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First thing.
Without nonsense there is no sense. Without sense there is no nonsense. Without sense there is no sense. Without nonce there is no once. Without out end there is no begin in. Without redundancy the waves would surge in one direction only.
Second thing.
I want to play a language game with you, a game that starts with a passage from a story by Jorge Luis Borges, concerning a man with an absolutely perfect memory:
Me dijo que hacia 1886 había discurrido un sistema original de numeración y que en muy pocos días había rebasado el veinticuatro mil. [ . . . ] En lugar de siete mil trece, decía (por ejemplo) Máximo Pérez; en lugar de siete mil catorce, El Ferrocarril; otros números eran Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, azufre, los bastos, la ballena, el gas, la caldera, Napoléon, Agustín de Vedía. En lugar de quinientos, decía nueve. [ . . . ] Yo traté de explicarle que esa rapsodia de voces inconexas era precisamente lo contrario de un sistema de numeración. Le dije que decir 365 era decir tres centenas, seis decenas, cinco unidades: análisis que no existe en los "números" El Negro Timoteo o manta de carne. Funes no me entendió o no quiso entenderme.
He told me that in 1886 he had thought up his own original numbering system, and that in a very few days he had gone past the number 24,000. [ . . . ] Instead of 7013 he would say, for example, Máximo Pérez; instead of 7014 he would say The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, sulfur, the saddle pads, the whale, the gas, the cooking pots, Napoleon, Agustín de Vedía. Instead of 500 he would say nine. [ . . . ] I tried to explain to him that this rhapsody of disconnected words was precisely the opposite of numbering system. I told him that to say 365 was to say three hundreds, six tens, five ones; an analysis that doesn't exist in the "numbers" The Negro Timoteo or meat blanket. Funes didn't understand me or didn't want to understand me.
The game is to reverse Borges's premise: to imagine a language that consists entirely of numbers, by taking the Oxford English...