[identity profile] davidcook.livejournal.com 2008-07-29 09:30 pm (UTC)(link)
... possibly because Chinese already exists :-)

I'll take [livejournal.com profile] del_c's word for it that there are 412 - which is very close to the number of distinct sounds (not counting tones) in (Mandarin) Chinese. I'm sure there would be some clever way to map all of the non-intersecting paths through a 5x5 grid (I guess that's what they are, at least) to the Chinese syllables ...

[identity profile] davidcook.livejournal.com 2008-07-29 09:32 pm (UTC)(link)
... of course, if I'd refreshed the page before commenting, I would have seen [livejournal.com profile] simont's various comments and done rather less stating-of-the-obvious. Oh well ...