I would just have thought that by now, Prince would have had his own Pictionary version where every word has just one correct image, and that is Prince's symbol for this word. Pictionary should send this idea to Prince and I bet he would draw a thousand words in minutes and send it back and it would be a hit. Pictionary Prince! Imagine Chris Rock yelling, "Pictionary Prince!"

(Sorry for this nonsense. I'm in the middle of reading Matt Thorn's book on Prince and I feel torn. That rhymes (and I'll sue anyone I find using it!), but did he actually come up with much new. The part about "The Vault" tapes getting wet when the engineer put hundreds of "vault" tape outside of the vault on carpet, then the carpet flooded and some of the tapes got wet. WTF? Is this true?)

Or does he have his own language? Oh..shit..he kinda does.

Why hasn't he retired by now?

I mean: how pointless is a career if you cannot retire?

I know this is getting rare in the USA but if he can't, how bad would that be?

That would be a thing to do before the language thing for sure.

There is far more about linguistics and language than simply alpha-numeric encoding an established language, which is homophonous to its ordinary counterpart.

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I hate to say it but what he writes is English. Very fantastical wordsmithy English. What he DOES have is his own style, and perhaps dialect by now

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I actually loved the first decades of the writing style, it was LOGICAL and SIMPLIFYING so when "I Feel For You" became "I feel 4 U" That was great, is saves time, and voila! Its concise and predictible, it is actually easier to write than his original title. Then I was even fine with <3. Also logical and simpler than "heart", Its universal! Where he lost me was the eyeball . I am sorry but a single one line stroke for the word "I" is way easier to draw than a picture of an eyeball for I.

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At least it became clear to me then, that for Prince it was never about simplifying language, it was all audio all along! Which is a beautiful thought, since he is a musician down to the core. How does it SOUND when you sing it? So that was my consolation when it went "too far" to follow linguistic evolutionary patterns LOL.

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(I'm a cryptologist, I study languages!)

[Edited 4/8/13 23:15pm]