Shavian eGroup Archive Browser

As there are only six months left till Christmas, it is high time you
were thinking of choosing suitable cards for your
alternative-alphabet-obsessed chums.

I have made some Shavian cards for my website. They are not terribly
good, but they are free to copy, print, send, edit, claim as your own
work, sell, burn, etc. More cards will be added when I feel less
lethargic.

The URL is:

http://www.simonbarne.com/shavian/cards.html

Suggestions and comments welcome.

Simon Barne




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dIr /SEvWn rIdxz,

fxst, a hVj HEnk V t /skot /hXison fP hiz help wiT mF /SEvWn rFtiN! I
wil sepREt mF 'a's from mF 'uh's, n Vz 'x' insted v 'r's At H end v wxdz.

sekond, /kwentin, /INgliS iz not spOken H sEm wE arQnd H wxld. wat V
nId iz sumwun wiH jP kPekt prOnunsiESun t translEt from /INliS t /SEvWn.
(anE edVkEted /sQT /Afrikan wil do.)

As H wxld grOz smalx, wI wil stAndRdFz on a set v prOnunsIESunz. (F
am betiN on 'bIb /INliS'.) wI R not HX jet.

Txd, /SFmon, H kRdz R luvlI! wen F rIinstal /korel /fOtOSop, F wil bI
krIEtiN sFnz, tM.

jPz,
/brent



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Hello all, from a Shavian across the pond!

I learned about shavian from my senior english book in high school
and I have since been fascinated by writing systems. (linguistics is
my hobby) I an amazed that so many people recognize the usefulness of
a system that works by phonetics rather than traditional spellings.
After all, who cares if you spell grey or gray, colour or color,
turck or lorrie (okay maybe not that last one). Anyway, my
question/observation is this: Shavian is missing one phenome to make
it american as well as english--the breathless "wh" versus the
breathed "w". This might have already been rehashed, but I'm willing
to hash it again ;)

Love and happy writing,
Star

ps. is there anyone who has a key to practicing handwritten Shavian?

All hail George Bernard Shaw!




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Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't shavian an outcry against the
silly standard spellings in the modern english language? Besides the
difference in pronunciation of Rhotic and non Rhotic accents, someone
in Brooklyn, NY might not agree with the way someone from
Massachusets "spells" something in shavian, anymore than someone from
Brittain would agree with someone from Ireland, not to mention the
slight variations on dialect within an area. Shavian is based on
Standard english, but night and knight are "spelled" the same because
they are pronounced the same. IMHO, making a standard spelling system
would go against what Shaw was trying to do, besides, who's accent
would you use? London or Liverpool? Dublin or Dallas? If you don't
like it, stick to standard English spelling.

Love and soapboxes
Star

All Hail George Bernard Shaw

--- In shavian@y..., "cutler" <cutler@i...> wrote:
>
> PRONUNCIATION versus GRAMMAR
> Paige Gabhart writes: "I believe the idea that Shavian spells
everything one way is clearly wrong and not necessary for good
communication."
>
> In my country where there are eleven official languages, standard
PRONUNCIATION is essential for communication. English is the lingua
franca of the courts, parliament, schools and universities most of
the population are trying to deal with a language that is not their
own. English taught by non-English teachers leads to distortion of
the language, which is becoming unrecognisable in some instances.
Even newscasters can be unintelligible. We hear that "a bed flew
into a Boeing", "The President unvealed a plague" and other
misleading information, the meaning of which must be guessed at.
Bad grammar is far less misleading.
>
> As I aim at using Shavian for teaching by writing it under the
word, it is imperative that a standard pronunciation be agreed on for
the purpose. Since all traditional alphabet printing adheres to
traditional English spelling as used in the Oxford English
Dictionary, it is the pronunciation guide of the OED that I intend to
use. Swerving from this can only lead to confusion, as there are so
many accents and variations around. Robert Burns might like all
spelling to be like his own:
>
> O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
>
> To see oursels as others see us!
>
> It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
>
> And foolish notion.
>
> If one is using the Shavian symbols as a game played as a hobby,
it is interesting and amusing to "hear" the different accents of
Australia, the Deep South of America and 'Oxford' English, but these
variations have to be for the pleasure of advanced students who have
mastered a standard pronunciation. L'Académie Française was
formed by
the Cardinal de Richelieu in 1635 to allay the chaos caused by
erratic spelling and pronunciation that made French almost
unintelligible to the French. Standardisation of spelling et cetera
saved the country millions. The whole purpose of Shavian is to
obviate ambiguity. The problem of ambiguity would fall away if each
sound were to have a symbol of its own. The sound of the symbol would
be inflexible - it would be foolish to re-create a possibility of
ambiguity in spelling.
>
> I believe that Shavian should standardise spelling to suit the
pronunciation of the English language most easily understood by those
who do not have English as their first language and have difficulty
in grasping the meaning of it.
>
> Remember that people never use words they do not know how to
pronounce and so vocabulary dwindles and common expletives are used
instead of meaningful words. Whole film scripts are made up of oaths
and obscenities to characterise people unable better to express
themselves.
>
> May I have your comments and transliteration to the Shavian
alphabet of the two sentences:
>
> A bird flew into a Boeing, & The President unveiled a plaque.




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Star writes:

>>Anyway, my question/observation is this: Shavian is missing one phenome
[phoneme] to make it american as well as english--the breathless "wh" versus
the breathed "w". This might have already been rehashed, but I'm willing to
hash it again ;) <<

Indeed, this problem has been discussed before. The w/wh distinction is an
archaic feature in American English - I have it, but at 62 I'm archaic - my
parents were from Oregon - probably inherited from Scots English. Its use in
southern England is distinctly "non-U". In the Shaw Alphabet, I just write
the two component letters. - A more serious problem, discussed at great
length on this list in the past, is the fact that British English has one
more vowel than I do, and I'd have to look a word up in a British-English
dictionary (if I had one) to tell me to write "daunce" and "lawf" rather than
"dance" and "laff". The rest of the English speaking world, for whom British
Received Pronunciation is normative, doesn't understand the problem we North
Americans have here, where we respect George V's pronunciation quite as much
as we did George III's tea.

Bob Richmond
Knoxville, Tennessee



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Do we object when whe hear someone with talk a certain accent? Do we ask of
them to talk in a different way? I don't. As long as we know what they are
talking about, there are no problems. That's why shavian forces us to write
down an R, even if it's not pronounced in certain accents.

Just consider Shavian a way of recording speech on paper.
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: warriorprincess@... <warriorprincess@...>
Aan: shavian@... <shavian@...>
Datum: vrijdag 29 juni 2001 17:11
Onderwerp: [shavian] Re: Shavian Standard Spelling


Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't shavian an outcry against the
silly standard spellings in the modern english language? Besides the
difference in pronunciation of Rhotic and non Rhotic accents, someone
in Brooklyn, NY might not agree with the way someone from
Massachusets "spells" something in shavian, anymore than someone from
Brittain would agree with someone from Ireland, not to mention the
slight variations on dialect within an area. Shavian is based on
Standard english, but night and knight are "spelled" the same because
they are pronounced the same. IMHO, making a standard spelling system
would go against what Shaw was trying to do, besides, who's accent
would you use? London or Liverpool? Dublin or Dallas? If you don't
like it, stick to standard English spelling.

Love and soapboxes
Star

All Hail George Bernard Shaw

--- In shavian@y..., "cutler" <cutler@i...> wrote:
>
> PRONUNCIATION versus GRAMMAR
> Paige Gabhart writes: "I believe the idea that Shavian spells
everything one way is clearly wrong and not necessary for good
communication."
>
> In my country where there are eleven official languages, standard
PRONUNCIATION is essential for communication. English is the lingua
franca of the courts, parliament, schools and universities most of
the population are trying to deal with a language that is not their
own. English taught by non-English teachers leads to distortion of
the language, which is becoming unrecognisable in some instances.
Even newscasters can be unintelligible. We hear that "a bed flew
into a Boeing", "The President unvealed a plague" and other
misleading information, the meaning of which must be guessed at.
Bad grammar is far less misleading.
>
> As I aim at using Shavian for teaching by writing it under the
word, it is imperative that a standard pronunciation be agreed on for
the purpose. Since all traditional alphabet printing adheres to
traditional English spelling as used in the Oxford English
Dictionary, it is the pronunciation guide of the OED that I intend to
use. Swerving from this can only lead to confusion, as there are so
many accents and variations around. Robert Burns might like all
spelling to be like his own:
>
> O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
>
> To see oursels as others see us!
>
> It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
>
> And foolish notion.
>
> If one is using the Shavian symbols as a game played as a hobby,
it is interesting and amusing to "hear" the different accents of
Australia, the Deep South of America and 'Oxford' English, but these
variations have to be for the pleasure of advanced students who have
mastered a standard pronunciation. L'Académie Française was
formed by
the Cardinal de Richelieu in 1635 to allay the chaos caused by
erratic spelling and pronunciation that made French almost
unintelligible to the French. Standardisation of spelling et cetera
saved the country millions. The whole purpose of Shavian is to
obviate ambiguity. The problem of ambiguity would fall away if each
sound were to have a symbol of its own. The sound of the symbol would
be inflexible - it would be foolish to re-create a possibility of
ambiguity in spelling.
>
> I believe that Shavian should standardise spelling to suit the
pronunciation of the English language most easily understood by those
who do not have English as their first language and have difficulty
in grasping the meaning of it.
>
> Remember that people never use words they do not know how to
pronounce and so vocabulary dwindles and common expletives are used
instead of meaningful words. Whole film scripts are made up of oaths
and obscenities to characterise people unable better to express
themselves.
>
> May I have your comments and transliteration to the Shavian
alphabet of the two sentences:
>
> A bird flew into a Boeing, & The President unveiled a plaque.




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At 11:09 AM 6/29/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Star writes:
>
> >>Anyway, my question/observation is this: Shavian is missing one phenome
>[phoneme] to make it american as well as english--the breathless "wh" versus
>the breathed "w". This might have already been rehashed, but I'm willing to
>hash it again ;) <<

Star, if you take a look at the Read Alphabet (also known as Quikscript),
which is Kingsley Read's revision of Shavian, you will find that he
realized his error and added a symbol for "wh." There is a Read Alphabet
Group on Yahoo, and I am its moderator. We have not been very active
lately, but if you go to the site, you will find a Read Alphabet font you
can download. The font is good but can still stand some improvement, which
I hope we can accomplish soon.

The Read Alphabet is much more cursive than Shavian. I have used it for 25
years, and I find it faster to write since it does not require the penlifts
that Shavian does. The font "Jerome" has been mapped to correspond to
Shavian letters so something you write in Jerome can be easily changed to
Shavian. The only exception to that is that Jerome also has the capacity
to use the Read "half-letters," which Shavian has no equivalent for. I
find they add much to the distinctiveness of the word-shapes in Read and
are one of its most innovative features. The problem is that if you use
them in e-mails, people who want to transliterate your message into Shavian
will not be able to read everything you have written.

>Indeed, this problem has been discussed before. The w/wh distinction is an
>archaic feature in American English - I have it, but at 62 I'm archaic - my
>parents were from Oregon - probably inherited from Scots English. Its use in
>southern England is distinctly "non-U".

Bob, I cannot agree with you. The distinction is not archaic in the United
States in southern Indiana where I live. I believe many people in this
region make the distinction. Two nights ago I just happened to be reading
the section on pronunciation in the preface to my Merriam-Webster
dictionary which was published in 1988 (ninth edition, I believe) It
declares that the distinction is not made in southern England, but that
most Americans make it. I doubt that the phoneme has become archaic in the
U.S. in the the last 13 years.

It seems to me if one makes the distinction, it seems important; if one
does not, one wonders why anybody cares. Perhaps, I am too sensitive,
since I make the distinction, but I have read posts on this site that
struck me as if they were looking down their collective noses at those of
us making the distinction. The impression I received from several of them
was "I don't use this sound, therefore, it must be antiquated." I remember
someone pointing out, somewhat snootily I thought, that the Scots still
make this sound. The thought seems to be if people in London do not make
this sound anymore, those who do must be country bumpkins. We all know
that language changes, but the fact that people in southern England and
some parts of the United States have stopped using a particular sound is
not necessarily an indication they are the vanguard of the
future. Perhaps, the usage merely represents a brook which has diverged
from the main flow of the English language and, over time, it will diminish
and disappear as a stream entering a desert. At this point, no one can say
whether "wh" will disappear from most people's speech, but it is still
alive and well here.

>In the Shaw Alphabet, I just write the two component letters.

My Merriam-Webster preface points out that "wh" is the unvoiced version of
"w." It is not two separate sounds anymore than "sh" or "th"
are. Besides, the lack of the "wh" strikes me as inelegant. It is not
that big a deal to add the Read Alphabet symbol for "wh," which hardly
varies from the "w" anyway, and it enables the alphabet to more accurately
portray the actual pronunciation of all English speakers around the world.

> - A more serious problem, discussed at great
>length on this list in the past, is the fact that British English has one
>more vowel than I do, and I'd have to look a word up in a British-English
>dictionary (if I had one) to tell me to write "daunce" and "lawf" rather than
>"dance" and "laff". The rest of the English speaking world, for whom British
>Received Pronunciation is normative, doesn't understand the problem we North
>Americans have here, where we respect George V's pronunciation quite as much
>as we did George III's tea.

Since I do not believe in attempting to standardize spelling in Shavian or
the Read Alphabet (that is partly what got us into this mess to begin
with), I do not see what the problem is. The British say "lawf." We
don't. But we still understand what they mean, and they understand us when
we speak. Surely, we can understand the same word when it is written by a
Londoner.

Paige Gabhart
Jeffersonville, IN




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[This is a copy of the mail I sent to the quikscript group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Read_Alphabet ]

Greetings,

I was messing around with Rosetta lately (the program can be
downloaded from the Shavian Yahoo-group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shavian ) and I was wondering if there
would be a dictionary for Quikscript (Senior Quikscript). If not,
would some people be interested in creating such a dictionary? I
would also like to help. But keep in mind that I am Dutch myself and
try to pronounce everything the posh British way. If such a
dictionary is going to be created, we'd have to stick to one way of
pronouncing. The phonetic dictionary included with Rosetta is
American. With this I mean that can't is pronounced like "kaent", and
not 'kahn't".

Then again the phonetic dictionary isn't optimised for the shortened
letter-forms of QS.

(If you don't know what I mean by the files, download rosetta and
open the files with a text editor such as notepad or wordpad)

If such a dictionary is going to be created, how exactly? Perhaps we
can edit the c0.6 file. I don't understand how a '.index'-file works,
but a '.vocabulary'-file should be editable.

Editing the c0.6 files seems to be the easiest thing to do, for it
already includes all phonetic transcriptions of the words. We just
have to look for situations where the shortened forms are required,
and replace them. When that's done, some editing of the
'phones_6.txt'-should make everything work.

Please tell me what you think.


Ewout




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I should have explained myself a little more. I already got misunderstood in
the Quikscript group.

I'm looking for a program that can convert texts from Traditional Orthograpy
to Quikscript. Rosetta is such a program. It contains a reference file that
looks up the word in the traditional orthography, and then returns this word
in a phonetic orthograpy, which could be Shavian or Quikscript. The
reference file isn't optimised for Quikscript yet, so I'm asking around here
if there is one around, and if not, if some people would like to create
one/have tips on creating one.
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: teraiten@... <teraiten@...>
Aan: shavian@... <shavian@...>
Datum: woensdag 11 juli 2001 0:03
Onderwerp: [shavian] any automatic QS convertors around?


>[This is a copy of the mail I sent to the quikscript group at
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Read_Alphabet ]
>
>Greetings,
>
>I was messing around with Rosetta lately (the program can be
>downloaded from the Shavian Yahoo-group at
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shavian ) and I was wondering if there
>

>[snip]
>
>Please tell me what you think.
>
>
>Ewout
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>




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[message has also been posted in the Shavian Yahoo-group]

I have contacted Mr. Callaway (the creator of Rosetta) and he was thinking of doing the same. I've asked about a few technicalities and await his reply (which may be entering my mailbox as this message is being sent).

Rosetta can already properly convert texts to Junior Quikscript (using a quite extensive phonetic dictionary freely available at http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict )

When Rosetta encounters a word that it does not yet know, an option is given to enter the proper transcription for this word.

Since the CMU dictionary is already very extensive, using this as a basis, it will not be too hard to create a 'quite complete' converter. It is perhaps possible to create a list on-line where people can post new words and transcriptions, and of course corrections. There will be only one rule: the words will have to sound with the same accent. For example, a new word that is pronounced in Posh British wouldn't fit in an American-sounding text.

I'm not certain about adding the names of persons to it, for the list can get quite big then. It would even be possible to add foreign names, as long as they can be transscribed in QS...

My name, Ewout, is for example possible in QS: /EvQt (the sound of the Dutch 'w' is quite the same as the English 'v')

I'll post the complete plan soon... (within two weeks or something, I'm going to England soon for a week...)

By the way, I also think QS would be helpful to the Dutch in order to get rid of the terrible 'Dutch Accent'. Many Dutch pronounce the English v as f, there's not aspirated 'wh' and a 'd' at the end of a word becomes a 't', many other letters go unvoiced too such as the 'th'. That's normal in Dutch, but not in English and sounds terrible. When I found out about Shavian and QS, I have also been spending more attention to voicing. And it will of course make people more certain as how to pronounce a word. No more Dutch people saying JIOgrefI [geography] :)

Ewout
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Paige Gabhart <pgabhart@... <mailto:pgabhart@...> >
Aan: Read_Alphabet@... <mailto:Read_Alphabet@...> <Read_Alphabet@... <mailto:Read_Alphabet@...> >
Datum: donderdag 12 juli 2001 0:11
Onderwerp: Re: [Read_Alphabet] any automatic QS convertors around?



Ewout:

Sorry I misunderstood. I am not familiar with Rosetta. What you have described would certainly be useful to provide texts for people to read to gain familiarity with the Read Alphabet. However, to make this practical, it sounds like it would be quite time consuming to enter a sufficient quantity of words into this transcriber to make it work very effectively.

Your mention of optimization for Quikscript leads me to wonder if you are referring to the use of half-letters, which are possible with the font Jerome. Of course, since they have no correspondence with Shavian, they are mapped to keys Shavian does not use. It might be possible to have a junior and a senior version of the transcriber. The user could pick which version they want their roman text transcribed into. Of course, this increases the work in preparing the transcriber even more.

I do not have any experience with this sort of thing so I cannot offer any assistance with this project. Anybody here who could?

Paige

At 09:48 PM 7/11/2001 +0200, you wrote:


Nononono, that's not what I meant. I should have explained myself a little more. I'm looking for a program that can convert texts from Traditional Orthograpy to Quikscript. Rosetta is such a program. It contains a reference file that looks up the word in the traditional orthography, and then returns this word in a phonetic orthograpy, which could be Shavian or Quikscript. The reference file isn't optimised for Quikscript yet, so I'm asking around here if there is one around, and if not, if some people would like to create one/have tips on creating one.


-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Paige Gabhart <pgabhart@... <mailto:pgabhart@...> >
Aan: Read_Alphabet@... <mailto:Read_Alphabet@...> <Read_Alphabet@... <mailto:Read_Alphabet@...> >
Datum: woensdag 11 juli 2001 5:43
Onderwerp: Re: [Read_Alphabet] any automatic QS convertors around?

Dear Ewout:

[snip]

So when you talk about a dictionary for the Read alphabet, I believe you are really suggesting we should produce a document that attempts to provide "correct spellings," rather than letting people spell as they speak. This result of this, in my opinion, would be to fall back into the same trap the printers led us into three centuries ago, and from which we are now trying to escape.

Paige


At 07:01 PM 7/10/01 +0000, you wrote:


Greetings,

I was messing around with Rosetta lately (the program can be
downloaded from the Shavian Yahoo-group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shavian ) and I was wondering if there
would be a dictionary for Quikscript (Senior Quikscript). If not,
would some people be interested in creating such a dictionary? I
would also like to help. But keep in mind that I am Dutch myself and
try to pronounce everything the posh British way. If such a
dictionary is going to be created, we'd have to stick to one way of
pronouncing. The phonetic dictionary included with Rosetta is
American. With this I mean that can't is pronounced like "kaent", and
not 'kahn't".

Then again the phonetic dictionary isn't optimised for the shortened
letter-forms of QS.

(If you don't know what I mean by the files, download rosetta and
open the files with a text editor such as notepad or wordpad)

If such a dictionary is going to be created, how exactly? Perhaps we
can edit the c0.6 file. I don't understand how a '.index'-file works,
but a '.vocabulary'-file should be editable.

Editing the c0.6 files seems to be the easiest thing to do, for it
already includes all phonetic transcriptions of the words. We just
have to look for situations where the shortened forms are required,
and replace them. When that's done, some editing of the
'phones_6.txt'-should make everything work.

Please tell me what you think.


Ewout


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