Shavian eGroup Archive Browser

Most vowels can have an unstressed equivilant. Take for instance the
change in stress between the word "rose" and the word "rosetta" In many
cases the unstressed vowel is not changed by the lack of stress. In up
vs. ado, however, Up speaks for the stressed or secondary stressed
vowel that is the short u sound, while, as others have written in this
ongoing misunderstanding of up vs. ado, the sound made by ado is
reminiscent of the sound a child makes when first learning to piece
together a string of sounds into a word. The consonant, unlike in the
named alphabet, makes a schwa sound so that emphasis is put on the
consonant sound.

"bee" makes a "b+schwa" sound or "zee" (zed for those across the pond)
makes a "z+schwa" sound

Anyway, back to lurking,
--Star

--- Bob Schmertz <rschmertz@...> wrote:
> On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 01:29:58PM +0100, Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
> >
> > > Regards, Paul Vandenbrink
> > > P.S. Hugh, is there any other unstressed vowels?
> >
> > The 'if' and 'eat' vowels are the only other vowels I would say are
> ever
> > used in non-stressed positions (such as in "sillY", "dEpart",
> "bEcome",
> > "carrYIng").
>
> How about the 'o' in "radio", for starters?
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Bob Schmertz
>


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--George E. Woodberry

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Hi Bill
I pronounce "radio" as 3 syllables.
rE-dI-O all of which sound long and stressed to me.
Idea ends in an unstressed Schwa to my ear.
Either F-dI-a
or F-dW in the Shaw alphabet. Are the Diagraphs W, V and C optional?
Also can you replace unstressed short vowels with Schwa (ado), if this is
close to normal pronunciation (i.e. banana)
banAna?

Regards, Paul Vandenbrink

P.S. So a,e and i can all have unstressed pronunciation.
***************** attached ********************************
At 11:52 PM 5/20/02 -0400, you wrote:
>On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 01:29:58PM +0100, Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
> >
> > > Regards, Paul Vandenbrink
> > > P.S. Hugh, is there any other unstressed vowels?
> >
> > The 'if' and 'eat' vowels are the only other vowels I would say are ever
> > used in non-stressed positions (such as in "sillY", "dEpart", "bEcome",
> > "carrYIng").
>
>How about the 'o' in "radio", for starters?
>
>--
>Cheers,
>Bob Schmertz
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




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----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Schmertz <mailto:rschmertz@...>
To: shavian@... <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 4:52 AM
Subject: Re: [shavian] schwa-ado and the stressed mid lax vowel - up

On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 01:29:58PM +0100, Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
>
> > Regards, Paul Vandenbrink
> > P.S. Hugh, is there any other unstressed vowels?
>
> The 'if' and 'eat' vowels are the only other vowels I would say are ever
> used in non-stressed positions (such as in "sillY", "dEpart", "bEcome",
> "carrYIng").

How about the 'o' in "radio", for starters?

That's secondary stress, just the same as the 'ette' in 'serviette', for instance.

However, the 'i' in 'radio' and 'serviette' are perfect examples of the unstressed 'eat' vowel! :)

Hugh

up ado ^p @'du
herder surfer h'3rd@r s'3rd@r [General American not BBC-E]

I would say the same relationship with regard to stress is the same
when dealing with the two vowels in herder or the two vowels in abut.

@'b^t abb@t
abut Abat

'h3rd@r hurrder [Spanglish]
hurdar? hXdD

Steve

--- In shavian@y..., Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@s...>
wrote:
> Hi Steve & Hugh
> I am unclear about the unstressed attribute.
>
> Even though there is similarity in sound between the ado (schwa)
sound and
> the up sound, I think the difference is in how the schwa is used.
That
> creates an important distinction between the two sounds. The Schwa
sound
> only merges with consonants or ends a syllable. It never seems to
connect
> two consonants together like the up sound.
>
> Should the schwa and the schwa r merge (array?) be treated
separately from
> short, long and dipthongs?
> Isn't there the same relationship between unstressed
> ado and up and the unstressed
> array and urge?
>
> Regards, Paul Vandenbrink
> P.S. Hugh, is there any other unstressed vowels?



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This long note pertains to earlier discussions on how to learn Shavian and the representation of the stressed and unstressed mid lax vowels when alone or in combination with [r]. As indicated, most of this comes from Ewout Stam's excellent webpage on the topic.

Quickscript
source: http:quickscript.teraiten.cjb.net <http://quikscript.teraiten.cjb.net/>

Read's <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel/files/Shaw-Alphabet/readscripts.gif> Quickscript is a simplified variant of the Shaw Alphabet that Kingsley Read published ten years after winning the Shaw alphabet competition.

Ewout <http://quikscript.teraiten.cjb.net/> Stam <http://quikscript.teraiten.cjb.net/> /EvQt /stym /EvQt /stym /eivout staam/ wrote: We all know English spelling is a real pain. It is a system that more or less works, (as Mark Rosenfelder discribes on his website <http://www.zompist.com/> ) but it's still damn hard. Most people don't really care about this, but foreigners (such as yours truly) and dyslexic people (who have trouble reading and/or writing) could really benefit from a simpler system. Some well known people such as Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and especially George Bernard Shaw have all advocated spelling reform.

In order to view this page properly you need to have the Jerome <http://home.wanadoo.nl/uln/quikscript/jerome.ttf> and Ghoti <http://home.wanadoo.nl/uln/quikscript/ghoti.ttf> fonts, click to download.

[SB] They all recommended alphabet reform - a particular type of spelling reform that does not try to introduce regularization into the traditional script but offers a parallel phonemic script. The successful reduction of irregularities have been respellings of 300 or so words. This conclusion is based on German, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese reforms during the past 100 years. The newer spellings coexist with the old spelling for ten years but are no longer supported by dictionaries or in the schools. To coexist within the old writing system, the new spellings cannot be that different from the old ones nor can there be so many new spellings to require the general public to be retrained.]

Many people think or want English to be the new world language. If the spelling is simplified sufficiently, chances of this being true increase greatly!

Let's get back to Shaw. He didn't only think the English spelling (from here on refered to as TO, Traditional Orthography) was complicated, it was also a waste of time. The letters we use were initially for writing in stone. No-one writes in stone these days. Most people use a ball-point pen or a computer keyboard. New and simpler letters were required. When Shaw died [in 1950], a contest was organized. People could submit a script they've designed, and win a money prize. Kingsley Read won the contest, and the alphabet was christened Shavian. One book, Androcles and the Lion was printed in this script.

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel/files/Shaw-Alphabet/quickscript-proof.gif> Time passed and Read tried to make Shavian even better. He called his new script 'Quikscript'. Quikscript had a few other advantages over Shavian, such as letters that connect to each other, saving even more time. He also devised a set or rules, that would further reduce the labor of writing, by leaving out some letters, that didn't create confusing situations. By writing somthing in Quikscript, you use only 50% of the space you'd use when writing the same text in TO. See his proof on the left.

You'd say it's a form of shorthand, but it's not, and that was the general idea Read had in mind. If it behaves itself just like normal roman script, going from left to right on a nice and straight line, it can be printed in books, newspapers and road signs. Stenography/shorthand moves up, down, left and right all the time, there is no way it can be typed and therefore printed, let alone be saved in a computer file. Quikscript can.

[SB] I would call it a linear shorthand for four reasons: it is phonemic, it includes abbreviations, it can be written almost as fast as someone speaks, and it takes up only half of the space of "long hand."


Shavian - SEvWn


Shavian is probably used more than Quikscipt. It looks more like a printed script, no characters connect. There are a few characters that look connected, but if you speak English you'll notice those sounds happen quite often in groups. In Quikscript you simply consider these separate sounds, they connect automatically. I have found Shavian a bit harder than Quikscript.

First of all, there are four characters where the only difference is stress. This is very easy to get wrong. Actually they don't make too much sense, because apart from these four, none of the other characters indicates stress. And there was one sound which is pronounced differently by Americans, so it led to some confusion. These characters are:

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel/files/shavian-eir.gif>

What makes Shavian easy to learn, but hard to master, is its logic; voiced consonants (consonants that use vocal chords, such as d, z, v and g) are simply 180 degree rotations of their unvoiced counterparts (t, s, f and k). Pretty easy to learn, as 50% of the consonants can be logically derived from the others. But because they look so alike you need to train yourself not to automatically turn those characters around in your head, when reading a text.

[SB] You have to over-learn the concept of voicing. Once you have this down it becomes relatively easy.
QuickScript drops some of the analytical character of Shavian. Some of the voiced unvoiced pairs are not simple rotations.

Language Related Websites

* spanglish in a nutshell
* sci.lang FAQ <http://www.zompist.com/langfaq.html> Frequently asked questions about linguistics
* The numbers 1 to 10 in over 4000 languages <http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml> .
* Fun facts to know and tell about Quechua <http://www.zompist.com/quechua.html>
* Amerindian words in English <http://www.zompist.com/indianwd.html>
* Arabic words in English <http://www.zompist.com/arabic.html>
* Deriving Proto-World with tools you probably have at home <http://www.zompist.com/proto.html> . Including the English/Chinese Pseudo-Cognate List!
* How likely are chance resemblances between languages? <http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm> - Quite likely, really. A statistical investigation.
* Proto-World and the Language Instinct <http://www.zompist.com/langorg.htm> Two dubious ideas that work dubiously together
* Hau to pranounse Inglish <http://www.zompist.com/spell.html> : The real rules of English spelling
* Writing English Chinese-style <http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm> English spelling is such a pain-- why not use logograms instead? Simplified pictograms shown below:
Fellini: fell has the radical vertical and the phonetic sell; lean has the radical stand and the phonetic bean; and knee has the radical body and phonetic tree. Winston Churchill transliterated would be Wensuteng Chuerqilu

* Hiragana flashcards <http://www.zompist.com/flash.html> : Gotta learn 'em all!
* Hergé's Syldavian <http://www.zompist.com/syldavian.html> : A Grammar
* The Language Construction Kit <http://www.zompist.com/kit.html>
* The Sound Change Applier <http://www.zompist.com/sounds.htm> : A program to apply a set of sound changes to a lexicon





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This long note pertains to earlier discussions on how to learn Shavian and the representation of the stressed and unstressed mid lax vowels when alone or in combination with [r]. As indicated, most of this comes from Ewout Stam's excellent webpage on the topic.

Quickscript
source: http:quickscript.teraiten.cjb.net <http://quikscript.teraiten.cjb.net/>

Read's <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel/files/Shaw-Alphabet/readscripts.gif> Quickscript is a simplified variant of the Shaw Alphabet that Kingsley Read published ten years after winning the Shaw alphabet competition.

Ewout <http://quikscript.teraiten.cjb.net/> Stam <http://quikscript.teraiten.cjb.net/> /EvQt /stym /EvQt /stym /eivout staam/ wrote: We all know English spelling is a real pain. It is a system that more or less works, (as Mark Rosenfelder discribes on his website <http://www.zompist.com/> ) but it's still damn hard. Most people don't really care about this, but foreigners (such as yours truly) and dyslexic people (who have trouble reading and/or writing) could really benefit from a simpler system. Some well known people such as Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain and especially George Bernard Shaw have all advocated spelling reform.

In order to view this page properly you need to have the Jerome <http://home.wanadoo.nl/uln/quikscript/jerome.ttf> and Ghoti <http://home.wanadoo.nl/uln/quikscript/ghoti.ttf> fonts, click to download.

[SB] They all recommended alphabet reform - a particular type of spelling reform that does not try to introduce regularization into the traditional script but offers a parallel phonemic script. The successful reduction of irregularities have been respellings of 300 or so words. This conclusion is based on German, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese reforms during the past 100 years. The newer spellings coexist with the old spelling for ten years but are no longer supported by dictionaries or in the schools. To coexist within the old writing system, the new spellings cannot be that different from the old ones nor can there be so many new spellings to require the general public to be retrained.]

Many people think or want English to be the new world language. If the spelling is simplified sufficiently, chances of this being true increase greatly!

Let's get back to Shaw. He didn't only think the English spelling (from here on refered to as TO, Traditional Orthography) was complicated, it was also a waste of time. The letters we use were initially for writing in stone. No-one writes in stone these days. Most people use a ball-point pen or a computer keyboard. New and simpler letters were required. When Shaw died [in 1950], a contest was organized. People could submit a script they've designed, and win a money prize. Kingsley Read won the contest, and the alphabet was christened Shavian. One book, Androcles and the Lion was printed in this script.

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel/files/Shaw-Alphabet/quickscript-proof.gif> Time passed and Read tried to make Shavian even better. He called his new script 'Quikscript'. Quikscript had a few other advantages over Shavian, such as letters that connect to each other, saving even more time. He also devised a set or rules, that would further reduce the labor of writing, by leaving out some letters, that didn't create confusing situations. By writing somthing in Quikscript, you use only 50% of the space you'd use when writing the same text in TO. See his proof on the left.

You'd say it's a form of shorthand, but it's not, and that was the general idea Read had in mind. If it behaves itself just like normal roman script, going from left to right on a nice and straight line, it can be printed in books, newspapers and road signs. Stenography/shorthand moves up, down, left and right all the time, there is no way it can be typed and therefore printed, let alone be saved in a computer file. Quikscript can.

[SB] I would call it a linear shorthand for four reasons: it is phonemic, it includes abbreviations, it can be written almost as fast as someone speaks, and it takes up only half of the space of "long hand."


Shavian - SEvWn


Shavian is probably used more than Quikscipt. It looks more like a printed script, no characters connect. There are a few characters that look connected, but if you speak English you'll notice those sounds happen quite often in groups. In Quikscript you simply consider these separate sounds, they connect automatically. I have found Shavian a bit harder than Quikscript.

First of all, there are four characters where the only difference is stress. This is very easy to get wrong. Actually they don't make too much sense, because apart from these four, none of the other characters indicates stress. And there was one sound which is pronounced differently by Americans, so it led to some confusion. These characters are:

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel/files/shavian-eir.gif>

What makes Shavian easy to learn, but hard to master, is its logic; voiced consonants (consonants that use vocal chords, such as d, z, v and g) are simply 180 degree rotations of their unvoiced counterparts (t, s, f and k). Pretty easy to learn, as 50% of the consonants can be logically derived from the others. But because they look so alike you need to train yourself not to automatically turn those characters around in your head, when reading a text.

[SB] You have to over-learn the concept of voicing. Once you have this down it becomes relatively easy.
QuickScript drops some of the analytical character of Shavian. Some of the voiced unvoiced pairs are not simple rotations.

Language Related Websites

* spanglish in a nutshell
* sci.lang FAQ <http://www.zompist.com/langfaq.html> Frequently asked questions about linguistics
* The numbers 1 to 10 in over 4000 languages <http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml> .
* Fun facts to know and tell about Quechua <http://www.zompist.com/quechua.html>
* Amerindian words in English <http://www.zompist.com/indianwd.html>
* Arabic words in English <http://www.zompist.com/arabic.html>
* Deriving Proto-World with tools you probably have at home <http://www.zompist.com/proto.html> . Including the English/Chinese Pseudo-Cognate List!
* How likely are chance resemblances between languages? <http://www.zompist.com/chance.htm> - Quite likely, really. A statistical investigation.
* Proto-World and the Language Instinct <http://www.zompist.com/langorg.htm> Two dubious ideas that work dubiously together
* Hau to pranounse Inglish <http://www.zompist.com/spell.html> : The real rules of English spelling
* Writing English Chinese-style <http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm> English spelling is such a pain-- why not use logograms instead? Simplified pictograms shown below:
Fellini: fell has the radical vertical and the phonetic sell; lean has the radical stand and the phonetic bean; and knee has the radical body and phonetic tree. Winston Churchill transliterated would be Wensuteng Chuerqilu

* Hiragana flashcards <http://www.zompist.com/flash.html> : Gotta learn 'em all!
* Hergé's Syldavian <http://www.zompist.com/syldavian.html> : A Grammar
* The Language Construction Kit <http://www.zompist.com/kit.html>
* The Sound Change Applier <http://www.zompist.com/sounds.htm> : A program to apply a set of sound changes to a lexicon





________________________________

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From my point of view the Schwa is a very different kind of vowel from
"up". It is not just a matter of stress.
Array and Urge also are quite different, but that difference is less
significant. Air and Err sound the same.
Any Linguists out there to clear this up.
Regards, Paul V.

At 07:42 AM 5/22/02 +0000, you wrote:
>up ado ^p @'du
>herder surfer h'3rd@r s'3rd@r [General American not BBC-E]
>
>I would say the same relationship with regard to stress is the same
>when dealing with the two vowels in herder or the two vowels in abut.
>
>@'b^t abb@t
>abut Abat
>
>'h3rd@r hurrder [Spanglish]
>hurdar? hXdD
>
>Steve
>
>--- In shavian@y..., Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@s...>
>wrote:
> > Hi Steve & Hugh
> > I am unclear about the unstressed attribute.
> >
> > Even though there is similarity in sound between the ado (schwa)
>sound and
> > the up sound, I think the difference is in how the schwa is used.
>That
> > creates an important distinction between the two sounds. The Schwa
>sound
> > only merges with consonants or ends a syllable. It never seems to
>connect
> > two consonants together like the up sound.
> >
> > Should the schwa and the schwa r merge (array?) be treated
>separately from
> > short, long and dipthongs?
> > Isn't there the same relationship between unstressed
> > ado and up and the unstressed
> > array and urge?
> >
> > Regards, Paul Vandenbrink
> > P.S. Hugh, is there any other unstressed vowels?
>
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




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--- Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@...> wrote:
> From my point of view the Schwa is a very different kind of vowel
> from
> "up". It is not just a matter of stress.
> Array and Urge also are quite different, but that difference is less
> significant. Air and Err sound the same.
> Any Linguists out there to clear this up.
> Regards, Paul V.

How about a hobby linguist? :)

Air and Err, at least by my American pronunciations are different as
the short e (air's non-rhotic equiv) and the short u (err's eqiv) The
comparison would come between err and array.

Err: short e + r
Array: schwa + r
Urge: short u + r
Air: long a + r

That is the best way I can think to describe it.

--Star

=====
Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
--George E. Woodberry

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On Mon, May 27, 2002 at 09:23:09AM -0700, Star Raven wrote:
>
> --- Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@...> wrote:
> > From my point of view the Schwa is a very different kind of vowel
> > from
> > "up". It is not just a matter of stress.
> > Array and Urge also are quite different, but that difference is less
> > significant. Air and Err sound the same.
> > Any Linguists out there to clear this up.
> > Regards, Paul V.
>
> How about a hobby linguist? :)
>
> Air and Err, at least by my American pronunciations are different as
> the short e (air's non-rhotic equiv) and the short u (err's eqiv) The
> comparison would come between err and array.
>
> Err: short e + r
> Array: schwa + r
> Urge: short u + r
> Air: long a + r
>
> That is the best way I can think to describe it.

"Err" is really a very poor choice of a word to base so much discussion
on, and to hinge a definition on. My American Heritage Dictionary gives
two pronunciations for it; one with a short e, one with a u with a
circumflex, which is used to indicate the sound in "her". But I had to
look that up to find all that out; it seems to be a quite seldom-used word
(and I was, until now, unsure of how it's generally pronounced). Finally,
even people like you (Star) and me who distinguish between "very" and
"vary" could be excused for pronouncing "err" the same as "air": I can't
think of any other word in the English language that has a short e
followed by an r at the end of a word or clearly at the end of a syllable.

Looking at the graphic of Androcles and the Lion I found at
http://www.unicode.org/pending/shavian/proposal/Shavian.html , it would
seem that the pronunciation for "err" that Read had in mind was the one
that rhymes with "her". In AatL, the "err" grapheme is used in stressed
syllables (such as "thirty" or "further") and the "array" grapheme is used
in unstressed syllables. Myself, I don't see any need to distinguish
these, but that's another thread.

--
Cheers,
Bob Schmertz


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Actually, in my continuing quest to speak correctly (darn that souther
heritage) I am more likely to pronounce it err as in: "To ERR is
human..." instead of "To AIR is human..."

--Star

=====
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--George E. Woodberry

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