Hi Craig
I will include the full text of your note to the Shaw Group and suggest
that everyone read your note attached to the bottom of my response.
Let me respond to your points in order. I have a few qualifications to some
of your points, but overall I am in agreement.
1. As to the qualitative differences between the 3 paired short and long
vowels. IT and EAT. WOOL and OOZE. ASH and AWE. I agree that in most
English accents there are slight variations in how they are pronounced, but
a major distinguishing factor is the additional sound duration and stress
that is put on the long vowels.
If you consider the duration of the vowel sounds in the words Wool and
Wooed, you will notice a marked difference.
It is interesting to note that in many English words, that the length
of short vowel sounds has been reduced to the point that they can not be
distinguished from a the minimal Schwa vowel sound in casual conversation.
(i.e. suppose, restore, familiar, vision, children, often)
I think length provides an easy way to categorize vowels for convenience,
even tho there is some overlap.
Schwa < short < Long < Short+R < Dipthong
2. As for the pronunciation of Ah in American Mid-Western English, I am not
certain it exists. I used to think it existed in words like calm, almonds
and alms, but after consideration of my normal pronunciation as opposed to
my affected British pronunciation, I find I either pronounce the "all"
sound as in almonds or the Awe sound without any "l" sound in Alms and calm.
The only way I can readily pronounce Ah is to say a drawn out "car" without
quite pronouncing the "r" in an affected Boston accent. I suspect that "Ah"
was only meant for for Non-Rhotic accents where it replace our
pronunciation of "Are". Non-Rhotic accents are fairly common in Southern
England and some New England states. This is apparent from the actual shape
of the Shaw letters. The R-letters in the Shaw Alphabet all appear to have
an embedded "Roar". "Ah" exactly resembles "Are" without the embedded "Roar".
Perhaps, we can build our American subset of the Shaw Alphabet, on the
assumption that a Rhotic accent will be used, if only to avoid eliminating
the useful post vocalic "R" sound.
So I agree with you that we can avoid including "Ah" in our proposed
sub-set of useful Shaw letters for American English.
I can't even hear that impure "l" sound, unless you mean the semi-vowel "l"
found in "table". I don't hear it in "calm".
I would also prefer to avoid Diagraphs, especially Yew.
Yew is in fact only a convenience.
Depending on the font, it can not be distinguished from "yea" "ooze".
3. As for Dipthongs, it would be easier for the reader to include the Shaw
letters for the 4 common English Dipthongs, "age", "ice" or "eye", "out"
and "oil". But I would like to exclude "ian", because that sound is rare
and more accurately represented by "eat" "ado".
There is a least one more dipthong that does exists in Canadian English in
words like "beauty", "few", "fuel" and "newt", for which the Shaw Alphabet
doesn't have a letter.
Perhaps most Americans pronounce "few" as "fyoo" or fee yea ooze.
4. And on your final and most important point I definitely concur that we
should hesitate to make changes that require much addition or substitution.
If it can be snipped to better
accommodate Americans, and thus introduce a large segment of the English
speaking population to the Shaw Alphabet, that is
worth the risk of muddying the waters.
So let us leave additions and especially changes until later.
I also don't believe these reformers from the middle of the last century
would mind, an honest attempt to revitalize the Shaw Alphabet.
5. A question for you. Perhaps, we can agree as a starting point to
incorporate all the consonants and semi-vowel letters unchanged from the
Original Shaw Alphabet into the American Subset. We need to look at the
R-sound letters as well.
Regards, Paul Vandenbrink
________________attached note from Craig ________________
To: <pvandenbrink@...>
Subject: re: Shavian American Vowel Pronunciation organized
X-Mailer: Webmail
My computer is down, so I am unable to send to the group, as I'm
subscribed with a different address. If you reply, would you mind
including the whole message to the list?
I must differ with you assessment of vowels differing in duration.
While what we call long vowels used to last longer (in Old
English), today their "length" is indicated by tenseness. If one
says IT holding out the I, it doesn't become EAT; the tongue is
higher and the lips more stretched. Same goes for WOOD and
WOOED: tongue higher and lips more pursed. At least in my
American English.
I'm not sure that the "aaaaaaaa" sounds are parallel. I hear the
difference between "awe" and "on" in the speech of people who
make the distinction, but it is a well-documented feature of some
dialects that there is no difference. My mom doesn't; my dad does;
so I'm in the middle.
Working through several more pages, I realized that the editors
only used the "ah" character in places where I would use "ash"
(like AFTER) and in words like CALM with an L (kick ah mime).
They omit the L, but I hear it. It's not a clear L in my speech, but
what I think linguists refer to it as an impure L. I'd spell it "kick awe
loll mime". I probably wouldn't put the "loll" in TALK though.
So I would minimally suggest that Americans abandon the letter
"ah" as its sound has migrated and merged with "ash", or perhaps
only use it as shorthand for "awe loll" in words with that impure L.
As for diphthongs, I'm inclined to keep them, as they increase
efficiency, a main objective of Shaw. Once I get the system down, I
suspect I will link letters more, as the system was designed. In
the "Suggestions for Writing" of ANDROCLES it says, "There is no
need to link letters at all. But it frequently happens that the end of
one letter naturally runs into the beginning of another; and the
alphabet is so designed that this cannot produce alternative
readings. Junctions or links can occur only along one of the
double guide-lines within which short letters are written. No links
are permitted between the guide-lines, nor above them, nor
beneath them." It seems odd that there are not more digraphs. If
"yew" is a letter, then why not its mirror, "woo(d)"?
Kingsley, MacCarthy, and Pitman intended the alphabet to function
as a printable shorthand. To that end, I wonder about encouraging
the following section of the "Notes on the Spelling":
"It would be possible to extend the number of word-signs beyond
the four provided for in the design. Thus, common words such as
the following could regularly be spelt with a single consonant (the
corresponding Roman letter is shown in brackets after each
word): for (f), be (b), with (w), he (h), are (r), so (s), do (d). Further
economies could be made by writing other common words with
two letters, omitting the vowel between initial and final consonants,
e.g., that (tht), was (wz), have (hv), not (nt), this (ths), but (bt), from
(fm), had (hd), has (hz), been (bn), were (wr), and so on. If such
spelling became standardized, these invariable written forms
would stand equally well for strong and weak forms in
pronunciation, each reader supplying whichever he found
appropriate in the context (which is what he does now).... It is
possible... that other abbreviations would come into use for private
purposes but not for printing; it is also possible that some might
come to be adopted in print as well."
Sounds like the originators were interested in eliminating vowels
as well.
It seems that cutting is in the spirit of the alphabet as given to us in
Androcles, thus I would hesitate to make changes that require
much addition or substitution. If it can be snipped to better
accommodate Americans, I don't think these reformers from the
middle of the century would mind.
Craig Butz
shavian@...
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