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In a previous episode, rubick67 said:

> As a west coast Canadian, I can confirm that. "Past" and "pasta" are
> both definitely with an "Ash".

perfect example of analogy being inadequate for describing sounds. When I
spoke of past being like pasta, I was imagining British AH, and pasta being
more or less as it is in Italian. Pasta with ASH must be a Northern Cities
Vowel Shift thing. I can imagine it in a really strong Buffalo or Cleveland
accent.

Craig



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Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the shavian
group.

File : /grapheme-phoneme-key-charts/alphabetchart.gif
Uploaded by : craigiest <shavian@...>
Description : Shaw Alphabet Reading Key with keyboard mapping and word-signs

You can access this file at the URL

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Regards,

craigiest <shavian@...>







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let me first say that I have a suppressed Tennessee
dialect... for those of us from the south we know that the
normal tennessee accent is a very different set of
inflectons from, say, georgia, or south carolina, ect. Now
what this means is I have cut out some of the nasal sounds
(for a tennessean pronunciation of the state name it is
pronounced T-n-s-E... just say the letters. Bob knows what
I am talking about ;)

At any rate, I strive to speak english as unaccented as I
can--though if that is really possible, who can say?--but
the fact remains that I have heard a difference between the
three sounds and can see where the original Shaw was coming
from...

For those in the UK, is there a way that you can identify
the specific inflections, in other words, the dialect, of
the person who wrote androlocles? Can you hear a
pronunciation that identifies the writer as from a specific
place?

For Americans and other native english speakers not from
the exact area that the androlocles dialect was written in,
do we include the Scottish roll or the irish lilt into a
phonetic alphabet? Who knows... perhaps in a later
evolution. Do we include the ah/awe/o(n) separation? Yes. I
myself pronounce rot and wrought differently, I would need
the different letters. As for Up and Ado, though I do not
use them as much, I can see a difference where some one may
need them. Therefore, perhaps there should be a sounded out
pronunciation key made by those who do have a separation,
or perhaps if you do not have the separation, learn to use
one of the letters that best fits and learn the rest as
"alternates".

Is this a possibility? I hope so,
--Star

=====
"One ship goes east, another west,
By the self same gale that blows.
'Tis not the gale, but set of sail
That determines which way it goes."

--Unknown

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Silly Canadians! (j/k)

:)

--Star, the jokingly ethno-linguocentric

> --- In shavian@y..., Brion VIBBER <brion@p...> wrote:
> > Note that there do exist people who pronounce "pasta"
> with an ASH.
> From
> > what I hear this is more likely among Canadians, but
> there may be
> some
> > border-straddling dialects... I don't know if they
> would also
> pronounce
> > "past" with an ASH, though.
>
> As a west coast Canadian, I can confirm that. "Past" and
> "pasta" are
> both definitely with an "Ash".

=====
"One ship goes east, another west,
By the self same gale that blows.
'Tis not the gale, but set of sail
That determines which way it goes."

--Unknown

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Seriously, though, the extensions are not a bad idea. Are they somewhat
established, or are they entirely your (Craig's) invention? More
particularly, are they open to debate and further revision?

If so, why not an abbreviation for "she"?

On Sun, 2002-07-14 at 17:21, shavian@... wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> This email message is a notification to let you know that
> a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the shavian
> group.
>
> File : /grapheme-phoneme-key-charts/alphabetchart.gif
> Uploaded by : craigiest <shavian@...>
> Description : Shaw Alphabet Reading Key with keyboard mapping and word-signs
>
> You can access this file at the URL
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shavian/files/grapheme-phoneme-key-charts/alphabetchart.gif
>
> To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit
>
> http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/files
>
> Regards,
>
> craigiest <shavian@...>

--
Cheers,
Bob Schmertz


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Hi Rubik
I would prefer to go with the one to one mapping of English sounds to Shaw
Letters, myself. With the number of different sounds in English, it is
enough for the reader to just learn all the Shaw letters.
I believe English has enough redundancy in word choice so that it is not a
serious problem that homonyms will not be marked with an alternate spelling
under the Shaw Alphabet.

For example the most common set of homonyms.
to
two
too
"to" is already abbreviated to the letter "tot"
"two" can be represented by the numeric digit "2"
"too" can be replaced by the synonym "also".
Even in English Roman Spelling, there is not always an alternate spelling
for different words that sound the same.
I think the benefits of a logical consistency in the Shaw spelling far
outweigh the lack of redundancy.

Regards, Paul V.
____________________ attached________________________

At 08:38 PM 7/12/02 +0000, you wrote:
>--- In shavian@y..., Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@s...>
>wrote:
> > There have always been Homonyms in English, where the meaning of
>the word
> > must be determined by context. Obviously, we wish to minimize those
> > homonyms as well. Maybe that requires creating alternate letters
>with the
> > same pronunciation.
> > We need to gauge the extent of the problem, first.
>
>I'd suggest avoiding the creation of any new letters for Shaw.
>Indeed, having multiple spellings for the same sound (something like
>561 spellings to represent 41 basic sounds in TO) is one of the
>problems that Shaw wanted to avoid. Purposely adding soundalikes puts
>us right back where we started. Sure, we'll be getting a whole bunch
>of words which will be spelled exactly the same where they didn't
>before (eg. to, two, too, their, there, they're, main, mane, air,
>ere, err, etc), but given that people have been using all of these in
>spoken English for centuries with no or minimal problems, I can't see
>any new ones cropping up simply because they're written down as they
>sound. L8r.
>
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




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Hi Craig
Since you were kind enough to dig out some good examples, let me do you
the favor of applying my educated ear to your sample.
As a Canadian, I accept both American and British R.P. pronunciations as
valid.
We had a fair amount of British programming on TV when I was growing up.
(Avengers, Man about the house, Two Ronnies, etc)
So let's see if I can sort this list out.
I am going to exclude a few words of dubious or archaic pronunciation, so
we can get some good samples.

Most words are pronounced with the short "o" or "oh" of "on".
This includes all the ON words and the majority of other words having a
soft "o" sound.

Even so there are a few words that can be pronounced equally recognizably
as the short "a" of ash or the longer British "ah" sound, which is
inbetween the short "o" and the longer "aw" sound. It rhymes with "car".
This is the AH category.

The final AWE category seems to include mainly words with All sound with
the remainder being short words ending in AW, such as Jaw and Law. I expect
this original sound is used by almost all English speakers, for a few
common words.
I would be surprised if it is common, tho.

Conclusion
I would like to mark "ah" as un-American, but that is probably too extreme.
I would like to preserve "AWE" as included in our practical sub-set of
Shaw Letters for spelling American English.
See samples below for confirmation. Let me know whether you can here a
different sound in the AWE samples.
> ON
>62 dog
>66 hobbles
>66 off
>66 not
>68 scoffed
>76 rotten
>
> AH
>64 rather
>64 after
>64 asked
>68 path
>
> AWE
>62 assaults
>64 always
>66 call
>66 all
>66 jaw
>66 law
>68 almost
>68 already
>68 fallen
>68 falling

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. Differences in accents seem to limited to vowel sounds, with the
exception of the semi-vowel /hw/ versus /w/.
We could minimize the number of representations of vowel sounds in logical
way in order to minimize spelling differences between different accents,
and still remain more or less phonetic.

__________________-attached-____________________
At 08:42 PM 7/13/02 -0400, you wrote:
>In a previous episode, Craig Butz said:
>
> > The map at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/maps/Map1.html shows the
> > extensive geographic distribution of those who merge AH and ON, as well as
> > discussion of its spread.
> >
> > Androcles and the Lion makes only very limited use of AWE, but I will read
> > some more and take notes before making any arguments about its
> application to
> > writing American.
>
>OK, I mixed the letter names up in my last post. The "cot/caught" merger
>involves the letters ON and AWE, as attested by the pair "rot(ten)/wrought"
>in Androcles.
>
>I've read another 5 pages of Androcles paying careful attention to these
>letters. Below is a list of the words on pages 60-68 that are spelled with
>ON, AH, and AWE. I'm particularly interested in whether other Americans and
>Canadians would spell the AH words with AH.
>
> ON
>62 dog
>62 collaring
>64 watching
>66 hobbles
>66 off
>66 not
>68 softened
>68 scoffed
>76 rotten
>
> AH
>56 calm
>60 clasps
>60 past
>62 yah
>62 gasping
>64 rather
>64 after
>64 asked
>66 last
>66 commands
>68 path
>
> AWE
>60 talk
>62 assaults
>62 haw
>64 always
>66 call
>66 all
>66 jaw
>66 law
>68 almost
>68 already
>68 fallen
>68 falling
>68 water
>68 wrought
>
>Except for "calm" I would use ASH for the A in every one of the AH words.
>How do those of you who see a need for all three of these letters to
>represent your idiolect use the letter AH? Are there Americans who
>pronounce "past" and the first syllable of "pasta" the same way?
>
>So as not to contribute to further confusion by trying to describe all these
>sounds, I've recorded the above list. You can hear how I say these words at
>http://frognet.net/~craig/on-ah-awe.mp3
>
>After recording it, I realized that I say AH and AWE identically. Yeesh.
>
>Craig
>
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




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No offence, but did the irony in this sentence make anyone else laugh.

>Even if someone is aware of and can even
> imitate the distinction, [...] if there [sic] dialect doesn't
>differentiate, they
> cannot determine which homophone they are hearing without context.

I've been reading with interest the recent discussion on when to
use "awe", "on", "ah" etc and have a question to ask those people who
have suggested not to use the letters if the accent in question does
not differentiate between them. I was wondering what will happen
when (not if) Shavian becomes the standard alphabet. Will there be a
standard correct spelling? Or will people spell differently
according to their accents, thereby negating the usefulness of a
single alphabet, making dictionaries redundant and relegating a lot
of reading to guesswork?



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I suggested that you should learn the letters even if you
don't hear a difference. Thus writing will only slightly be
affected by dialect and reading will not be guess work. If
one's dialect has no difference between ah and awe, learn
both letters as sounding the same. This would take the
guesswork out of reading.

--Star

--- finewineau <finewineau@...> wrote:
> No offence, but did the irony in this sentence make
> anyone else laugh.
>
> >Even if someone is aware of and can even
> > imitate the distinction, [...] if there [sic] dialect
> doesn't
> >differentiate, they
> > cannot determine which homophone they are hearing
> without context.
>
> I've been reading with interest the recent discussion on
> when to
> use "awe", "on", "ah" etc and have a question to ask
> those people who
> have suggested not to use the letters if the accent in
> question does
> not differentiate between them. I was wondering what
> will happen
> when (not if) Shavian becomes the standard alphabet. Will
> there be a
> standard correct spelling? Or will people spell
> differently
> according to their accents, thereby negating the
> usefulness of a
> single alphabet, making dictionaries redundant and
> relegating a lot
> of reading to guesswork?
>
>


=====
"One ship goes east, another west,
By the self same gale that blows.
'Tis not the gale, but set of sail
That determines which way it goes."

--Unknown

__________________________________________________
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I should point out that in most British dialects, we do not pronounce 'r's after vowels (unless followed by another vowel). However, in Shavian, we write the 'r's anyway. It's counter-intuitive, but we manage to do it! It would be silly to leave them out, as readers over the Atlantic would find it difficult to understand us, and that would work against effective communication, which is what a written language is supposed to facilitate!

The point of this all is, Shavian wasn't created as a way of writing only your own speech down - for the written system to be effective at all, you need to form some general consensus (by experience, i.e. by communicating more and more with others); write things down so they can be read well by anyone, with less emphasis on your own personal speech. If every word were written down differently by each person, legal documents, dictionaries, terms and conditions, search engines, etc. would count for nothing. Purposely creating transatlantic (and indeed regional) spelling differences would completely rubbish the whole concept of Shavian.

I know that the fear people have of Shavian becoming as set in its spellings as the current alphabet. However, as long as there are no major phonemic developments in the English language in the foreseeable future, I see no reason why people won't be able to re-adapt their spellings appropriately if and when any changes in . The way things are going, English dialects around the world are becoming CLOSER together, rather than further apart, so this won't pose any problems. HOWEVER - if and when spoken English becomes so different that Shavian no longer serves it well, it's obvious the alphabet will have to be revised. Shavian's lifespan isn't infinite.

Hugh

----- Original Message -----
From: Star Raven <mailto:celestraof12worlds@...>
To: shavian@... <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: [shavian] Re: Is there an Ideal way to type Shaw?

I suggested that you should learn the letters even if you
don't hear a difference. Thus writing will only slightly be
affected by dialect and reading will not be guess work. If
one's dialect has no difference between ah and awe, learn
both letters as sounding the same. This would take the
guesswork out of reading.

--Star

--- finewineau <finewineau@... <mailto:finewineau@...> > wrote:
> No offence, but did the irony in this sentence make
> anyone else laugh.
>
> >Even if someone is aware of and can even
> > imitate the distinction, [...] if there [sic] dialect
> doesn't
> >differentiate, they
> > cannot determine which homophone they are hearing
> without context.
>
> I've been reading with interest the recent discussion on
> when to
> use "awe", "on", "ah" etc and have a question to ask
> those people who
> have suggested not to use the letters if the accent in
> question does
> not differentiate between them. I was wondering what
> will happen
> when (not if) Shavian becomes the standard alphabet. Will
> there be a
> standard correct spelling? Or will people spell
> differently
> according to their accents, thereby negating the
> usefulness of a
> single alphabet, making dictionaries redundant and
> relegating a lot
> of reading to guesswork?
>
>


=====
"One ship goes east, another west,
By the self same gale that blows.
'Tis not the gale, but set of sail
That determines which way it goes."

--Unknown

__________________________________________________
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