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Paul,

I must say that I agree with what you say here 100%. The whole point of writing is that it DOES avoid the awkwardness and inaccuracy of the spoken language. How in the world can we expect to sell a new alphabet to anyone but ourselves when they will stand to lose consistency and accuracy in communication? I'm sure we've all heard of the phrase "to thrown the baby out with the bathwater"? Without communication being UNAMBIGUOUS, as it is with the current alphabet, writing is a useless tool.

I would gladly promote a few years' worth of pain learning some set spellings than abandon the concept of a unified, unambiguous communicational tool. At the end of the day, our world WOULD NOT function without writing as it is. Think how many laws could be disputed because a word in a written law could be claimed to be a DIFFERENT word from someone else's dialect! Learning spellings is only a painful experience at present because the alphabet is so useless. The fact that you have to teach someone to spell where half the letters they're supposed to use are redundant/historical/ambiguous is the thing to throw out.

It's true the printing press did standardise spellings, where before there was no standardisation; but standardisation is not a bad thing when it comes to writing. Before the printing press, we did not have computers, the internet, newspapers, dictionaries, and other modern developments that rely on a unified written system. Most legal matters were conducted in Latin, and I can understand why - spellings, meanings, grammar - it was all UNIFIED. The only reason we don't have to use Latin any more is because English has moved on.

I don't deny that the pronunciation of English will change, thus making some spellings look a little antequated. The point of the matter is, even if you're adapting the spellings correctly, the sounds of the language will probably change too, so whole parts of the alphabet will probably need revising. Any such change will be difficult. At the end of the day, you just can't avoid changing alphabet and/or spellings after a period of time. You can't develop an alphabet that is always going to remain perfectly matched up to the spoken language. The point is, pronunciation is at its most steady point right now, so we are not likely to see the same rate of development we have seen in the past; Shavian is guaranteed a longer effective lifespan than its predecessor.

Shavian is not a voice recorder, or a way of using pen and paper as a telephone. It is not a way of using paper as if we were speaking - why would we need that with today's technology? Shavian is merely BASED on our speech. Having a closer relationship to our speech makes it easier to understand and learn, but that's as far as it can go, unless you want to remove order and replace it with chaos. If you try to turn it into a form of International Phonetic Alphabet, it ceases to be practical as writing.

Food for thought: what if each Egyptian scribe had painted hieroglyphics exactly as he wanted?

Hugh

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <mailto:pvandenbrink@...>
To: shavian@... <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 5:55 AM
Subject: [shavian] Rebuttal: Is there an Ideal way to type Shaw?

Hi Paige
Is Paige appropriate or would C. Paige be better?
While I accept your point of view for casual writing or correspondence
within your dialect group, I believe it is necessary to develop a literary
or international standard spelling.

Let me start my rebuttal.
The benefits of having a standardized spelling are so great that we impose
an extraordinary effort on all literate English writers to maintain and
propagate that standard. This is not done lightly. The huge number of
English words would make it almost impossible for us to have printed
dictionaries with all the valid alternate spelling. The information
technology that keeps our world humming is dependant on this level of
Spelling standardization. Imagine how much more complicated library
indexes, computer search engines, automatic language translation and
computer programming would be if they could not depend on standard
spelling. Data processing would require much additional time consuming
error checking. Non-standard spelling would create words with overlapping
meaning. The same sounds could represent 2 or more words.
We need a instrument to reduce communication chaos or static, not generate
more random errors.
I believe that the Shaw alphabet can create that happy medium, a logical
consistent alphabet that comes close enough to being phonetic that we can
write clearly and exactly to all our fellow English Speakers around the
world, even if we would have to painfully puzzle out their accent in spoken
conversation.
That is the ideal that I am striving for.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. While I accept that pronunciation of words do evolve in time to
different forms require a different spelling, I would like to slow that
process down and only iteratively change the standard spelling. I don't
want it to be free to change erratically.
Say for example, every 10 years or so, provide a revised dictionary and
spellchecker, with the new spellings.

P.P.S Again as a large portion of the accent differences is in the vowel
pronunciation, I would prefer to minimize the number of vowel letters in
each accent dialect. Obviously, I am trying to create a consensus on what
that minimum set of vowel letter for the British R.P. and the American
Standard would be, and then identify vowel letters that are common to both
standards, and then mark the left-overs as being specific to one or the
other accent dialects. I have no idea of the scope of the difficulties
until we do that preliminary assessment.

___________________attached_____________________

At 11:46 PM 7/15/02 -0400, you wrote:
>In my humble opinion, the purpose of an alternative alphabet such as Shavian
>or Quikscript is to provide English speakers with a phonetic alphabet to
>replace the roman alphabet which has never fit the English sound structure.
>This implies that you need a symbol for each sound used by the speakers of
>the language. In a language as wide-spread as English, it is to be expected
>that there will be dialectical differences which will require a few extra
>symbols to encompass the phonemic range of all the speakers of the
>language. I would use the phonemes I need for my dialect, and you would use
>the phonemes needed for your dialect. Necessarily, if I pronounce some
>words differently than you do, I should spell them differently, and you have
>the same privilege. If we attempt to maintain the current roman alphabet
>concept that there should be a single, "correct" spelling as we shift to
>Shavian or Quikscript, then whose dialect do we choose, and why? And if we
>were to make that mistake, then we are back in the same deadend that we are
>in now. A few centuries hence, English spelling will be as illogical as it
>is now. The spoken language inevitably changes, and spelling cannot be
>frozen either. It has to be free to change.
>
>Thus, I believe your assumption that one of the purposes of Shavian is to
>provide a single, "correct" spelling for an English word is an over-
>simplification based on an erroneous assumption, that everyone should spell
>words the same way.
>
>We all grew up with the idea that there is one correct way to spell a word,
>but this is not a necessary nor even an extremely old concept. In the
>1600s, English writers felt free to spell words in whatever way made sense
>to them and fit their dialect. Presumably, those who read what the writers
>wrote understood what they were reading without undue hardship. Over time,
>however, printers and dictionary editors (I assume) won out with the idea
>that a word should be spelled in one way only. Many educated people lament
>the alleged decline of literacy and as evidence, they point to the failure
>of people to comply with the "official" spelling. I have been guilty of
>this in the past, and I still have to fight against this tendency which was
>fostered by years of school indoctrination. As a further example of this
>attitude, look at the spelling contests that school children go through,
>which is nothing other than an enormous waste of time memorizing approved
>spellings because one cannot use logic to predict how an English word will
>be spelled in the roman alphabet.
>
>If Shavian or Quikscript were in common use, can you imagine children
>wasting their time, memorizing how you spell words. Of course not. There
>would be no point in a phonetic alphabet.
>
>Most words will be spelled the same in Shavian or Quikscript by the majority
>of people, and the words that people spell differently due to their dialect
>will generally only cause a slight slowing of the reader's speed and not
>appreciably impede communication. After all, if you could understand a
>person's dialect if you heard them speaking, you surely should be able to
>understand the same message as they would write it!
>
>Paige
>
>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?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




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I've done a good bit of research how English spelling got the way it is and
why it isn't changing.

Some of you might find this an interesting read. Others will just enjoy
looking at the pictures of various alternative alphabets. It's still a
draft, so if you have any comments, pass 'em my way.

http://frognet.net/~craig/spelling/spellingreform.html

Craig



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Think how many laws could be disputed because a
> word in a written law could be claimed to be a DIFFERENT
> word from someone else's dialect!

That brings up an interesting point... sometimes I wonder
where the critical mass of law base is though... When does
it become impossible to follow one law without breaking
another?

Sorry, just pointing out neat things :)

Up too late,
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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Star:

I thought you might find this interesting given your comment below. About 3 years ago, the Indiana legislature passed a law that stated a policeman cannot stop a vehicle solely to determine compliance with the mandatory seat belt law. Another law was passed in the same session, but attached to another bill, that stated that a policeman can stop a vehicle for that sole purpose. Talk about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. By the was, this was contested in court almost right away, and the appellate court held that the standard rules of legal construction permit the more restrictive law to be applied, and that is where it stands. Both laws are still in the Indiana Code, one after the other. Why am I not surprised?

Paige


Star Raven wrote:

Think how many laws could be disputed because a
> word in a written law could be claimed to be a DIFFERENT
> word from someone else's dialect!

That brings up an interesting point... sometimes I wonder
where the critical mass of law base is though... When does
it become impossible to follow one law without breaking
another?

Sorry, just pointing out neat things :)

Up too late,
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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Star:

I thought you might find this interesting given your comment below. About 3 years ago, the Indiana legislature passed a law that stated a policeman cannot stop a vehicle solely to determine compliance with the mandatory seat belt law. Another law was passed in the same session, but attached to another bill, that stated that a policeman can stop a vehicle for that sole purpose. Talk about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. By the was, this was contested in court almost right away, and the appellate court held that the standard rules of legal construction permit the more restrictive law to be applied, and that is where it stands. Both laws are still in the Indiana Code, one after the other. Why am I not surprised?

Paige


Star Raven wrote:

Think how many laws could be disputed because a
> word in a written law could be claimed to be a DIFFERENT
> word from someone else's dialect!

That brings up an interesting point... sometimes I wonder
where the critical mass of law base is though... When does
it become impossible to follow one law without breaking
another?

Sorry, just pointing out neat things :)

Up too late,
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

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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Craig:

I read your paper and found it quite interesting. I printed a copy of
it and would like to have a copy of the final version when you get it
finished. It had been years since I read about some of these things
such as the ITA alphabet and Sir James Pitman. Many of your references
I had never seen, and I have never seen a list with as many spelling
reformers as you have cited. I knew there were quite a number, but I
did not realize it was that large a group altho (could not resist using
it) I am not surprised to learn Ben Franklin was among the group.
Edison probably would have been too except there was no way to turn a
profit from spelling reform.

I also appreciated your comments about the sort of people who would be
interested in tinkering around with the alphabet to try to improve it.
I know that when I have tried to interest people in Quikscript, I am
usually met with a ho-hum attitude by almost everyone. I agree with you
that those who are already literate have little interest in improving
things for the future. I have never tried teaching it to a five year
old child. Children would probably find it great fun, until they
learned that hardly anyone knows it so you are essentially relegated to
communicating with yourself.

Paige




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Craig:

I read your paper and found it quite interesting. I printed a copy of
it and would like to have a copy of the final version when you get it
finished. It had been years since I read about some of these things
such as the ITA alphabet and Sir James Pitman. Many of your references
I had never seen, and I have never seen a list with as many spelling
reformers as you have cited. I knew there were quite a number, but I
did not realize it was that large a group altho (could not resist using
it) I am not surprised to learn Ben Franklin was among the group.
Edison probably would have been too except there was no way to turn a
profit from spelling reform.

I also appreciated your comments about the sort of people who would be
interested in tinkering around with the alphabet to try to improve it.
I know that when I have tried to interest people in Quikscript, I am
usually met with a ho-hum attitude by almost everyone. I agree with you
that those who are already literate have little interest in improving
things for the future. I have never tried teaching it to a five year
old child. Children would probably find it great fun, until they
learned that hardly anyone knows it so you are essentially relegated to
communicating with yourself.

Paige




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I prefer shavian to quickscript, mostly because I prefer
the printed style at the moment. As for the five year old
children... I have four nieces, three of whom are newborns.
once they reach an age where they are old enough to write,
teach it to them as a "secret language." I knw when I was
little I was fascinated by the written language. I have
only locked onto shavian as the most successful of the
phonetic alphabets I have come across.

Up too early,
Star

> I also appreciated your comments about the sort of people
> who would be
> interested in tinkering around with the alphabet to try
> to improve it.
> I know that when I have tried to interest people in
> Quikscript, I am
> usually met with a ho-hum attitude by almost everyone. I
> agree with you
> that those who are already literate have little interest
> in improving
> things for the future. I have never tried teaching it
> to a five year
> old child. Children would probably find it great fun,
> until they
> learned that hardly anyone knows it so you are
> essentially relegated to
> communicating with yourself.
>
> Paige
>
>
>


=====
"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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Hi Craig

I took a quick look at your article. It is an impressive compilation on the
progress of English spelling reform.
On the basis of your history, perhaps I can make some predictions.
You seem to suggest that there is mild evolutionary trend to correct
spellings, but they are not consistently applied and even less consistently
accepted in all English countries, and take years to be accepted by all
English speakers. And as you mentioned, Computer Spell-Checkers are now
retarding that evolutionary processes as well.
History suggests that spelling reform will never be applied consistently.
In particular, British Spelling and American Spelling will tend to be very
conservative in accepting each others proposed changes.
Also your description of the I.T.A.,(See attached) perhaps the best of the
letter augmentation schemes, suggests that no matter how well designed and
presented, any spelling reform correction or letter augmentation proposal
will not work as well as a entirely new alphabet, such as the Shaw Alphabet.

Given the Shaw Alphabet was hastily constructed on the British model of
pronunciation, and not subject to any further evolution or adaption to
World English, it has stood up remarkably well.

Would you agree that the development of the Shaw Alphabet as an auxiliary
alphabet has the best chance of creating useful logically consistent
phonetically based system to represent English?

Regards, Paul V.


________________attached____________________________

Concern about children and immigrants learning English quickly spawned a
batch of new proposals in the latter half of the century, many of which did
not seek to supplant traditional orthography, but to supplement it with a
more accurate alphabet that could be used by learners to quickly learn the
written language before switching to traditional orthography. Most
prominent of these was the Initial Teaching Alphabet, created in 1961 by
the grandson of Sir Isaac Pitman, James Pitman, who was also involved with
the creation of the Shaw alphabet. The i.t.a. contains new letters so that
each letter corresponds to one sound, but the letters were carefully
designed to resemble the digraphs they most often correspond to in
traditional orthography. <ch> is turned into a ligature. The voiced and
voiceless sounds of <th> are each given a ligatured character based on the
usual letters, but the tails on the t part go different directions. The two
sounds of <oo> are treated similarly. Certain compromises are made to ease
the transition to standard writing. The sound of [z] is represented by a
normal <z>, except in words like is where it is usually spelled with an
<s>. In those cases, a backwards <z> is used, indicating the [z] sound, but
hinting at its standard representation (Pitman and St. John 132).

In 1965, use of the i.t.a. had spread to all 50 states, and it was being
used by around 100,000 children in Great Britain (Dewey 67). But while
children did learn to read more quickly using i.t.a., the transition to
standard spelling was not effortless for all children. Many adults today
blame their poor spelling on having been taught initially with Pitman's
alphabet (Lane). However, those who had difficulty making the transition
may well be the same people who would have had difficulty with our
cumbersome spelling system anyway. Regardless, the Initial Teaching
Alphabet fell out of favor once the progressive 60s were over.

Craig

At 10:53 PM 7/16/02 -0400, you wrote:
>I've done a good bit of research how English spelling got the way it is and
>why it isn't changing.
>
>Some of you might find this an interesting read. Others will just enjoy
>looking at the pictures of various alternative alphabets. It's still a
>draft, so if you have any comments, pass 'em my way.
>
>http://frognet.net/~craig/spelling/spellingreform.html
>
>Craig
>
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




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Hi Paige
You caught me off-base on that one.
My blanket statement that the acceptance of alternate spellings
based on all the different acceptable pronunciations
would make a printed dictionary almost impossible to produce and maintain
is hyperbole.
With Modern computer database technology and improved voice recognition
technology, it would be possible to collect all possible phonetic spellings
for a particular word just by polling and collecting data from a number of
people around the word.
I suspect the number of variations would be quite large.
I suspect it would be challenging to edit.
I am not suggesting that we have a world wide standard.
I am suggesting we have a British Standard acceptable to Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, India and Pakistan.
I am also suggesting we have American standard acceptable to the other
countries where an American accent pre-dominates.
I suggest we minimize and document the differences between these two main
standards along the lines that you yourself suggest.

P.S. Chinese Dictionaries are orginized based on the stroke count of the
character. They are difficult to use to find characters with a large number
of strokes. Both China and Japan, modern countries which use Chinese
characters, have attempted reforms to have a limited basic vocabulary for
newspapers and government documents, to reduce the complexity of reading
Chinese characters.
P.P.S. Canadian (excluding Newfoundlanders of course) is close enough to
American pronunciation to match up quite nicely for writing purpose. There
are only a handful of words that are pronounced differently and their
number diminishes yearly. "vase", "vaze" and "voz" is the only Canadian
variants that I can think of off-hand.
________________attached _________________________
At 09:54 AM 7/16/02 -0400, you wrote:
>Paul Gershon Vandenbrink wrote:
>
> > Hi Paige
> > Let me start my rebuttal.
> > The benefits of having a standardized spelling are so great that we impose
> > an extraordinary effort on all literate English writers to maintain and
> > propagate that standard. This is not done lightly. The huge number of
> > English words would make it almost impossible for us to have printed
> > dictionaries with all the valid alternate spelling.
>
>I am not convinced the advantages of a "correct" spelling were that great when
>this practice developed. It is not done lightly now, but I suspect it was a
>pattern we fell into originally, not because it was a necessity, but because
>printed material validated a particular spelling. By the way, I
>understand that
>dictionaries exist for the Chinese language. Since Chinese does not use an
>alphabet, and manages to find another way to organize their dictionaries, a
>blanket statement, with no evidence to support it, that alternate spellings
>would make a printed dictionary almost impossible is not very convincing
>to me.
>I would agree it would make it more challenging, but not impossible or
>unworkable.
>
> > The information
> > technology that keeps our world humming is dependant on this level of
> > Spelling standardization. Imagine how much more complicated library
> > indexes, computer search engines, automatic language translation and
> > computer programming would be if they could not depend on standard
> > spelling. Data processing would require much additional time consuming
> > error checking. Non-standard spelling would create words with overlapping
> > meaning. The same sounds could represent 2 or more words.
> > We need a instrument to reduce communication chaos or static, not generate
> > more random errors.
>
>The foregoing seems to make some good points. But the actual variation
>between
>English dialects around the world and how that would affect spelling if people
>were free to spell words as they pronounce them has not been tested. No doubt
>alternate spellings would require additional programming, but how large a
>problem this might be is not clear to me as I am not a programmer.
>
> > [snip]
> >
> > P.S. While I accept that pronunciation of words do evolve in time to
> > different forms require a different spelling, I would like to slow that
> > process down and only iteratively change the standard spelling. I don't
> > want it to be free to change erratically.
> > Say for example, every 10 years or so, provide a revised dictionary and
> > spellchecker, with the new spellings.
>
>What organization would impose these spelling changes on English speakers
>around
>the world? It seems to me that European-style language academies would be
>unacceptable to most English speakers as I suspect they do not want their use
>of language to be controlled by some "authority."
>
> > P.P.S Again as a large portion of the accent differences is in the vowel
> > pronunciation, I would prefer to minimize the number of vowel letters in
> > each accent dialect. Obviously, I am trying to create a consensus on what
> > that minimum set of vowel letter for the British R.P. and the American
> > Standard would be, and then identify vowel letters that are common to both
> > standards, and then mark the left-overs as being specific to one or the
> > other accent dialects. I have no idea of the scope of the difficulties
> > until we do that preliminary assessment.
>
> From what I have seen in the posts, one of the primary differences that
> people
>have been writing about is that in some speech communities the "ah", "on" and
>"awe" sounds have collapsed into "on" and those speakers do not understand the
>usage of the two former symbols as those sounds do not exist in their accent
>dialect anymore. My response is to let them spell with "on" alone. There
>is a
>commercial on TV now for the "Nautilus" sleep system. The announcer calls it
>"Notilus," which sounds peculiar to me, but I did not have any trouble
>understanding him, and if he had written me a letter in Shavian, I am
>confident
>I would have figured out what he meant if he had spelled it with an "on"
>rather
>than "awe."
>
>I am not sure there are mutually exclusive vowels in different accents
>(left-overs as you phrase them). I do not remember a post stating that
>Canadian speakers use other phonemes that Americans or British speakers do not
>use. Therefore, rather than attempting to restrict the number of vowel
>letters
>in each accent dialect as you suggested, I believe we should explain to new
>users of the alphabet that some accent dialects do not need all the symbols to
>represent their speech that others require.
>
>Your reference to British R.P. and American Standard seems to leave out
>Australian and New Zealand speech (I assume the American standard inclues
>Canadian?).
>
>Paige
>
>
>
>
>
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