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Hi Hugh

I am trying to create a consensus on what
the minimum set of vowel letters for the British R.P. and the American
Standard English 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.
As a first draft of a plan to simplify the introduction of the Shaw
Alphabet for people with a Standard American accent, consistent with the
English spoken on the National News Programs on the American TV Networks,
let me make the following suggestion..
I suggest that we mark the following 5 Shaw Letters as either redundant or
not used at all in the phonetic transcription of American accented English.
They would be reserved for British Accented English.
Ah
Ian
Yew
Ear
Urge

In American English Ah is usually pronounced the same as Ash,
but in some cases where the sound is closer to a lengthened soft "o" of On,
then the Ah would be spelled as Awe.
You can usually hear the difference when pronouncing
pom-pom girl and palm tree.

The other 4 redundant letters selected above, would be replaced with the
following letters which are not particularly different in American accented
English.
Ian == Eat Ado
Yew == Yea Ooze
Ear == If Array
Urge == Ado Array

This reduces the letters to be considered in transcribing American English
speech from 48 to 43. As well as reducing the amount of time needed to
learn the essential Shaw Letters, it also reduces the number of acceptable
variations in spelling, which slow down a novice reader.

Please let me know if you have any other suggestions to prune down the
stock of Shaw Letters for American English.

While I do want English Spelling in the Shaw Alphabet to be utterly
UNAMBIGUOUS to optimize the accuracy of written communication,
I suspect that after examining the 2 high status pronunciations (British
R.P and American Standard) we will find that some of the letters are
redundant and needlessly complicate the spelling.

Unnecessary multiple valid spellings for the same word increase the odds of
overlapping spellings and possible future ambiguity.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. I believe that spelling needs to be stabilized for long periods time,
but languages and language pronunciation change, so it behooves us
synchronize the spelling system with actual pronunciation, when a good
opportunity presents itself.
The popular introduction of a new alphabet such as Shaw or Shavian Alphabet
gives us that opportunity.
Another practical opportunity might not occur in our life-time.

____________________attached_______________________

At 09:53 PM 7/16/02 +0100, you wrote:
>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




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I have a clear distinction... As a matter of fact, while
transcribing william blakes "the tiger" over the weekend, I
used all five of these and the letters you say they sound
like. I also used the /hw/ from qwikscript which is to say,
a tiny /h/ attached to a normal sized /w/ this is the only
variation I have done. This increases my shaw to 49, but I
would rather it be complete than have to lose
pronunciation.

> Ah
> Ian
> Yew
> Ear
> Urge
>
> In American English Ah is usually pronounced the same as
> Ash,
> but in some cases where the sound is closer to a
> lengthened soft "o" of On,
> then the Ah would be spelled as Awe.
> You can usually hear the difference when pronouncing
> pom-pom girl and palm tree.
>

This is not always true. Ah for me is the sound in
"father," which is to say a short open sound. On is a
different sound, though not much, and Awe is the sound in
"law" which is to say that it is not only a longer sound
but to duplicate it without the shavian character, it would
have to be Ah+w to accurately depict the sound.

As for the standardised spellings, should it not be things
like place names that have standardised spellings? I mean,
think of the name of the town I used to live in: Maryville.
It was on the national news and Tom Brokaw could not
pronounce it correctly. (It is one of the top ten
retirement towns :)

If we allow for alternate spellings, would it not allow for
the language to evolve with less hinderance?

that's all for now,
--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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Hi Star Raven
Thanks for looking at my modest suggestion. I believe that your ear can
differentiate the sounds relating to all 5 redundant letters. What I am
suggesting tho is that for Ah letter, the sound it represents is not
significantly different from my pronunciation of words like father, fodder,
path, cloth, rather, bother, after, asked and cart, where I use the soft
"o" sound of "on". I can not think of any two words that I would
distinguish by the slight variations between these 2 sounds. For some
speakers, a sound difference exists, but perhaps it is not significant
enough to distinguish different words. Can you suggest some of the words
that you found with the Ah sound? Perhaps, we need to look at this letter
again, not matter how confusing most Americans find its use.
As for the other 4 letters which I said were redundant, I don't mean to say
that the sound that they represent don't exist.
I just think that those 4 sounds would be better represented by the
following 4 other letter combinations. The sound represented by the letter
Ian would be more accurately represented by the Eat Ado Letter combination.
And so forth.
Ian == Eat Ado
Yew == Yea Ooze
Ear == If Array
Urge == Ado Array

The \hw\ sound that you hear can certainly be represented by
the 2 Shaw letters Ha-Ha and Woe. Why would we need to create a new Shaw
Letter at this point for a rarely used sound, if 2 Shaw letters work well
and can not be interpreted as any other sound.

Remember, we are not deleting the redundant letters. We are just taking
them out of mix to allow American English speakers to avoid the confusion
of having to consider more letters than absolutely necessary when first
learning to write American English in the Shaw Alphabet.
They need a simple basic understanding. So
We would like to provide simple clear rules of spelling, with a minimum of
alternate spellings.
Dropping the vowel letters from 24 to 19, will be a great help to students.
Regards, Paul V.

At 05:39 AM 7/22/02 -0700, you wrote:
>I have a clear distinction... As a matter of fact, while
>transcribing william blakes "the tiger" over the weekend, I
>used all five of these and the letters you say they sound
>like. I also used the /hw/ from qwikscript which is to say,
>a tiny /h/ attached to a normal sized /w/ this is the only
>variation I have done. This increases my shaw to 49, but I
>would rather it be complete than have to lose
>pronunciation.
>
> > Ah
> > Ian
> > Yew
> > Ear
> > Urge
> >
> > In American English Ah is usually pronounced the same as
> > Ash,
> > but in some cases where the sound is closer to a
> > lengthened soft "o" of On,
> > then the Ah would be spelled as Awe.
> > You can usually hear the difference when pronouncing
> > pom-pom girl and palm tree.
> >
>
>This is not always true. Ah for me is the sound in
>"father," which is to say a short open sound. On is a
>different sound, though not much, and Awe is the sound in
>"law" which is to say that it is not only a longer sound
>but to duplicate it without the shavian character, it would
>have to be Ah+w to accurately depict the sound.
>
>As for the standardised spellings, should it not be things
>like place names that have standardised spellings? I mean,
>think of the name of the town I used to live in: Maryville.
>It was on the national news and Tom Brokaw could not
>pronounce it correctly. (It is one of the top ten
>retirement towns :)
>
>If we allow for alternate spellings, would it not allow for
>the language to evolve with less hinderance?
>
>that's all for now,
>--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!?
>Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better
>http://health.yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




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Simplify english for us Americans? would you bee keeping
the original 24 for the British? Once I figured out a clear
difference between the letters, I had no problem using
them.

Also, yew is y & long oo combined. To combine /eat/ and
/ado/ into a letter would be more complicated than
combining /if/ and /ado/ for the dipthong sound of /Ian/.
/Ear/ is the natural connection of /Ian/ and /r/ and urge
is also the natural connection of /ado/ and /r/ perhaps
what needs to be taught fo these letters is not that they
are different sounds but that they are natural connections
between letters, like cursive but not to the extent of
quickscript. With shavian, there are many natural
connections, which is one of the reasons that it is better
than roman.

Just another simple American,
--Star

--- Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@...>
wrote:
> Hi Star Raven
> Thanks for looking at my modest suggestion. I believe
> that your ear can
> differentiate the sounds relating to all 5 redundant
> letters. What I am
> suggesting tho is that for Ah letter, the sound it
> represents is not
> significantly different from my pronunciation of words
> like father, fodder,
> path, cloth, rather, bother, after, asked and cart, where
> I use the soft
> "o" sound of "on". I can not think of any two words that
> I would
> distinguish by the slight variations between these 2
> sounds. For some
> speakers, a sound difference exists, but perhaps it is
> not significant
> enough to distinguish different words. Can you suggest
> some of the words
> that you found with the Ah sound? Perhaps, we need to
> look at this letter
> again, not matter how confusing most Americans find its
> use.
> As for the other 4 letters which I said were redundant, I
> don't mean to say
> that the sound that they represent don't exist.
> I just think that those 4 sounds would be better
> represented by the
> following 4 other letter combinations. The sound
> represented by the letter
> Ian would be more accurately represented by the Eat Ado
> Letter combination.
> And so forth.
> Ian == Eat Ado
> Yew == Yea Ooze
> Ear == If Array
> Urge == Ado Array
>
> The \hw\ sound that you hear can certainly be represented
> by
> the 2 Shaw letters Ha-Ha and Woe. Why would we need to
> create a new Shaw
> Letter at this point for a rarely used sound, if 2 Shaw
> letters work well
> and can not be interpreted as any other sound.
>
> Remember, we are not deleting the redundant letters. We
> are just taking
> them out of mix to allow American English speakers to
> avoid the confusion
> of having to consider more letters than absolutely
> necessary when first
> learning to write American English in the Shaw Alphabet.
> They need a simple basic understanding. So
> We would like to provide simple clear rules of spelling,
> with a minimum of
> alternate spellings.
> Dropping the vowel letters from 24 to 19, will be a great
> help to students.
> Regards, Paul V.


=====
"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 seem to remember Rick (aka Flyfisher) didn't know the difference either. But once he knew what those characters represented he could use them with no problem. He was from the States, somewhere, I can't remember where...

----- Original Message -----
From: Star Raven <mailto:celestraof12worlds@...>
To: shavian@... <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 4:54 PM
Subject: [shavian] American versus British

Simplify english for us Americans? would you bee keeping
the original 24 for the British? Once I figured out a clear
difference between the letters, I had no problem using
them.

Also, yew is y & long oo combined. To combine /eat/ and
/ado/ into a letter would be more complicated than
combining /if/ and /ado/ for the dipthong sound of /Ian/.
/Ear/ is the natural connection of /Ian/ and /r/ and urge
is also the natural connection of /ado/ and /r/ perhaps
what needs to be taught fo these letters is not that they
are different sounds but that they are natural connections
between letters, like cursive but not to the extent of
quickscript. With shavian, there are many natural
connections, which is one of the reasons that it is better
than roman.

Just another simple American,
--Star

--- Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@...>
wrote:
> Hi Star Raven
> Thanks for looking at my modest suggestion. I believe
> that your ear can
> differentiate the sounds relating to all 5 redundant
> letters. What I am
> suggesting tho is that for Ah letter, the sound it
> represents is not
> significantly different from my pronunciation of words
> like father, fodder,
> path, cloth, rather, bother, after, asked and cart, where
> I use the soft
> "o" sound of "on". I can not think of any two words that
> I would
> distinguish by the slight variations between these 2
> sounds. For some
> speakers, a sound difference exists, but perhaps it is
> not significant
> enough to distinguish different words. Can you suggest
> some of the words
> that you found with the Ah sound? Perhaps, we need to
> look at this letter
> again, not matter how confusing most Americans find its
> use.
> As for the other 4 letters which I said were redundant, I
> don't mean to say
> that the sound that they represent don't exist.
> I just think that those 4 sounds would be better
> represented by the
> following 4 other letter combinations. The sound
> represented by the letter
> Ian would be more accurately represented by the Eat Ado
> Letter combination.
> And so forth.
> Ian == Eat Ado
> Yew == Yea Ooze
> Ear == If Array
> Urge == Ado Array
>
> The \hw\ sound that you hear can certainly be represented
> by
> the 2 Shaw letters Ha-Ha and Woe. Why would we need to
> create a new Shaw
> Letter at this point for a rarely used sound, if 2 Shaw
> letters work well
> and can not be interpreted as any other sound.
>
> Remember, we are not deleting the redundant letters. We
> are just taking
> them out of mix to allow American English speakers to
> avoid the confusion
> of having to consider more letters than absolutely
> necessary when first
> learning to write American English in the Shaw Alphabet.
> They need a simple basic understanding. So
> We would like to provide simple clear rules of spelling,
> with a minimum of
> alternate spellings.
> Dropping the vowel letters from 24 to 19, will be a great
> help to students.
> Regards, Paul V.


=====
"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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Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better
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Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
> I seem to remember Rick (aka Flyfisher) didn't know the difference
> either. But once he knew what those characters represented he could use
> them with no problem. He was from the States, somewhere, I can't
> remember where...

As for myself, I can pretty well predict the use of AWE and AH as
opposed to ON from the spelling in traditional orthography. But that's
rather missing the point of the Shaw alphabet, isn't it?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)



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If you can do that, you can use the letters! It's no different from us Brits getting into the habit of putting 'r's in words (I have no problem doing so). Think how much trouble you guys over there would have if we didn't include them...

It's not missing the point if it results in effective global communication. If we have to decipher a different accent every time you read something (i.e. leave it to guesswork), you'd be better off using traditional orthography. At least that's unambiguous.

----- Original Message -----
From: Brion VIBBER <mailto:brion@...>
To: shavian@... <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 8:09 PM
Subject: Re: [shavian] American versus British

Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
> I seem to remember Rick (aka Flyfisher) didn't know the difference
> either. But once he knew what those characters represented he could use
> them with no problem. He was from the States, somewhere, I can't
> remember where...

As for myself, I can pretty well predict the use of AWE and AH as
opposed to ON from the spelling in traditional orthography. But that's
rather missing the point of the Shaw alphabet, isn't it?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)



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I wrote:
> As for myself, I can pretty well predict the use of AWE and AH as
> opposed to ON from the spelling in traditional orthography.

Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
> If you can do that, you can use the letters! It's no different from us
> Brits getting into the habit of putting 'r's in words (I have no problem
> doing so). Think how much trouble you guys over there would have if we
> didn't include them...

Yes, we're both quite capable of memorizing apparently arbitrary
spelling distinctions; if we weren't, we wouldn't be literate today,
would we? ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)



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Hi Bruce
I wish I could predict when to use Ah in British English.
I can usually determine whether the soft or short "o" of On is needed, as
opposed to the longer, more emphatic, more distinct "o:" of Awe, just by
pronouncing the words and listening for the difference. The fact that Awe
which is much closer to the sound of On than Oak is, is spelled with an
letter "a", shows the paradox of the Roman alphabet.
I think you reached the crux of the problem, when you said we're all quite
capable of memorizing apparently arbitrary
spelling distinctions.
For the Roman Alphabet, if we couldn't, we wouldn't be literate and
wouldn't be discussing the issue so intelligibly, today.
I am suggest this is a serious issue and we should design our use of Shaw
Alphabet, so as to minimize the number of arbitrary
non-phonetic spelling distinctions, we all have to learn .

Regards, Paul Vandenbrink

At 12:14 PM 7/23/02 -0800, you wrote:
>I wrote:
> > As for myself, I can pretty well predict the use of AWE and AH as
> > opposed to ON from the spelling in traditional orthography.
>
>Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
> > If you can do that, you can use the letters! It's no different from us
> > Brits getting into the habit of putting 'r's in words (I have no problem
> > doing so). Think how much trouble you guys over there would have if we
> > didn't include them...
>
>Yes, we're both quite capable of memorizing apparently arbitrary
>spelling distinctions; if we weren't, we wouldn't be literate today,
>would we? ;)
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/




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Hi Star Raven

As I recall both Benjamin Franklin and Webster attempted to simplify
English spelling for Americans with mixed results. See Craig's paper for
Details. My main intention is simplify the Shaw Alphabet so that it is
easily accessible by even un-lettered Americans.

As for recognizing all the letter sounds, you have a good ear.
I have a problem predicting when to use Ah in English, myself. Maybe down
south, they still preserve the distinction to some extent. I doubt that
your use of Ah matches with exactly the same words in which Ah is used in
British English, in any case.

I can usually determine whether the soft or short "o" of On is needed, as
opposed to the longer, more emphatic, more distinct "o:" of Awe, just by
pronouncing the words and listening for the difference. The fact that Awe
which is much closer to the sound of On than Oak is, is spelled with an
letter "a", shows the many inconsistencies of the Roman alphabet.

The British English speakers, would probably use more of the 24 vowel
letters than the 19 Shaw vowel letters suggest for Shaw Alphabet beginners
from America.

The limitation of 19 Shaw vowel letters is just for the vast majority of
Americans and Canadians who don't make or even recognize the Ah Ash
distinction.

Fond regards from just another uncomplicated Canadian.

Paul V.
________________attached______________________________
At 08:54 AM 7/23/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Simplify english for us Americans? would you bee keeping
>the original 24 for the British? Once I figured out a clear
>difference between the letters, I had no problem using
>them.
>
>Also, yew is y & long oo combined. To combine /eat/ and
>/ado/ into a letter would be more complicated than
>combining /if/ and /ado/ for the dipthong sound of /Ian/.
>/Ear/ is the natural connection of /Ian/ and /r/ and urge
>is also the natural connection of /ado/ and /r/ perhaps
>what needs to be taught fo these letters is not that they
>are different sounds but that they are natural connections
>between letters, like cursive but not to the extent of
>quickscript. With shavian, there are many natural
>connections, which is one of the reasons that it is better
>than roman.
>
>Just another simple American,
>--Star
>
>--- Paul Gershon Vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@...>
>wrote:
> > Hi Star Raven
> > Thanks for looking at my modest suggestion. I believe
> > that your ear can
> > differentiate the sounds relating to all 5 redundant
> > letters. What I am
> > suggesting tho is that for Ah letter, the sound it
> > represents is not
> > significantly different from my pronunciation of words
> > like father, fodder,
> > path, cloth, rather, bother, after, asked and cart, where
> > I use the soft
> > "o" sound of "on". I can not think of any two words that
> > I would
> > distinguish by the slight variations between these 2
> > sounds. For some
> > speakers, a sound difference exists, but perhaps it is
> > not significant
> > enough to distinguish different words. Can you suggest
> > some of the words
> > that you found with the Ah sound? Perhaps, we need to
> > look at this letter
> > again, not matter how confusing most Americans find its
> > use.
> > As for the other 4 letters which I said were redundant, I
> > don't mean to say
> > that the sound that they represent don't exist.
> > I just think that those 4 sounds would be better
> > represented by the
> > following 4 other letter combinations. The sound
> > represented by the letter
> > Ian would be more accurately represented by the Eat Ado
> > Letter combination.
> > And so forth.
> > Ian == Eat Ado
> > Yew == Yea Ooze
> > Ear == If Array
> > Urge == Ado Array
> >
> > The \hw\ sound that you hear can certainly be represented
> > by
> > the 2 Shaw letters Ha-Ha and Woe. Why would we need to
> > create a new Shaw
> > Letter at this point for a rarely used sound, if 2 Shaw
> > letters work well
> > and can not be interpreted as any other sound.
> >
> > Remember, we are not deleting the redundant letters. We
> > are just taking
> > them out of mix to allow American English speakers to
> > avoid the confusion
> > of having to consider more letters than absolutely
> > necessary when first
> > learning to write American English in the Shaw Alphabet.
> > They need a simple basic understanding. So
> > We would like to provide simple clear rules of spelling,
> > with a minimum of
> > alternate spellings.
> > Dropping the vowel letters from 24 to 19, will be a great
> > help to students.
> > Regards, Paul V.
>
>
>=====
>"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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