From: RSRICHMOND@aol.com
Date: 2003-02-03 14:13:52 #
Subject: [shavian] Re: Greetings to a fellow Shavian.
From: C. Paige Gabhart
Date: 2003-02-03 14:20:42 #
Subject: Re: [shavian] Re: Greetings to a fellow Shavian.
From: Mike
Date: 2003-02-03 16:06:13 #
Subject: [shavian] Question
and I am currently having trouble finding the difference between the
AIR, ERR, and ARRAY characters. Could someone please elaborate on
the differences between them, because I have seen each character used
different ways, and it is quite confusing.
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From: paul vandenbrink
Date: 2003-02-03 16:08:25 #
Subject: [shavian] Re: Greetings to a fellow Shavian.
Please don't forget that the Alphabet has to be designed for the
benefit of even those foreign or untutored readers/writers who do not
have recourse to knowing the traditional orthography, and knowing
that there used to be an R sound in the word before it evolved into
its modern non-rhotic pronunciation. An alphabet needs to stand on
its on eventually.
Regards, Paul V.
___________________attached_____________________________
--- In shavian@..., "Scott Stephens <swstephe@y...>"
<swstephe@y...> wrote:
> I would have thought that rhotic forms would be an advantage to
> rhotic groups rather than non-rhotic groups. When someone wanted
to
> write "bird", for example, rhotic groups would be tempted to
write "b-
> ih-r-d" while rhotic groups might write "b-uh-d". There would be a
> strong divergance between rhotic and non-rhotic speakers. Keep the
> rhotic forms, then bird could always be spelt "b-ih+r-d", but
> pronounced with or without the "r" in speech, (but the subtle
> understanding that the "r" is there and important to the word.
>
> Making the number of letters smaller isn't always good. The
current
> spelling list only has 26 letters, but ... (I'm currently digging
> through some text-to-speech code to automate shavian spelling
> decisions) ... requires some 10,000 rules that can be used to
figure
> out how to pronounce only half of our vocabulary, or unknown words,
> the other half has to be memorized. Our brains apparently handle
> these rules just fine. Being able to handle 40 letters is much
> easier than having to remember rhotic and non-rhotic spelling in
> order to read different texts.
>
> I guess I'm on the side of wanting the language to be somewhat
> standardized.
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From: Craig Butz
Date: 2003-02-03 16:40:29 #
Subject: Re: [shavian] Digest Number 390
From: paul vandenbrink
Date: 2003-02-03 16:51:12 #
Subject: [shavian] Re: Question on Air, Err(Urge), and Array
You bumped into a problem a number of other people have suffered from.
The sounds of some of Key words used to describe the sound of a
particular Shaw Letter have changed over the last 50 years.
Also the American pronunciation differs slightly in a few cases.
We need to provide more than one sample word for each sound. So
anyway here are a bunch of sample words using those sounds. I will
capitalize the significant letters, but you have to listen to the
sound to get it. I have a mid-west Canadian accent.
Air bARe, beAR, mare, mayor, tear, care, fair, fare,
airplane, snARe, stare, Clair, cARavan, Air, hair
Err URge, mURder, ERksome, hER, URbane, gIRl, squIRrel, mYRtle
Array murdER, mirrOR, bothER, lawyER, fiRE, undERcovER, buyER, tiRE,
errOR, terrOR, tailOR.
Regards, Paul V.
--- In shavian@..., "Mike <theomnis@y...>"
<theomnis@y...> wrote:
> I am a high school student currently studying the Shavian alphabet,
> and I am currently having trouble finding the difference between
the
> AIR, ERR, and ARRAY characters. Could someone please elaborate on
> the differences between them, because I have seen each character
used
> different ways, and it is quite confusing.
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From: Hugh Birkenhead
Date: 2003-02-03 17:26:41 #
Subject: Re: [shavian] Question
From: Scott Stephens
Date: 2003-02-03 17:29:45 #
Subject: Re: [shavian] Re: Greetings to a fellow Shavian.
From: paul vandenbrink
Date: 2003-02-03 17:31:34 #
Subject: [shavian] Greetings to a fellow Shavian.
I realize that the difficulties in acheiving unanimity may reduce
some of us to hopelessness, but I myself hope that we will eventually
acquire enough Shaw readers, so that we will have a Shavian community
and that at least within that community, people will practically
address many of these problems with Shaw Alphabet and with
transliterating text written in the Traditional English Orthography.
We have to realize tho that the Shaw Alphabet is a phonetic system
for representing English speech and as there are divergant
pronunciations, there will always be divergent Shaw spellings of the
same word. We can strive to minimize those differences and in the
light of that humble objective, we can create a tool to unite the
International English speakers and learners everywhere. It is a tool
that has many other practical applications.
I think we all see the benefits of addressing people's difficulties
in learning the Shaw Alphabet.
Whether that requires more teaching, more attention to questions of
new users, or even a sub-set of the Shaw alphabet to be used for
writing to and from novices or to people outside your accent
community; I think it is well worth the effort.
As I mentioned earlier, reading a subset of the Shaw Alphabet for the
American Rhotic Accent community should not be challange to anyone
familar the Original Shaw Alphabet. Reading involves recognition
memory more than anything else.
Also am I correct in assuming the Indian English Speech Community is
Non-Rhotic?
Regards, Paul V.
P.S. Just a side note on one new application for the Shaw Alphabet.
Currently, there are serious attempts to develop a graphics interface
for P.D.A.s and Tablet PC computers. Most are based on Graffiti, a
Roman Cursive Alphabet which has serious deficencies. The Shaw
Alphabet or Quikscript would fill this requirement better.
_________________attached________________________________
--- In shavian@..., "C. Paige Gabhart" <pgabhart@c...>
wrote:
> Watching the discussions that take place on this site convinces me
that
> the plight of English spelling is essentially hopeless. I read a
report
> of a study last year which determined that the children in Italy
suffer
> from dyslexia at the same rate as English-speaking children. The
reason
> it was necessary to study this was that Italian children do not
seem to
> suffer from it. The study concluded that the reason was that
Italian
> had (if I remember correctly) 35 phonemes and only 38 different
ways to
> spell them, whereas English had a total of divergent spellings up
around
> 3,800. In other words, the Italian children with dyslexia are
unaware
> of it because it does not affect their ability to read their native
> language.
>
> In the post below, Scott states our brains handle 10,000 rules just
> fine. Apparently, he believes that the millions of children in
remedial
> reading classes are where they belong! "...the other half has to
be
> memorized." Why don't we just go to a Chinese system and memorize
all
> of the words since we are already half way there.
>
> Paige Gabhart
>
>
> Scott Stephens wrote:
>
> >I would have thought that rhotic forms would be an advantage to
> >rhotic groups rather than non-rhotic groups. When someone wanted
to
> >write "bird", for example, rhotic groups would be tempted to
write "b-
> >ih-r-d" while rhotic groups might write "b-uh-d". There would be
a
> >strong divergance between rhotic and non-rhotic speakers. Keep
the
> >rhotic forms, then bird could always be spelt "b-ih+r-d", but
> >pronounced with or without the "r" in speech, (but the subtle
> >understanding that the "r" is there and important to the word.
> >
> >Making the number of letters smaller isn't always good. The
current
> >spelling list only has 26 letters, but ... (I'm currently digging
> >through some text-to-speech code to automate shavian spelling
> >decisions) ... requires some 10,000 rules that can be used to
figure
> >out how to pronounce only half of our vocabulary, or unknown
words,
> >the other half has to be memorized. Our brains apparently handle
> >these rules just fine. Being able to handle 40 letters is much
> >easier than having to remember rhotic and non-rhotic spelling in
> >order to read different texts.
> >
> >I guess I'm on the side of wanting the language to be somewhat
> >standardized.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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From: paul vandenbrink
Date: 2003-02-03 17:48:09 #
Subject: [shavian] Re: Greetings to a fellow Shavian.
It is hard to compare the difficulty of learning to write Chinese
with the difficulty of learning to write English. There are a number
of side issues. There is more play (redundancy) in the English word
stock. If I don't know how to spell a word, I either use a synonym or
make an phonetic spelling and see if my spell checker can figure out
what I am getting at. Because Chinese has only recently developed
some practical computer interfaces, which are not generally
available, so the student has to learn a painstaking form of
calligraphy to be legiable. That what takes serious time.
Given my penmanship, I doubt that I would have progressed very far in
the Chinese school system.
We will to wait to see in the future, whether English requires more
rules to write than Chinese.
Regards, Paul V.
--- In shavian@..., Scott Stephens <swstephe@y...> wrote:
> I guess I should clarify my previous statements. I
> was looking at some text-to-speech software source
> code. There is one section which converts a written
> English word into it's pronunciation, (something the
> average adult English-speaking brain seems to handle
> almost effortlessly from my experience), the code
> consists of some 10,000 rules and about 50,000
> exceptions. That's just a remark on the capabilities
> of the human brain. I was just saying that by
> reducing the number of Shavian letters increases the
> number of rules we have to follow mentally. Is
> "b-uh-d" a British spelling for "bird" or or does it
> mean the international spelling for "bud"? My
> argument is that memorizing a special letter for
> "ih-r", then spelling "bird" the same in both rohtic
> and non-rohtic communities is easier on the reading
> process than trying to guess what the author meant by
> the context.
>
> While travelling around Asia, (and teaching English as
> a second language in my youth), I encounter many
> people over there learning English because, "English
> is the de-facto international language". (I couldn't
> sway them to try out Esperanto or Lojban :-(. If so,
> the spelling needs to be vastly simplified.
>
> By the way, Chinese consists of about 10,000
> characters in most dictionaries I've seen, (it's
> officially about 4 times as many, but the rest are
> extremely rare -- names of forgotten princes and
> such). Those characters are made up of about 400
> different "radicals" alone or in combinations.
> Usually, the pronunciation can be guessed from the
> radical. For example, many words pronounced "ma" have
> the radical for "horse" in it. "Mother" consists of
> the radical "woman" and the radical "horse", which is
> to say, "a woman, whose pronunciation is 'ma'".
> Technically, then, English speakers carry around more
> exceptions and rules in their heads than people who
> read Chinese. That makes English writing technically
> more difficult to learn than Chinese characters! I've
> always argued that English may be one of the most
> difficult languages to learn. Mandarin Chinese also
> consists of fewer phonetic sounds. They can represent
> all of their sounds using Latin letters and a much
> smaller set of diphtongs.
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