Shavian eGroup Archive Browser

This is exactly why you should take a look at the cut Shavian alphabet I devised.

It consolidates those characters that cause confusion between the two dialects.

Another quote from the Shavian forum:-

1. peep
2. bib
3. tot
4. dead
5. kick
6. gag
7. fee
8. vow
9. thigh
10. they
11. so
12. zoo
13. sure
14. measure
15. church
16. judge
17. yea - yonder, piano, million
18. woe - suede, suite
19. hung - think, linger, thankyou
20. ha-ha
21. loll
22. roar - car, traitor, marry, fervour
23. mime
24. nun
25. if
26. eat - queasy, sillier, seemly
27. egg
28. age
29. ash
30. eye
31. ado - us, murmurous, among, girder, offal, utter
32. oak
33. wool
34. ooze - superfluous
35. out
36. oil
37. ah - on, psalm, hot, part, palmolive
38. awe - paw, wrought, core, call, hawthorn

That's it. No confusion. Try it out.

Hugh B

----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Stephens <mailto:swstephe@...>
To: shavian@... <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: [shavian] Re: Greetings to a fellow Shavian.

You probably would have done quite well in Chinese
schools. The less legible the writing, the better ...
it becomes a piece of art to hang up in the house ...
as long as the character has the right weight and
bearing. There are some interesting features of
Chinese, too. I once read an example where someone
who speaks only Spanish can pick up a German newspaper
and kind of figure out how to pronounce the words, but
not what it means. A person who speaks one Chinese
dialect, can understand the meaning of another
dialect's newspaper, but not how to pronounce it,
except in their own dialect.

I mention this because I think that is where this
Shavian American vs. British debate is going. Letters
have to be able to merge phonetics so that either side
can read each other's writing in their own dialect,
even if the pronunciation is different. I don't think
Shavian will be usable unless it can standardize it's
spelling. There should be no complaints about not
being able to read something written by another
culture unless you want to create a true linguistic
rift in an age when English dialects were just
starting to merge again.



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----- Original Message -----
From: Star Raven <mailto:celestraof12worlds@...>
To: shavian@... <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 7:56 PM
Subject: Re: [shavian] Question



> Mike - the 'air', 'err' and 'array' characters are really optimized
> for writing dialects of British English. You shouldn't need them at
> all.

I BEG TO DIFFER!!! I use these three in their proper place all the
time. These are very important.

You may do, but I suspect you'll find yourself in the minority over there.

You may know where to put the characters (whether or not you actually hear a distinct difference between them is another matter) but a hell of a lot of people - TOO MANY people - just CAN'T. They DON'T make any such distinctions.

Shavian has a choice.
1) Perpetuate subtle differences like the above and re-educate people to recognise them,
2) Consolidate subtle differences like the above and let people write as best they can using the characters provided.

Unless you wish to re-train all those who simply do not recognise the differences (not a wise move), I suggest that Shavian should CONSOLIDATE SUBTLE DIFFERENCES. If you force those users to make a choice between several letters for the same sound, you will only end up with each user using different characters for the same sound depending on their 'choice', which is a ridiculous state of affairs.

> I would advocate ignoring them and using combinations of vowel+r.
> Basically, 'air' is 'egg'+'roll', and both 'err' and 'array' are
> 'ado'+'roll'.

Pay no attention to the man behind the green curtain... those ARE the
vowel + r, only they are already combined to represent the different
sound that a vowel makes when followed by R

They're not all vowel+r. 'Ado' is the only character to be a simple ligature.

Air and err clearly suffered a 'glyph flip' during printing of the alphabet. Unfortunate, but true. 'Air', if you flip it upside down, is two 'egg's joined together, with a 'roll' finishing it off. 'Err' is the same only with two 'ado's. This doubling of the 'egg' and 'ado' indicates the INCREASED LENGTH of those vowels, as pronounced by British English speakers. American English (GENERAL pronunciation) makes no distinction between long and short vowels, so the symbols are redundant. The fact that they are flipped only confounds the situation.

Why shouldn't you just write 'egg'+'roll'?

Hugh B

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Are you so sure about that? perhaps instructed to understand the
differences, most people WOULD hear a difference. Minority or not, I
think that there is enough of a difference that they were created in
the first place and should be retained.

--Star

--- Hugh Birkenhead <mixsynth@...> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Star Raven
> To: shavian@...
> Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 7:56 PM
> Subject: Re: [shavian] Question
>
>
>
> > Mike - the 'air', 'err' and 'array' characters are really
> optimized
> > for writing dialects of British English. You shouldn't need them
> at
> > all.
>
> I BEG TO DIFFER!!! I use these three in their proper place all the
> time. These are very important.
> You may do, but I suspect you'll find yourself in the minority over
> there.
>
> You may know where to put the characters (whether or not you actually
> hear a distinct difference between them is another matter) but a hell
> of a lot of people - TOO MANY people - just CAN'T. They DON'T make
> any such distinctions.
>
> Shavian has a choice.
> 1) Perpetuate subtle differences like the above and re-educate people
> to recognise them,
> 2) Consolidate subtle differences like the above and let people write
> as best they can using the characters provided.
>
> Unless you wish to re-train all those who simply do not recognise the
> differences (not a wise move), I suggest that Shavian should
> CONSOLIDATE SUBTLE DIFFERENCES. If you force those users to make a
> choice between several letters for the same sound, you will only end
> up with each user using different characters for the same sound
> depending on their 'choice', which is a ridiculous state of affairs.
> > I would advocate ignoring them and using combinations of vowel+r.
> > Basically, 'air' is 'egg'+'roll', and both 'err' and 'array' are
> > 'ado'+'roll'.
>
> Pay no attention to the man behind the green curtain... those ARE
> the
> vowel + r, only they are already combined to represent the
> different
> sound that a vowel makes when followed by R
> They're not all vowel+r. 'Ado' is the only character to be a simple
> ligature.
>
> Air and err clearly suffered a 'glyph flip' during printing of the
> alphabet. Unfortunate, but true. 'Air', if you flip it upside down,
> is two 'egg's joined together, with a 'roll' finishing it off. 'Err'
> is the same only with two 'ado's. This doubling of the 'egg' and
> 'ado' indicates the INCREASED LENGTH of those vowels, as pronounced
> by British English speakers. American English (GENERAL pronunciation)
> makes no distinction between long and short vowels, so the symbols
> are redundant. The fact that they are flipped only confounds the
> situation.
>
> Why shouldn't you just write 'egg'+'roll'?
>
> Hugh B


=====
"Alright, enough with the storyline, let's get back to the monster killing...Hello!"

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----- Original Message -----
From: Star Raven <mailto:celestraof12worlds@...>
To: shavian@... <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 4:38 PM
Subject: Re: [shavian] Question

Are you so sure about that? perhaps instructed to understand the
differences, most people WOULD hear a difference. Minority or not, I
think that there is enough of a difference that they were created in
the first place and should be retained.

I am 100% sure. In all the four years I've been using this message board, every time I tried to help confused US-Eng speakers out with the 'ah'/'on' distinction, they kept telling me, they just DO NOT hear a difference. Only upon checking official pronunciation guides of most American dictionaries did I finally start to see this for myself. It only clicked when I consulted with phoneticians from my own University's Linguistics department.

If by 'instructing' you mean giving them a list, as long as you are tall, of words that take either character, forget it. They just DO NOT know that sound AT ALL. Unlike Traditional Orthography's absolute consistence in describing when to use 'roll' (which makes it easier for Brit-Eng speakers to know when to include it), it is far from consistent with 'ah' and 'on'. Take "wallow" (which would take 'on') - it sure as hell doesn't rhyme with "shallow" ('ash'), or even "wall" ('awe'), "marshall" ('ado'), etc. Also remember that Brit-Eng speakers DO RECOGNISE AND KNOW the 'roll' sound, whereas most US-Eng DO NOT RECOGNISE AND DO NOT KNOW the short 'ah' sound.

"I think that there is enough of a difference that they were created in
the first place and should be retained."

For the majority of US-Eng speakers (quite a sizeable majority), there is NO difference between them, let alone 'enough of' a difference.

The Shaw Alphabet was no "god's gift to the English language". IT HAS PROBLEMS, and we should not be afraid to address them! If we keep our blinkers on and keep repeating "it was created that way and should stay that way", the alphabet will become - or, rather, REMAIN - nothing more than a museum piece.

Modernising the alphabet in the way I describe does not change Shavian very much phonemically, and alters no existing characters visually. All the basic non-ligatured letterforms, bar TWO which are merged with others, remain exactly as they always have been, phonemically and visually.

The 'magic' of Shavian remains!

Hugh B

I guess I'm confused from my American point-of-view.
Would you spell "car" with or without the "r" in
cut-shavian? Would you insist other people write it
the same way, or take their pick and do away with
standardized spelling?

My wife and I were amazed during a parent-teacher
conference with my step-son's 1st grade (primary)
school teacher. She was telling us that they don't
correct children's spelling. They tell the kids to
just spell it anyway they think it should be spelled
first to build up their self-esteem and "phonics"
before imposing rules! Yes ... I live in California.

I guess I prefer to see standardized, but simple,
spelling, like that which most other languages enjoy.
I like Shavian because it just looks clean and
regular. I guess since Dr. Read was a type-setter,
however, Shavian doesn't seem very well suited for
cursive writing, though.



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In a previous episode, shavian@... said:

> The reason to use 'ah' instead of 'on' is that 'ah' and 'awe' are phonetically
> close together ("cot"/"caught")

> 37. ah - on, psalm, hot, part, palmolive
> 38. awe - paw, wrought, core, call, hawthorn

This is NOT how AH and AWE are used in Androcles. With the exception of
'yah'--YEA AH HUNG, AH is always used for words that use ASH in American
Pronunciation e.g. 'gasp' and 'past'. AH is used in neither 'cot' nor
'caught'. I pronounce them both the same, but according to the example of
Androcles, ON would be used in 'cot' and AWE would be used in 'caught'.

It seem to me that a lot of confusion derives from people using their own
usage as examples rather than looking at the work of the alphabet's creators
as the example of how letters should be used. If you work from Androcles,
and reduce its letters to match American pronunciation, AH completely
disappears and confusion remains for some people between AWE and ON. How
can one put AH in the word 'on' which is already the name of a letter?
Clearly one should use ON to represent the sound in ON. Of these three
letters that are muddled over here, ON is the only one that does fit
exactly.

Craig



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----- Original Message -----
From: Scott Stephens <mailto:swstephe@...>

I guess I'm confused from my American point-of-view.
Would you spell "car" with or without the "r" in
cut-shavian? Would you insist other people write it
the same way, or take their pick and do away with
standardized spelling?

You would still include rhotics, yes, for standardised pronunciation. Brit-Eng speakers know where to put 'r' wherever it occurs (e.g. we know to include it in between the words "fair as"), and find no difficulty including it when asked to, even if we don't always speak it in every situation. Traditional orthography is pretty uncompromising when it comes to 'r's.

My wife and I were amazed during a parent-teacher
conference with my step-son's 1st grade (primary)
school teacher. She was telling us that they don't
correct children's spelling. They tell the kids to
just spell it anyway they think it should be spelled
first to build up their self-esteem and "phonics"
before imposing rules! Yes ... I live in California.

It's a bit hard for them to build up their phonics with the pathetic roman alphabet! I wonder who would be able to read anything they wrote if each of them used different combinations of symbols to represent different sounds?

I guess I prefer to see standardized, but simple,
spelling, like that which most other languages enjoy.
I like Shavian because it just looks clean and
regular. I guess since Dr. Read was a type-setter,
however, Shavian doesn't seem very well suited for
cursive writing, though.

Standardised and simple spelling is what the cut version allows. It is reduced to simple, clearly discrete, vowel phonemes that are much more difficult to confuse. If confusion between the remaining characters does occur, this has been anticipated; the two pairs of vowel sounds that are often confused for each other are made to be simple reversals of each other, i.e. 'ash'/'egg' (in words such as "carrier") and 'ah'/'awe' (in words such as "frost"). Because of the close visual similarity of these sometimes interchangeable characters, speed readers should not be slowed down to anywhere near a large extent as at present. Put more succinctly, all the US-Eng writer has to do is to try to maintain some degree of distinction between 'ah'/'awe' (not 'ah' and 'awe' AND 'on') and/or 'ash'/'egg', but if one is unavoidably interchanged with the other, it's no big deal to the reader because the characters are so similar to each other.

I realise I must be sounding like I'm trying to impose this on you guys. That's far from the truth! I've spent a lot of time on this, not trying to impose my personal preference (as my own preference had always been to keep Shavian 'as is') but trying to find the BEST solution, and shown it to work for me and Paul Vandenbrink so far; our spellings matched almost exactly together in the Shaw test piece, where before there had been glaring character differences left right and centre! And this was with little or no guidance on when to use characters or anything! The alphabet itself was the limiting factor in what he could use to write his speech, not a set of superimposed 'doctrines'.

All I would suggest to anyone in this group is to please check it out and see if you find it easy to make it 'work' for you. If you do, and your writing happens to correspond more closely with that of others, we're in business; if it fails miserably and you hate it, I'm not too proud to accept your point of view! You can't say fairer than that, Guv'nor! Try transcribing Shaw's test piece (http://members.aol.com/RSRICHMOND/shawtest.html) using only the characters listed. The character table is included in full in one of my posts from a day or two ago. When you're done, send it to me if you like, or compare it with my transliteration of the same text on the Shavian Forum.

Hugh B

Hi Craig
For a some other reasons, I don't mind the condensation of letters as
suggested by Hugh.
First the removal of the Shaw letter for "up". I always thought this
symbol looked too much like a number 7 in any case.
As for consolidating "on" with "ah", I find the "ah" letter more
distinguishable. As I have certain dylexic tendencies, I find the
four short vowel arch letters to be hard to discern on occasion.
Also in some fonts, it looks similar to the letter "noon" and
sometimes the letter "roar". I think the "mime" and "nun" should be
distinctly larger than the vowel letters.

Regards, Paul V.

--- In shavian@..., "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@b...>
wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Craig Butz
>
>
> </lurk>
>
> In a previous episode, shavian@... said:
>
> > 'Ah' or 'on'? = 'Ah'.
> > 'Array' or 'err'? = 'Ado' + 'roll'.
> > 'Up'+'roll' or 'err' or 'array'? = 'Ado' + 'roll', as above.
> > 'Egg'+'roll' or 'air'? = 'Egg' + 'roll'.
>
> My only quarrel here is that AH is more complicated to write than
ON. Keep
> the four one-stroke simple vowels intact, please.
>
> Craig
> Quote from the Shavian forum (where this is all being discussed, in
detail, right now):-
>
> "2) Merging of 'on' and 'ah' into the 'ah' phoneme
>
> In British dialects, the only major thing that differentiates these
two sounds is vowel length. If spoken out loud with the same length,
the actual sound is often virtually indistinguishable. The Merriam-
Webster dictionary makes no distinction between them - American
dialects don't seem to utilise vowel length at all - all vowel sounds
can be the same length.
>
> The reason to use 'ah' instead of 'on' is that 'ah' and 'awe' are
phonetically close together ("cot"/"caught"), just like 'egg'
and 'ash' are close together ("merry"/"marry"). There is quite a
phonetic gap between 'ah' and 'ash'; 'ah' and 'awe' are both 'back'
vowels, whereas 'egg' and 'ash' are 'front' vowels. Having 'ah'
looking similar to 'awe' is just the same as having 'egg' looking
similar to 'ash'. Because of the visual similarity between 'ah'
and 'awe', if anyone does use one symbol instead of the other (such
as in some American dialects that barely distinguish), the words will
appear very similar anyway, so shouldn't be that difficult to read at
speed. If two sounds are similar, they should APPEAR similar,
wherever possible; the difference between 'ah' and 'awe' is therefore
only a simple glyph reversal, and quite appropriately so. It is also
easy to join 'ah' to 'roll' in handwriting, whereas such a join is
impossible with 'on'.
>
> While this would leave 'ado' standing on its own without a reversed
counterpart, I believe this is appropriate, as the schwa sound is a
unique NEUTRAL vowel (i.e. smack in the middle of the IPA vowel
chart), and therefore different from all other pure vowels in the
first place.
>
> Look at the progression of pure vowels my cut version leaves:
>
> FRONT VOWELS: (close) --> 'eat' 'if' 'egg' 'ash' --> (open)
> BACK VOWELS: (open) --> 'ah' 'awe' 'wool' 'ooze' --> (close)
>
> In between the front and back vowels, the letter 'ado' occurs, in
between the close-mid and open-mid positions - this is why it's
different from the rest."
>
> [For the full posting, visit:]
> http://www.shavian.org/hugh/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?
s=3e3eaac01411ffff;act=ST;f=4;t=17;st=20
>
> Hugh B



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Hi Scott
I agree standardization is a good thing, but I thing we are put the
cart before the horse. First and foremost, the Shaw Alphabet is
phonetic Alphabet. Unlike Chinese where the symbol for every word
must be memorized, the Shaw Alphabet only requires that the writer
listen to what he is saying, and record it faithfully according to
the sounds that he hears.
We would like an illiterate English Speaker, to be able to write his
words, intelligably, even without having a Dictionary or sample
words, just by knowing the principles of the Shaw Alphabet.
At this this point we can minimize different spellings through
intelligant design, but I expect standardization will come later.

As long as the reader can reconstitute and recognise the words from
the Shaw spelling, we will have accomplished the primary goal.

We have to get this beautiful idea off of the drawing board.

Regards, Paul V.

--- In shavian@..., Scott Stephens <swstephe@y...> wrote:
> You probably would have done quite well in Chinese
> schools. The less legible the writing, the better ...
> it becomes a piece of art to hang up in the house ...
> as long as the character has the right weight and
> bearing. There are some interesting features of
> Chinese, too. I once read an example where someone
> who speaks only Spanish can pick up a German newspaper
> and kind of figure out how to pronounce the words, but
> not what it means. A person who speaks one Chinese
> dialect, can understand the meaning of another
> dialect's newspaper, but not how to pronounce it,
> except in their own dialect.
>
> I mention this because I think that is where this
> Shavian American vs. British debate is going. Letters
> have to be able to merge phonetics so that either side
> can read each other's writing in their own dialect,
> even if the pronunciation is different. I don't think
> Shavian will be usable unless it can standardize it's
> spelling. There should be no complaints about not
> being able to read something written by another
> culture unless you want to create a true linguistic
> rift in an age when English dialects were just
> starting to merge again.



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Hi Star
Good to hear your back.
I hope your computer is feeling better.
When you say, the man behind the Green curtain, is that a reference
to the Charlatan who passed himself off as the Wizard of Oz?

Regards, Paul V.

--- In shavian@..., Star Raven <celestraof12worlds@y...>
wrote:
>
> > Mike - the 'air', 'err' and 'array' characters are really
optimized
> > for writing dialects of British English. You shouldn't need them
at
> > all.
>
> I BEG TO DIFFER!!! I use these three in their proper place all the
> time. These are very important.
>
> >
> > I would advocate ignoring them and using combinations of vowel+r.
> > Basically, 'air' is 'egg'+'roll', and both 'err' and 'array' are
> > 'ado'+'roll'.
>
> Pay no attention to the man behind the green curtain... those ARE
the
> vowel + r, only they are already combined to represent the different
> sound that a vowel makes when followed by R
>
> --Star
>
> =====
> "Alright, enough with the storyline, let's get back to the monster
killing...Hello!"
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
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