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I get the feeling that if Shavian had actually become our writing system 50
years ago, many of the people who are interested in it now would be the ones
trying to "preserve" traditional spelling, the eccentrics who wrote notes
the old way just because. True?

Craig



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Go backwards? Never! I would be pushing to drop the
naming dot and reforming English grammar. Meanwhile,
I would be using the traditional rules as long as they
are still official.

--- Craig Butz <shavian@...> wrote:
> I get the feeling that if Shavian had actually
> become our writing system 50
> years ago, many of the people who are interested in
> it now would be the ones
> trying to "preserve" traditional spelling, the
> eccentrics who wrote notes
> the old way just because. True?
>
> Craig



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Hi Craig
Much as I venerate Kingsley Read and the other pioneers of the Shavian
Alphabet, I realize they are dead and we must take responsibility for
keeping their concept alive. The Shaw Alphabet is more than a cold
artifact, it is dynamic system that potentially can be adapted to preserve
literacy, in our over -extended high speed world. It is too valuable to
throw away or languish in obscurity.
If Shaw Alphabet had been implemented 30 years ago, I would find another
hobby horse. I doubt that it would involve preserving and perpetuating an
out-of -date way of pronouncing
English, but who knows. The lack of a solid Literature or Dictionary
written in Shaw at this moment, forces people to spell phonetically in any
case.

Regards, Paul V.
_________________________________________

At 02:46 PM 3/4/03 -0500, you wrote:
>I get the feeling that if Shavian had actually become our writing system 50
>years ago, many of the people who are interested in it now would be the ones
>trying to "preserve" traditional spelling, the eccentrics who wrote notes
>the old way just because. True?
>
>Craig
>
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/





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On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 14:46, Craig Butz wrote:
> I get the feeling that if Shavian had actually become our writing system 50
> years ago, many of the people who are interested in it now would be the ones
> trying to "preserve" traditional spelling, the eccentrics who wrote notes
> the old way just because. True?
>

While I wholeheartedly agree with the label "eccentrics", I wouldn't see
myself advocating for going back to the old way. English TO has,
without question, the most perverse spelling system of any widely used
language that uses the Roman alphabet (did I use enough qualifiers
there? ;-)). I could see myself taking a similarly perverse pleasure in
/learning/ it (though depending on how useful it was, I'm sure I would
never get the mastery of the spelling that I now take pride in), but I
couldn't possibly advocate going back to it and scrapping Shavian (or
whatever we ended up with, as long as it was fairly consistent).

Before I was doing Shavian, I was very involved in the International
Auxiliary Language movement (though I never actually got around to
learning any IALs). I like modern English much better than the flowery,
stilted (to my ears) mode of expression that was normal a century or two
ago, though I wish we could tolerate longer sentences occasionally.

So in conclusion... I think I could answer this "what if?" question with
a fair amount of certainty.... "no".

--
Cheers,
Bob Schmertz


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Hello, everyone. My name is Ethan, and I'm totally new to the group.
I've been using the Shavian alphabet off and on for a couple years since
I discovered it on the internet. I'm very much in favor of its use for
everyday, even public, purposes, and am about to embark on a project to
completely reproduce my homepage <http://www.30below.com/~ethanl/> in
Shavian, and thereafter to maintain both Latin and Shavian versions of
the webpage in parallel. I already have some material in Shavian,
namely the first six chapters of the Bible, the beginning of a project
currently on hold until I can get a better implementation worked out.
I'm also working on yet another Shavian font, and will probably do more
than one once I get this one finished.

The question I have is about the proposed addition of Shavian to the
Unicode standard. I understand that the names of letters and symbols
are an official part of Unicode, and are even encoded into Unicode fonts
as a means of identifying the particular letters in the font.

Has anybody noticed that the proposal as posted on the Unicode website
at <http://www.unicode.org/pending/shavian/proposal/Shavian.html> and
the other various listings of Shavian at the Unicode site, all
consistently label the letter whose shape is similar to:

NNNn
NNNNN:
`NNN
NNN:
:NNN
NNN.
:NNNNN
uNNN

with the word

"RUN"

???

Does anybody know why this is, and can it be corrected before it gets
hard written as a standard, or is it already too late to change it to
"NUN"?

Thank you.

--
Ethan



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Hi Ethan

Yikes! I didn't notice they'd got the 'nun' character as 'run'. I think members of the Unicode inclusion 'team' read this list - they will hopefully notice these messages and be able to get something done about it.

Hugh B

----- Original Message -----
From: Ethan <mailto:ethanl@...>
To: Shavian Group <mailto:shavian@...>
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 10:07 AM
Subject: [shavian] Introduction and question regarding Unicode Shavian

Hello, everyone. My name is Ethan, and I'm totally new to the group.
I've been using the Shavian alphabet off and on for a couple years since
I discovered it on the internet. I'm very much in favor of its use for
everyday, even public, purposes, and am about to embark on a project to
completely reproduce my homepage <http://www.30below.com/~ethanl/> in
Shavian, and thereafter to maintain both Latin and Shavian versions of
the webpage in parallel. I already have some material in Shavian,
namely the first six chapters of the Bible, the beginning of a project
currently on hold until I can get a better implementation worked out.
I'm also working on yet another Shavian font, and will probably do more
than one once I get this one finished.

The question I have is about the proposed addition of Shavian to the
Unicode standard. I understand that the names of letters and symbols
are an official part of Unicode, and are even encoded into Unicode fonts
as a means of identifying the particular letters in the font.

Has anybody noticed that the proposal as posted on the Unicode website
at <http://www.unicode.org/pending/shavian/proposal/Shavian.html> and
the other various listings of Shavian at the Unicode site, all
consistently label the letter whose shape is similar to:

NNNn
NNNNN:
`NNN
NNN:
:NNN
NNN.
:NNNNN
uNNN

with the word

"RUN"

???

Does anybody know why this is, and can it be corrected before it gets
hard written as a standard, or is it already too late to change it to
"NUN"?

Thank you.

--
Ethan



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Hi Scott

Sorry to take so long to respond. I have been moving to a new home so
for a short while, I have been responsible for two residences. I feel
schizoid. Maybe, having two alphabets is also like having 2 places to
think.
It is unrealistic for many reasons, such as you mention, to expect
the Shaw Alphabet to supplant the Roman Alphabet, for regular English
use.
However, we live in a time where we have computers which can
transliterate back and forth at the touch of a button.
So we don't have to live with just one alphabet, or even just one
language. For the majority of the educated word outside of China,
English is an auxilary language.
We have to realize that for a native English speaker, the Roman
Alphabet has the insurmountable benefit of being ingrained in us from
earliest childhood, so we can use it in a semi-automatic, almost
unconscious fashion.
A true phonetic alphabet that reflects accent variations in speech
requires a bit more work to use.

I would like to look at your 2 requirements for the success of Shaw
Alphabet.

First, I need to prove some real
personal advantage for Native English Language Speakers, after they
already have a fluent understanding of the Roman Alphabet?
Are we not setting the bar too high?
Highly or Well Educated people obviously have an interest in
preserving their advantage over the less literate. Look at how hard
it is to make a Lawyer clarify legal language.

But there are benefits, even if the Shaw Alphabet doesn't become
widespread/predominant/common. I can think of many. Maybe we should
keep a list to send to the disenheartened (spelling?)

Let me just mention 4 off=beat ones.

1. An understanding of phonetics helps you to use the Roman Alphabet
better. You need a metalanguage (Shaw Alphabet) to keep the
distinctions straight.
2. Non-Native English Language Learners find the Shaw Alphabet
immeasurably easier to pronounce. For a Non-Native English Language
Learner, who writes English like using a codebook, the Shaw Alphabet
provides an easy entry point to translate, to and from spoken English.
3. When I am writing a note to my girlfriend, or updating my diary,
or noting down one of the inumeral (spell?) numbers or passwords our
society demands, I like to add a little confidentiality to my writing.
4. Soon we will be talking to our computers.
Why is this not the norm already.
It is because the Roman alphabet is non-phonetic.
As a computer programmer, I am telling you, that if you want to
validate what you told the computer, you'd better get the computer to
write the information phonetically. I would like comments to this
point.

Secondly, that I need a big community and
a lot of resources to propagate a new idea.

I think history shows that the world will beat a path and beat down
your door, if you can make a better mousetrap.

The internet provides us with the best tool to desseminate
information the world has ever seen.

Why do you think I am here?
Why do you think, I have a web-site called www.shawalphabet.com?

Sorry, you don't have to answer, the question was Rhetorical.

Regards, Paul V.
Regards, Paul V.

--- In shavian@..., Scott Stephens <swstephe@y...> wrote:
> I had to think long and hard about this. You have to
> look at history first. Most writing revolutions were
> put into place by persons of the royal or religious
> variety. Checking out http://www.omniglot.com/, it
> seems there is usually some story of a king or priest
> who invented a new writing system, more often to
> separate a culture from another similar culture.
> Second place goes to writing systems which changed
> gradually because the old way was vastly more
> difficult due to a change in writing tools or just
> being unsuitable for the language being used.
>
> We are probably on the verge of several revolutions.
> Our writing tools have changed and cultures are
> merging on global scales due to technology. However,
> the old insentive, (getting in trouble with the king
> or priests), is not really there anymore. There is
> probably no one in power today with enough influence
> to get an entire people to change from one writing
> system to another.
>
> Look at the apparent failure for Americans to convert
> to metric. Despite the tremendous economic pressure
> of every country in the world standardizing to metric,
> except for America and Liberia, there has been very
> little change. Back in the 1970's Carter tried to
> push for metric, but even the government itself
> refused. (I've just recently learned, it is still
> required to have both units on package, although on
> 11/2002, NIST had a meeting to allow manufacturers to
> voluntarily have metric-only packaging ... how's that
> for "progress"). There is just some resistance to
> change that even economics couldn't change. For my
> part, I was a kid in school at the time, I had just
> returned to the United States after living in Europe
> for several years. The thing that most people in
> America couldn't get over was thinking they would have
> to keep converting units between the two systems to be
> able to understand it. I told people I met, (even my
> own teachers), that you don't have to convert if you
> are only using one system. From what I remember,
> though, England seems pretty comfortable with metric
> even though they still talk about pints and miles
> locally.
>
> If you want spelling reform, in my opinion, you need
> two things. First, you need to prove some real
> personal advantage, not just to foreigners and
> children learning to read and write, but to native
> speakers who are fairly fast readers and writers in
> traditional spelling. Recently, I've been playing
> around with speed-reading. I've been wondering if
> speed-reading can be made even faster in Shavian than
> in traditional spelling, but I've got to get some
> training sets and examples going, (and I have to work
> on my Shavian). Second, and now is the ideal time for
> this to come along, you need a big community and
> resources. Some people have already written automatic
> converters, what about the next step of filter
> websites into Shavian versions, or converting e-books
> to Shavian. What about getting some tech devices into
> Shavian, I would like to see if I can somehow
> translate my Palm OS into Shavian, (making it even
> more secure!). I would like to have Shavian on my
> cellphone and Shavian t-shirts. I wish I had the time
> to try out these things.



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paul vandenbrink wrote:


Hi Scott

[snip]
Look at how hard
it is to make a Lawyer clarify legal language.

Paul:

I am an attorney, and I draft legal documents all the time. When I was in law school studying wills and estates, my professor cautioned us against using untried terms in wills we draft for our clients. The reason was that some of the terms of art that have been used for a number of years have been tested through the crucible of the appellate process which have clarified their meaning. If I use a standard term, I can be certain of the manner in which a court will interpret it. If I branch out on my own to make it "easier" for the client, my adventuresomeness may embroil his heirs in a contest over the meaning of his will. It also could get me sued by irate heirs. Another reason for what may seem obscure language is that terms of art, i.e. "legal language," have a specific meaning that may take the place of a phrase if it has to be set out in a more basic vocabulary. Would you expect doctors to use less precise layman's language rather than the more precise medical terminology to describe an injury or treatment of a patient? If not, then why are lawyers singled out?

The foregoing haveing been said, I will acknowledge that I do attempt to draft documents in a straightforward fashion as much as possible. I avoid what I would classify as jargon, which I would describe as poor writing which is purposefully obscure to impress the client. I also instruct my clients that they should ask me for clarification if they are uncertain of the meaning of anything I write or tell them.

Paige Gabhart






I had to think long and hard about this. You have to
look at history first. Most writing revolutions were
put into place by persons of the royal or religious
variety. Checking out http://www.omniglot.com/, it
seems there is usually some story of a king or priest
who invented a new writing system, more often to
separate a culture from another similar culture.
Second place goes to writing systems which changed
gradually because the old way was vastly more
difficult due to a change in writing tools or just
being unsuitable for the language being used.

We are probably on the verge of several revolutions.
Our writing tools have changed and cultures are
merging on global scales due to technology. However,
the old insentive, (getting in trouble with the king
or priests), is not really there anymore. There is
probably no one in power today with enough influence
to get an entire people to change from one writing
system to another.

Look at the apparent failure for Americans to convert
to metric. Despite the tremendous economic pressure
of every country in the world standardizing to metric,
except for America and Liberia, there has been very
little change. Back in the 1970's Carter tried to
push for metric, but even the government itself
refused. (I've just recently learned, it is still
required to have both units on package, although on
11/2002, NIST had a meeting to allow manufacturers to
voluntarily have metric-only packaging ... how's that
for "progress"). There is just some resistance to
change that even economics couldn't change. For my
part, I was a kid in school at the time, I had just
returned to the United States after living in Europe
for several years. The thing that most people in
America couldn't get over was thinking they would have
to keep converting units between the two systems to be
able to understand it. I told people I met, (even my
own teachers), that you don't have to convert if you
are only using one system. From what I remember,
though, England seems pretty comfortable with metric
even though they still talk about pints and miles
locally.

If you want spelling reform, in my opinion, you need
two things. First, you need to prove some real
personal advantage, not just to foreigners and
children learning to read and write, but to native
speakers who are fairly fast readers and writers in
traditional spelling. Recently, I've been playing
around with speed-reading. I've been wondering if
speed-reading can be made even faster in Shavian than
in traditional spelling, but I've got to get some
training sets and examples going, (and I have to work
on my Shavian). Second, and now is the ideal time for
this to come along, you need a big community and
resources. Some people have already written automatic
converters, what about the next step of filter
websites into Shavian versions, or converting e-books
to Shavian. What about getting some tech devices into
Shavian, I would like to see if I can somehow
translate my Palm OS into Shavian, (making it even
more secure!). I would like to have Shavian on my
cellphone and Shavian t-shirts. I wish I had the time
to try out these things.






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Paul and Paige,

Actually, I've been a computer programmer for the past
20 years, and am currently doing most of my work in
databases and internet protocols, so I'm well aware
that automation can help promote a new way of writing.
I wasn't putting down Shavian, just pointing to some
good directions for promoting Shavian just by
overwhelming the market.

Also, My wife is a legal assistant to her Uncle, so I
know all about how important jargon is to that
profession.

I'm not saying Shavian is not a good thing. I
personally prefer all the things Shavian is,
(non-Roman and phonetic). I was just trying to point
out that sometimes something better isn't latched onto
right away. A classic example in economics is the
Dvorak keyboard, (I'm going to finally attempt to
learn that thing). The QWERTY keyboard we all use on
computers was designed to put the most common 2-key
combinations on far sides of the keyboard so the old
manual typewriter keys wouldn't jam, (this story has
been presented in other forms, but I believe this is
the most common understanding -- it wasn't made to
slow the typist down, just as a mechanical
convenience). Now that we have electronic typewriters
and keyboards, this isn't a problem. In the 1940's,
August Dvorak redesigned the keyboard so the most
common keys were all on the home row. According to
most studies, about 75% of all English words can be
typed without leaving the home row. It's much faster
to learn, (Dvorak claimed 52 hours), and the eventual
typing speed can be improved by about 75% on average.
Many people who can type both QWERTY and Dvorak prefer
Dvorak and swear by it. There are some who go back to
QWERTY, but from what I understand, it's because they
don't have the opportunity to use Dvorak all the time.
It also reduces repetitive strain injury.

Now, here is another example of something that is
technically better, but for various economic reasons,
won't lead to a full reformation without royal or
religious decree. People in modern times don't do new
things just because it's better. It seems they do
things only when everyone else is doing it already or
because it has been made into a law. You can look at
a lot of the old comparisons for examples: Beta vs.
VHS, metric vs. imperial, DOS vs. Macintosh, etc.

I think I've just resigned myself to accept that I,
personally, may want to do it a better way, but it's
going to be in a small community and I'll seem like an
eccentric for doing it.



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Are we trying to use shavian to confuse envagle and obfuscate our
friends? I thought it was a means of communication that we want to
propogate for use by the plebian masses.

--Star

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

__________________________________________________
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