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"Mooo..."

> nerd52-@... wrote:
> original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/shavian/?start=226
> >There have been literally hundreds of other artificial language
> projects...
> >
> > Lee
> >
> Correct, and you can see a lot of them at http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~jrk
> /conlang.html. I also happen to be a "conlanger" (that's what we model
> language builders call ourselves) and I am working on a project to use
> Shavian, but there seems to be no letter for a voiceless uvular
> fricative...but that isn't a conversation for here. Anyways, most
> conlangs are for personal joy (yes, we have fun doing it, too) but a
> sizeable amount of them have the dream of being the international
> standard. They are to the global community what Shavia are to the
> English-speaking community.
>
> Levi

A simple answer to the problem is to invent a letter. :) Yes, while I've
said that there shouldn't be and _change_ to the Shavian alphabet (ie: the
"huNG"/"Haha" debacle), I haven't ruled out _amending_ Shavian for new
sounds... What say ye, fellow Shaviati? :)

....Quozl!

> there seems to be no letter for a voiceless uvular
> fricative

What's that? Is that the last sound in "Bach" or "loch"? If you invent a
Shavian letter for that, you'd also want to invent a rotated-180-degrees (or
mirror-image) form for the corresponding voiced sound (which would then be
the "ghain" of Arabic or the "gamma" of Modern Greek). Just for symmetry.

Cheers,
Philip

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>
> > there seems to be no letter for a voiceless uvular
> > fricative
>
> What's that? Is that the last sound in "Bach" or "loch"? If you invent a
> Shavian letter for that, you'd also want to invent a rotated-180-degrees (or
> mirror-image) form for the corresponding voiced sound (which would then be
> the "ghain" of Arabic or the "gamma" of Modern Greek). Just for symmetry.

No, it's like the Cocney accent's handling of T in words like "that"
("tha'"), etc...

....Quozl!

> > > there seems to be no letter for a voiceless uvular
> > > fricative
> >
> > What's that? Is that the last sound in "Bach" or "loch"? If
> you invent a
> > Shavian letter for that, you'd also want to invent a
> rotated-180-degrees (or
> > mirror-image) form for the corresponding voiced sound
> (which would then be
> > the "ghain" of Arabic or the "gamma" of Modern Greek). Just
> for symmetry.
>
> No, it's like the Cocney accent's handling of T in words like "that"
> ("tha'"), etc...

I would have called that a glottal stop -- isn't that what it is? Not a
fricative.

Cheers,
Philip

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> What's that? Is that the last sound in "Bach" or "loch"?

Bravo! You guessed right!

Levi


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Kingsley Read at some point introduced symbols for the Scots "loch" sound
(German "ach" sound) - actually a voiceless velar fricative, I think - and
for the infamous Welsh lateral-released l (the "llan" sound). I may need to
get these scanned for my Web site.

Obviously he was opening a can of worms, since both Lowland Scots and Welsh
have quite different sound systems from English Received Pronunciation. As
far as I know, he didn't pursue this idea.

It seems to me that inventing Shavian symbols for languages other than
English is not a good idea. The Shaw Alphabet was specifically designed for
the particular phonetics of English.

Bob Richmond


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Kingsley Read at some point introduced symbols for the Scots "loch" sound
(German "ach" sound) - actually a voiceless velar fricative, I think - and
for the infamous Welsh lateral-released l (the "llan" sound). I may need to
get these scanned for my Web site.

Obviously he was opening a can of worms, since both Lowland Scots and Welsh
have quite different sound systems from English Received Pronunciation. As
far as I know, he didn't pursue this idea.

It seems to me that inventing Shavian symbols for languages other than
English is not a good idea. The Shaw Alphabet was specifically designed for
the particular phonetics of English.

Bob Richmond


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Have we gotten here into a confusion about adapting a script that was
created to represent English phonetically and trying to create a new
International Phonetic Alphabet? The IPA is really adequate for
transcribing world languages. The question to me with regard to Shavian
is "What shall we do about the chaotic state of traditional English
spelling and the burden it places on English-speaking children in
learning.

There does arise the problem of what you are going to consider under the
umbrella term, "English." There are mutually unintelligible speech forms
that right now are all called "English." In standard field linguistics,
we would call all of these speech forms different languages, not
"dialects" of the same language. Linguists differ as to whether the word
"dialect" has any functional use in linguistics at all, but I think few
would call all of the speech forms we are now calling "English,"
dialects of the same language.

If you intend to use Shavian for everthing now being called "English,"
you will require something like the International Phonetic Alphabet,
and, therefore, be required to add a considerable number of new letters
to Shavian, perhaps double the number of present letters. Just from
listening to cassettes of Robert Frost, an eminent American poet from
Vermont, reading his poetry, and William Faulkner, an American prose
writer from Mississippi, reading his short stories, I can imagine that
the number of new symbols needed for all of the "English" speech forms
represented in the United States would be enormous. Yet, if we canonize
one speech form as standard, and insist that all people learn it, it
seems to me that we defeat the whole purpose of reforming spelling. Or
have we here created a world auxiliary language just for people who call
themselves "English speakers?"

The sound in Scots "loCH" is the voiceless velar fricative. Its voiced
counterpart appears in Arabic. Does it occur anywhere in what we're
calling "English." The Cockney sound in "bottle" is a glottal stop. At
the end of a word, it may either be a glottal stop or an unreleased
stop. I would have to see the speaker's mouth to determine which it is.



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To the helpful nerd on the Shavian line,
Thank You! Your feedback was just the kind of feedback I was looking
for. It all goes back to the dialect question. It would be a reason for
abandoning abbreviations. Of course, if we're going to write
phonetically, we must also face the fact that I (borned and raised on
the Northwest side of Chicago) could not read anything written by people
from Southern Alabama, Mississippi or Belfast, because I can't
understand them when they speak.

I took the "v"= "of" from the Shavian spelling chart, at the bottom.
It's one of the four recommended ("mandatory?") abbreviations. The word
"you" is represended by a combined form included in the body of the
chart.

There is actually a more interesting problem in English linguistics,
discovered by Dr. William Labov, who came up with "statistical
dialectology," in studying language change. It turns out that all
speakers of American English in the Midwest pronounce the common word,
"on," in two different ways. Each speaker used both "ahn" and "awn,"
though there tended to be a variation by region in the percentage of the
time speakers said "ahn" or "awn." Chicagoans use a high percentage of
"ahn." When said "awn" slowly and deliberately in this area, most people
would immediately brand it as an affectation. St. Louis, on the other
hand, has a much higher normal use percentage of "awn."

Ah, when we dip our fingers into phonetics, the whole arm goes in, like
it or not. And I, for one, do not ever plan on writing anything or ever
trying to speak the British Received Pronunciation, Mr. Shaw
notwithstanding. I'll stick to good old Midwestern, and those who want
to understand me probably will. For those whose "English" is so far
removed from mine that they can't understand me, we can use some other
language we both speak or use Esperanto.

Fond regards, fellow concerned linguists, Dan Szczurek



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Conlanging is indeed a fun pursuit, according to my likings. I don't do
it. Too many interesting human languages I want to dig into in India and
the Caucasus. But I like the idea of playing with language as a joyful
activity that brings delight.

My Shavian interests are quite practical, however. I've seen too many
intelligent children laboring under the burden of traditional English
spelling, and concluding from it that they are stupid. Shavian, or any
other truly phonetic spelling reform, is a practical neccesity for me;
for the masses, not for the few.
Thanks, Dan



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