Hi again group, been busy once again for a while - time to get back into the
Shavian mindset...
----- Original Message -----
From: "paul vandenbrink" <pvandenbrink@...>
To: <shavian@...>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 6:47 PM
Subject: [shavian] Re: About the "on" shavian letter
> Hi Carl & Bob
> I have to side with Carl in this matter, even though Bob's logic is
> impecable. The question is not who is right, linguistically speaking.
> The question is how can an American English speaker make use the Shaw
> Alphabet in a clean consistent fashion.
> And he should be able to do it without confusing one half or the
> other of the English speaking world when it is unnecessary.
> So like Carl, I also suggest dropping the use of the "On" letter
> for "Ah".
> Personally, some time ago I had to chose which of these 2 symbols to
> use for what was an essentially indistinguishable sound for me.
> Even tho, the Shaw letter "On" is easier to write than "Ah",
> I found 3 very practical reasons to use "ah" instead.
> 1. Phonetics trumps convention. In T.O. this sound is more usually
> thought of as an soft "o" sound, but in my accent, I hear a close
> correspondence between the traditional soft "o" sound and the "Awe"
> sound. I like having these similar sounds represented by the upper
> and lower case "y". Like "If" and "Eat" should be on the same key.
> 2. As I am slightly dyslexic, I can get confused between the Shaw
> tiny letters "Ado", "Ash", "Egg" and "On". I make mistakes.
> Sometimes, when a word doesn't gome out right, I even have to stop
> and consider the orientation of these letters. It really slows my
> reading. Removing "On" from the mix helps.
> 3. When I put the question to Hugh, a while back, he strongly
> suggested Americans should use "Ah" over "On", if they must collapse
> those 2 Shaw letters into one. I try not to argue with him over the
> British pronunciation of the Shaw Letters. He's the expert. And I am
> sure he has a reason.
I don't know... Sure, I did suggest 'ah' over 'on' in US-Eng dialect
situations - but that was only in the context of the "cut Shavian" I devised
with the intention of of rationalising the phoneme set. In that cut
alphabet, there would be no difference made between 'ah' and 'on' phonemes
so 'ah' was chosen as it was more similar to the 'awe' letter phonetically.
In "standard" (original?) Shavian, if you have 'on' thrown into the mix of
letters for Brit-Eng speakers to use, I would tend to suggest US-Eng
speakers use 'on' for 98% of the words with that phoneme, as there are VERY
few instances, if you think about it, where you would even need to think
about using 'ah' instead (such as in "father", "calm", "rationale"). This
can be easily memorised. This way, i.e. using 'on', words written by US-Eng
speakers would inadvertently end up being written exactly the same as those
same words written by a Brit-Eng speaker. This should be the desired outcome
as it minimises spelling differences.
I'm sure we discussed this before in this group and I gave a list of common
words that would take 'ah' instead of 'on' - it must have numbered less than
a dozen. I'll try to find the past discussion later.
In truth the 'ah'/'on' confusion is easily solved by the method described
above (i.e. when in doubt just use 'on' and learn the short list of 'ah'
words) - my main concern is still the 'up'+'roll'/'err', 'egg'+'roll'/'air'
and 'if'+'roll'/'ear' confusion. This is less easily addressed as US-Eng
doesn't recognise a 'short'/'long' vowel distinction as Brit-Eng does.
Hugh B
> And as for you final point.
> > But
> > the Shavian "on" grapheme is not tied to the British pronunciation
> of
> > that word.
> Any British English Speaker will be confused by the Americans Shaw
> Letter choice in the situation, but as it is tied to accent, it
> should become clear, that it is just a minor accent difference.
> We have to get away from retaining old fashion pronunciation
> standards at this stage of the development of the Shaw Alphabet.
> We have to make it easy for Americans to use.
>
> Regards, Paul V.
>
> __________________attached________________________________________
>
>
>
>
> --- In shavian@..., Bob Schmertz <rschmertz@s...> wrote:
> > carl easton incurred the wrath of Bob on Sep 9, by saying
> >
> > >Based on my research done off of www.omniglot.com I discover that
> the
> > >sound for "on" is simply a rounded "ah". Since I have an American
> > >Dialect I don't use rounded vowels (Which Europeans tend to use,
> i.e.
> > >"o" umlaut, etc...). So as far as my shavian writing I no longer
> use
> > >"on" simply because I don't pronounce it. So for the "ah"
> phonemes I
> > >just use "ah" and "awe".
> >
> > I'm not sure, in the context of the concepts behind Shavian, if it
> is
> > correct to say "the sound for 'on' is <whatever>". The sound
> for "on"
> > is however you pronounce it. Shavian is meant to allow people on
> both
> > sides of the pond to use the same vowel glyphs more-or-less for the
> > same phonemes, provided they are used consistently within that
> dialect.
> > So, as long as you use the same vowel in the
> words "on", "off", "hot",
> > "shod", "lock", etc., and you pronounce them in a way that would be
> > understandable to anybody familiar with the major North American
> > dialects, you are free to, and IMHO should, use the "on" character.
> >
> > You are correct that the way many if not most Americans
> pronounce "on"
> > is closer to the British "ah" sound than to the British "on"
> sound. But
> > the Shavian "on" grapheme is not tied to the British pronunciation
> of
> > that word.
> >
> > --
> > Cheers,
> > Bob Schmertz
>
>
>
>
>
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