Hi Joseph
I am not against developing an American Standard Shavian Dictionary
with Standard American Pronunciation. But according to my previous
reasons, see below, it is almost insurmountable problem to create a
standard spelling.
Personally, I try to maximize the use of the Schwa, Schwi, and
Schwar, the unstressed minimal vowel sounds, that are becoming more
common in ordinary English Speech. But that goes against most
peoples perception of how English should be correctly pronounced. It
is funny that the prescriptive English pronunciation, which is
closer to T.O. spelling, is mainly used to clarify or to enunciate a
misheard word.
We could use a standard American accent group as documented in that
dictionary that I just recommended to Carl. It does a very nice job
of reducing the
number of phonemes to effectively handle Standard American
Pronunciation. It uses a subset of the IPA alphabet, which is
Phonetic based.
The Eastern (Indian) accent of English probably has the most number
of speakers. American English is fairly high status in most of the
world, but the British Accent is not far behind in status or usage.
I don't see how you can have a world wide standard English
pronunciation?
Regards, Paul V.
--- In shavian@..., "Joseph Smith" <stetsdigs@h...>
wrote:
> Thanks for the reply, though I would disagree.
>
> I think a standard is needed to help communication, or even to
> facilitate it. People will use a standard when it comes to
> disseminating material for a large audience, and they will simply
> choose the standard most likely to be accepted by the highest
number
> or readers.
>
> We ought not wait until mass audiences are catered for, but
instead
> begin now, and take a handle on the situation before it is too
late.
> A good representation of English will last for many years, and
will
> only slight modification over the years. No tough choices are
needed
> between one accent of the other, as the differences are truly not
> that large. The fact that we can understand each other in speech
> bodes well for understanding each other in the more formal setting
or
> writing.
>
> The lack of standard simply deters people from learning Shavian.
> Learners want things easier, not harder. Standard spellings in
> Shavian will only be a fraction of the burden they are in TO, yet
> almost all of the benefits will remain.
>
> One of the worst things I see at the moment is spellings which are
> clearly incorrect. People seem to regularly think every vowel in a
> multisylabbic word is stressed, and so use stressed vowels instead
of
> unstressed. They don't even speak like this, so it is a wonder why
> they write like it.
> > Don't get screwed up by using traditional English Spelling to
> > determine how a word should be pronounced.
>
> Thanks again for your reply,
> Joseph
>
> --- In shavian@..., "paul vandenbrink"
> <pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
> > Hi Joseph
> >
> > I really should let Hugh take this one, but since he handled
Carl's
> > question, I will give it a shot. We posted a through discussion
of
> > this about 8 months back.
> >
> > The Standard response is that the Shavian Alphabet is phonetic.
> > It represents exactly the way that an English word sounds.
> > You don't need spelling rules, you just sound it out and write
it.
> > It is independant of T.O. It stands on it own.
> >
> > Unfortunately, all Languages evolve over time and distance. And
the
> > British pronunciation used to determine the standard Original
> > Shavian spelling 45 years ago is now occassionally out of date.
> > And the American Accent/Pronunciation never matched exactly in
the
> > first place.
> > So where we agree on the words pronunciation, we have a standard
> > spelling. Where there are 2 different pronunciations, we have 2
> > equally valid spellings that can be considered as synonyms if
you
> > like. In T.O. it be like recognizing "jail" and "gaol" to be
both
> > valid English words for the same thing.
> >
> > Unfortunately, again a sizable group of English speakers, ( I
won't
> > say who!) cannot distinquish or don't use one or more of 5
common
> > English vowel pairs. (i.e. Array/Err(Urge), On/Awe/Ah, W/Wh,
> Egg/If,
> > Ado/Up)
> > So they randomly use one or the other of the letters.
> >
> > I would personally suggest using a subset of the vowel letters
> based
> > on your own standard accent group. Write consistently at least.
A
> > dictionary I recommended to Carl does a nice job of reducing the
> > number of phonemes to effectively handle Standard American
> > Pronunciation.
> >
> > Don't get screwed up by using traditional English Spelling to
> > determine how a word should be pronounced.
> >
> > Regards, Paul V.
> >
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