Shavian eGroup Archive Browser

Well said, that man! Thank you, and hello back atcha, Bob!

Now, what about the rest of you? Are you chicken? I'm not just speaking about those group members who have been vocal so far; I mean the lurkers too. You know who you are. I've seen your names. There are tens and tens of you.

YOUR ALPHABET
NEEDS YOU!

Where's that fellow Barne when we need him to do another poster? Swanning around in Indonesia, that's where. Bloody typical.

----- Original Message -----
From: <RSRICHMOND@aol.com>
To: <shavian@...>
Sent: 28 October 1999 1:34 pm
Subject: [shavian] The Kingsley Reader (was Learning Shavian)


> Hi Lionel Ghoti!
>
> I'll help with the Kingsley Reader.
>
> Bob Richmond
> Knoxville, Tennessee
> http://members.aol.com/RSRICHMOND/shavian.html


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> Hi Lionel Ghoti!
>
> I'll help with the Kingsley Reader.

So will I.

Hugh Birkenhead
www.funkymusic.co.uk


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"hugh birkenhead" <mixsynt-@...> wrote:
original article:http://www.egroups.com/group/shavian/?start=293
> > Hi Lionel Ghoti!
> >
> > I'll help with the Kingsley Reader.
>
> So will I.
>

And I, Lionel.

BTW, Lionel, so many of your comments struck resonant chords within me
that I almost laughed aloud.

From time to time I run across people (especially in this forum) who
seem
like such kindred spirits. Please allow me to electronically clap you on
your virtual shoulder and buy you a cyber-beer.

Hal



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I concur with Lionel's comments about the phonetic translator.

I don't wish to say that it's a bad program. Not at all. I'm
appreciative of the effort to which Andy has gone. He has
certainly contributed more to the Shavian community than I have
(which, come to think of it, is just a couple of kilobytes of
idle chatter).

Lionel, if you know Delphi, couldn't you whip up a Windows-based
version relatively quickly?

Andy, would you possibly be willing to share the source code?

Of course, I've thought of my own transcriber (solely for Shavian,
unlike Andy's more general-purpose software). But that's a non-
trivial project, and I haven't halfway completed the flashcard
program yet.

Another software idea I have is one that is a) difficult enough
I'd have no idea where to begin, and b) darned near useless. But
the thought of it is heart-warming: OCR software (optical character
recognition) that can read Shavian. Whatcha think, guys? :)

Cheers,
Hal



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Sorry, but I'm about 100 times better at thinking of ideas than
implementing them.

But this is one that is achievable and might be useful.

From time to time, I find myself wondering what is the "proper"
Shavian spelling of a word. Not knowing RP, and being a quirky
rhotic American speaker, I tend to look to Androcles at such
times. (One of my prized possessions is a worn hardback of the
Shaw Alphabet edition of _Androcles and the Lion_.)

A&L is, of course, the _original_ corpus for Shavian, not to
mention that it is probably still the largest. (I'm not counting
QuickScript.)

Of course, using A&L as a dictionary is an uncertain proposition.
Is this word even in Androcles? On what page?

The idea, version 1: Produce a list of words in A&L and show their
Shavian transcriptions. Better yet, produce another list along with
it, alphabetized not by Latin letters but Shavian. What, haven't you
learned your peeptotkicks? :)

A few hours with a scanner and few more hours programming could produce
an alphabetized list. Even alphabetizing the Shavian is not really a
giant headache. But after that, that's when it gets harder. Maybe a
transcriber would be a good start, which could be manually compared to
A&L. All told, I would estimate 40 man-hours if I were to do it.

The idea, version 2: Extend it to include other words also. Let the
A&L spelling (if available) be marked as such. Include alternative
spellings, possibly even naming the dialect whence they originate.

Notes on version 2: I favor listing the alternative spellings in
order of decreasing weight, as follows.
1. Give A&L the highest weight.
2. Next give weight to words that are derived from A&L words or
might be deduced by clear analogy. For example, if A&L spells
"dog" and "house," then we have a derived spelling for "doghouse."
In the second (shakier) case, if it spells "dog," we might use the
same vowel for "hog" and "log." Is there _any_ dialect of English
where these don't rhyme?
3. Next give weight to RP where it is clear. Even RP speakers may
disagree, of course. Following the tradition of Shavian from the
very beginning, spellings should probably be rhotic. (Side note:
I used to have a friend from New Zealand, with whom I spent many
entertaining hours talking about English. He was very non-rhotic.
Once I used the word "orrery" to him, and he responded jokingly,
"Oh, we call that an 'oey'...")
4. Finally, list any dialects by frequency of occurrence. Since we
cannot poll the entire English-speaking world, this will come from
the citizens of Shavia who choose to contribute. Right now, there
are only tens of us, but I can foresee a time when there might be
dozens or even scores -- perhaps even a full gross.

Thoughts, anyone?

Hal




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Sorry, this is my last pie-in-the-sky post (for this week,
anyhow).

When we get an easily-usable transcriber (and maybe also a
pseudo-standardized spelling), let's start cranking out the
Shavian.

Not just original works, though that's a great thing.

Idea, part 1: Let's rip off Project Gutenberg (keeping legal
issues in mind -- I don't advocate real copyright infringement,
and the laws vary from one country to another). There's tons of
English text there begging to be transliterated.

Part 2: Let's produce some bi-alphabetic stuff, like Androcles.
Maybe even publish it. (The two options then are obviously to
find a "real" publisher or to self-publish it using donations
from among ourselves.)

Part 3: The "facing pages" method is good. But for learning
purposes, I prefer the "interlinear" style -- alternating lines
of Latin and Shavian. (Maybe some of you have used an interlinear
Greek New Testament or the like. No anti-religious flames, please,
if you haven't!)

Comments?

Hal



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I'll help, too.

Cheers,
Philip

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Yup. Count me in.

Hmmm. I think I promised everyone "Utopia" a while back, but have been
busy. I'm eroding at the moment.

Good to hear people are using TPT. Having had no feedback (or very little),
I'd assumed no-one was using it. Better get back on to the Windows version.


- .+'^'+. A.M.Callaway ----------------- acal@...
- A N D Y Melbourne, Australia --- a.callaway@...
- `+.,.+' www.ozemail.com.au/~acal -------------------------

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Yup. Count me in.

Hmmm. I think I promised everyone "Utopia" a while back, but have been
busy. I'm eroding at the moment.

Good to hear people are using TPT. Having had no feedback (or very little),
I'd assumed no-one was using it. Better get back on to the Windows version.


- .+'^'+. A.M.Callaway ----------------- acal@...
- A N D Y Melbourne, Australia --- a.callaway@...
- `+.,.+' www.ozemail.com.au/~acal -------------------------

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> Good to hear people are using TPT.

Is it available in the Vault? If not, perhaps you could upload it.

Cheers,
Philip

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