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Hi Scott

The Shaw Alphabet doesn't really have names for the letters. It
provides a sample word, but I wouldn't really call it a name, so a
provided some names based on the Hebrew Alphabet. Never the twain
shall meet.

Regards, Paul V.
P.S. I sent a message earlier that addressed your other questions.


--- In shavian@..., Scott Harrison <scott@m...> wrote:
>
> On Apr 2, 2004, at 08:29, Star Raven wrote:
>
> > Took a look at the site and was very confused... That's not the
shaw I
> > know and love... 48 letters, plus /hw/ (on occasion) that's what
I'm
> > familliar with. But I don't even recognise the squiggles on
> > shaw-alphabet.com.... did I miss something?
> >
> The website is very confusing because it seems to be
promoting an
> alphabet calling it the Shaw (Shavian) alphabet. The names of the
> letters are wrong, as well as having letters that are not in
Shavian.
> It would be much better if this alphabet were labeled as a
modification
> or variation of the Shavian alphabet since people not familiar with
> Shavian can become quite confused.
>
> --
> Scott Harrison PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86




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Inline Reply below

>
> As for my website www.shawalphabet.com, it is going through some
> changes and some of the documentation still reflects an earlier
> revision, where I did not necessarily indicate all of the crucial
> vowel letters. I will change all references from Alphabet to Abjad,
> when I get the opportunty. If you click on forum inside the Portal
> page you will see an uptodate description of what is the Revise Shaw
> Alphabet.
>

Credit where credit is due, you are working towards the same goal, if
your method is not what we are used to. I was never one to understand
place-holders or vowel substitutes. I think we may be approaching this
like adults, who already know how to read and speak english. If I run
into the word "Holmium" (the name of a chemical element) and I've never
seen it before. How do I know what is supposed to go into the place of
the vowel place holders?

It is not unusual for those of us, that means all of us, who are into
spelling reform to forget the children and what it was like to learn to
read for the first time, and coming across a word that you couldn't
decipher for the first time. Has anyone read Watership Down recently?
There are words there in "rabbit speak" that are repeated throughout
the book. Just exactly how does one pronounce elil?

>
> P.S. I still use the regular original Shaw Alphabet as well as my own
>
> Revision, and hope you accept my participation in the group as
> someone who puts great value on the unparalleled simplicity, logical
> consistency and art of the Shaw Alphabet.


Of course you are accepted and encouraged to participate! I love the
discussions, and even the disagreements so long as it gets us talking
and spreading the word of shavian as it were. I am a personal fan of
"classic shavian" though I do see that there are mistakes and problems
that could have been better handled by it, and something which those of
us who use it should reach a consensus.

Read on, and be joyous!
--Star


=====
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Hi Paul,

You are Right. I responded to Ethan on this. I agree that there should be a standard of spelling for each English-speaking Nation.

best of regards,

Carl

paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@...> wrote:

Hi Carl

Don't forget India, Pakistan and Hong Kong. Altogether they have more
Second Lnguage English Speakers than America, and their accent is
closer to the British Accent.
English is a world language. The majority of countries in the world
accept English as their preferred second language.

Regards, Paul V.
______________attached________________________

--- In shavian@..., Ethan <ethanl@3...> wrote:
> carl easton wrote:
> > Hi John,
> >
> > That's okay. Originally, Kingley Read in Androcles and the Lion,
> > mentioned to use the spellings from that volume when the time
came to
> > formalized Shavian spelling. Which is as you have indicated is
the
> > Northern England accent.
> >
> > So, I assume to derive this Northern England accent from a
dictionary,
> > one might use the Oxford dictionary. However, due there also
being
> > Shavian Ethusiasts around the World. An American Spelling is
needed for
> > us western hemisphere people.
> >
> > regards,
> >
> > Carl
>
>
> According to the numbers found at
> http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/lan_eng_spe
>
> Native English speakers per country, 1984 estimates -
> UK: 55 million
> US: 210 million
>
> I think that it is important to consider where the people are, and
how
> they speak when deciding where to standardize. If you go by the
> numbers, standard American English should be given preference.
Consider
> also that most Canadians speak almost the same as standard American
English.
>
> That said, it would scarcely be fair to force the American standard
on
> people who find it strange, so I think it would be good to have at
least
> a standard for British English as well, so everybody can be as
> comfortable as possible. But would either standard be acceptible
for
> people in, say, Australia, New Zeeland, or South Africa?
>
> --
> ·ð?˜Â°Ã°Ââ€˜â€Ã°Ââ€˜Â©Ã°Ââ€˜Â?- Ethan




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--- In shavian@..., "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@f...> wrote:
> It looks like Windows XP's character map application doesn't support
> supplementary Unicode characters.

[snip]

> I'm going to have to find another one that does - anyone have any
> suggestions?

Try Rosetta or BabelMap. I don't remember where to get them.




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--- In shavian@..., Star Raven <celestraof12worlds@y...> wrote:

[snip]

> I think we may be approaching this
> like adults, who already know how to read and speak english. If I run
> into the word "Holmium" (the name of a chemical element) and I've never
> seen it before. How do I know what is supposed to go into the place of
> the vowel place holders?

There are a lot of writing systems that represent words without clearly indicating
pronunciation. Usually, different or modified spelling is used for teaching children.

In Hebrew, short vowels are not usually written except in children's books and certain
texts of special significance. In Japanese, the pronunciation of kanji (Chinese
characters) is indicated by writing above or beside it (for vertical writing) in a syllabic
script.

In the modified Shavian abjad, these vowels could be specifically indicated for
children and later removed when they become natural.

> It is not unusual for those of us, that means all of us, who are into
> spelling reform to forget the children and what it was like to learn to
> read for the first time, and coming across a word that you couldn't
> decipher for the first time.

Terrible, terrible times.




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Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
> Damn this...
>
> It looks like Windows XP's character map application doesn't support
> supplementary Unicode characters. Which means I can't view the Shavian
> characters contained in 'Andagii'.
>
> I'm going to have to find another one that does - anyone have any
> suggestions?
>
> Thanks
> Hugh B

I believe you'll discover (if you can find a viewer app) that they look
just exactly like the characters in Ghoti.

--
·𐑰𐑔𐑩𐑯 - Ethan



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Speaking of fonts, I'm working on a Garamond style font that should be great for
printing. But I can't get my copy of FontLab registered. I'll have to figure that out
before I can really do anything with it.

If I ever do, I'll make both a standard keyboard Shavian font and a Unicode font.




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The number of speakers of Indian English (the politically correct term now is "Third World English" probably exceeds the number of North American speakers, or soon will. Indian English phonetically is different both from British and American English.

This group badly needs a speaker of Indian/Third World English. Can't somebody recruit somebody who can compare the austere grandeur of Shavian to the lush Borobodurean beauty of Devanagari?

Bob Richmond
Knoxville TN and Gastonia NC

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Hi Star & Joe

Thanks Star for your vote of confidence. It is one of my my favorite
activities to participate in this roundtable discussion. Nice to feel
welcome.

Let me try to answer your concern about the New Shaw Abjad.

An Abjad is quite similar to an Alphabet in function, but has quite
different strengths and weaknesses. You are correct that an Abjad
does not provide much information about the pronunciation of the
Vowel sounds. It is not as exact as an Alphabet in this regard, which
is a weakness, but the Shaw Abjad has some compensating strengths.

For example, It indicates the Exact vowel sounds for the crucial
vowel sounds in a word. It has letters for all the vowel sounds.
It just doesn't use them for the inconsequential vowel sounds in a
word. It uses a Vowel Variable insted. For example, in an Abjad a
Schwa vowel sound is always represented by single dot (vowel marker)
unless it is a stand-alone vowel syllable, when it is represented by
the letter Adu. (i.e. alone, away, initi-a-tive)

And for the noncrucial vowel sounds, these Vowel markers also
indicate whether the vowel ends a word or syllable, or is embedded in
the middle of the syllable.
Other types of vowels are indicated by Vowel letter, not Vowel
markers.
So to get a sense of the rythmn of the word, vowel markers actually
give just as much or more information on how to pronounce the overall
word, by showing us the syllable boundaries. Let me know if you need
some examples to see how this works?

And in reality, our children learn the language first, and then learn
to read by recognizing the written form of words in process more like
puzzle solving, than actual sounding out all the letters. Sad to say,
the T.O. and our Education system have not encouraged the phonetic
approach to reading. It requires too much work for the teacher.
If only the Shaw Alphabet were already in use, they could attempt it.

For the New Revised Shaw Abjad, I do provide a system to annotate the
vowel markers of Newly coined words with an exact vowel
pronunciation. There are 9 of these Mazor signs, which are written
right under the Vowel Variable.
These Mazor signs could be used in Children's books, dictionaries and
Newspapers or any other book where an exact pronunciation is required.

Conceivably, for normal writing this annotation could be toggled on
and off inside your word processor. It's easy to let the computer do
the Mazor Annotation.

But you are right. Because of the initial complexity of system of
Vowel markers, it is more suited to adults. Children should probably
learn the original Shavian Alphabet in their local accent, and then
graduate to the Shaw Abjad, with one standard spelling for everybody.

The main advantage of Abjad, besides the words being more concise, is
that some sometimes indeterminant English sounds, (i.e. a/u, e/i,
ei/ai) would be represented by a single Vowel marker, producing one
unified Shaw spelling. Hopefully, recognition of words would be
enhanced, when these less precisely pronounced sounds would be
devalued right in the writing system.

Children learning to read Hebrew, usually use dots to indicate vowels
until the fifth grade. And there after most of them get by without
explicit vowel markers except at the beginning and end of the word.
Especially the ones with strong parental input and reinforcement.

So there are number of possible solutions to your concerns.

It would be nice if someone actually did a study on the benefits of
learning English Phonetically using the Shaw Alphabet.
I believe would find learning to read much less tedious and
frustrating.

Kids don't really have a choice, they can't effectively rebel or go
on strike, because of poor teaching strategies.

Anyway I probably overdid it.
Talk later.

Regards, Paul V.


> --- In shavian@..., Star Raven
<celestraof12worlds@y...> wrote:
> > I think we may be approaching this
> > like adults, who already know how to read and speak english. If I
run into the word "Holmium" (the name of a chemical element) and I've
never
> > seen it before. How do I know what is supposed to go into the
place of
> > the vowel place holders?

Joe wrote:
> There are a lot of writing systems that represent words without
clearly indicating
> pronunciation. Usually, different or modified spelling is used for
teaching children.
> In Hebrew, short vowels are not usually written except in
children's books and certain
> texts of special significance. >
>





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--- In shavian@..., "paul vandenbrink" <pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:

> And in reality, our children learn the language first, and then learn
> to read by recognizing the written form of words in process more like
> puzzle solving, than actual sounding out all the letters.

It is true that children learn the language first, but they will inevitably encounter
many words they don't recognize already. They do tend to start learning to read and
write with a fairly small vocabulary of common words.

>Sad to say,
> the T.O. and our Education system have not encouraged the phonetic
> approach to reading. It requires too much work for the teacher.
> If only the Shaw Alphabet were already in use, they could attempt it.

I was taught to sound out words I didn't recognize. The phonetic approached
worked about as well as it can for T.O.

> It would be nice if someone actually did a study on the benefits of
> learning English Phonetically using the Shaw Alphabet.
> I believe would find learning to read much less tedious and
> frustrating.

The same kind of study has been done with the Initial Teaching Alphabet, and I would
bet the results would be about the same with Shavian. That is, children would learn
to spell more proficiently and more quickly, and they would tend to do better in other
studies.

> Kids don't really have a choice, they can't effectively rebel or go
> on strike, because of poor teaching strategies.

Well, they could if their parents/guardians backed them. But that might be a stretch.

> Anyway I probably overdid it.

Yes, you did. Shame on you! :D

Best Regards,
Joe




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