In Hebrew and other languages having an abjad, the acronyms are
actually pronounced by sounding the words (TaNaKH). SOmething
similiar might work for Shavian. We could use a fairly standard way
of determining what vowels go best between consonants or what
consonants between vowels. I actually like the Hebrew tendency of
using 'a' (<i>on</i>). <i>ago</i> might make a good choice for a
vowel and/or consonant: English, as most Germanics, is fond of the
sound, which <em>can</em> act as a vowel, but is actually a consonant.
I've used it in my Droiderik language for almost everything as a
mediating consonant <em>and</em> vowel, but more of that later (like
when the transcription doesn't look like the alphabet blew up in your
face...) anything ending in 'r' would obviously use either 'err' or
'array'. (T.L.R.=> talD/tolX/tAlX) in pronunciation. Obviously, it
would be helpful to write it out as a regular abbreviation (maybe).
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink"
<pvandenbrink11@h...> wrote:
> Hi John
>
> You raise an number of important issues, that we touched on a while
> back when talked about employing some of the obsolete accent and
> punctuation keys.
> Since the Shavian Alphabet requires a new Keyboard Mapping it
> behooves us to make sure that we have all the Punctuation signs and
> other accoutrements of Clear/Clean writing at our fingertips.
>
> First remember Capitalization is gone. and indentation is up in the
> air. Also there are all those other writing conventions,
> (Abbreviations, Contractions, Acronyms, Omonophia, etc) which have
> been developed using the Roman letters. How will they work with the
> Shavian Phonetic Alphabet?
> I think a subset of them will work well. But we have to spell out
> what works, what doesn't and what has to be changed.
> First, Acronyms. The Shavian Letter names cannot be used for Acronyms.
> Most of them are words, with there own meanings. They can can be
> written but how the heck would you pronounce them aloud. We need a
> set of Shavian Letter names that can be used for writing Acronyms.
> Roman based Acronyms will just have to be written phonetically.
>
> While I think many of your concerns require a full discussion,
> let me just hit the high points to start things going.
>
> 1. I like Double quotes. They will have to be higher for the Tall
> letters.
> 2. Since we don't have Capitalization and indentation is tricky.
> Why don't we start all paragraphs and wherever convenient new
> sentences at the beginning of a line.
> We can put a half blank line between Paragraphs. I like using bold
> and italic fonts.
> Remember lines are wider and narrower with Shavian text.
> Perhaps, concatenated words of all kinds can be seperated with an
> apostrophe or hyphen.
> I will continue my response at a later time.
>
> Regards, Paul V.
> __________________attached___________________________
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, John Burrows <burrows@t...>
> wrote:
> > I've been following recent e-mails with interest, but am currently
> more
> > concerned with the appearance of the Shaw alphabet.
>
> I have re-worked some of Androcles, whch is the only
> > model available. That is a play, complete with stage directions,
> and uses
> > are found for italics and bold texts, for which there are separate
> font
> > faces, as well as for plain and square brackets. When I turned to
> Jane
> > Austen, hoping for a plain text stream, rather like listening to a
> book
> > being read aloud, I found there were other problems.
> I want the output to
> > look nice, but if it is too smooth and regular it will be difficult
> to
> > read.
>
> More specifically, which effects are needed and which choices must I
> > make from those below :--
> > Emphatic punctuation with curved commas and apostrophes or straight
> lines
> > and single quotes
> > Emphasis through bold, italics, underlining or continental style
> l i k e t h i s, or Turkish like (this).
> > What about abbreviations? (Mr. Bingley, Mr Bingley, mr Bingley,
> mister
> > Bingley, M:R, m-r)
> > Portait or landscape?
> What is the ideal line length for Shavian?
> > The __shire militia. They lived at Wh_rt_n.
> looong vowels. lloudd sounds.
> > Concatenation of words, at least in speech : He maybe coming at
> fiveoclock
> > tomorrowafternoon.
> > jb