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I think the whole point of adopting Shavian is to leave the irregular past behind and
spell things in the way that makes the most sense right now. Maybe there was a
reason for not correcting this reversal (and I believe it was a mistake), but it's within
our power now to fix it. I associate the tall letter "ha-ha" with the Roman letter h and
"hung" with the letter eng. Read may not have made this association himself, though
similar associations with other letters would seem to support it.

I don't think there's any reason to hang on to this error (no pun intended). My point,
though, is really that we don't have to hang on to anything. If not T.O., then not
Androcles' Shavian. That's not to say that we can't keep this apparent reversal if it
makes more sense, but I have yet to see any good support of it. That goes for all
other revisions, as well, as long as they're reasonable and well-supported.

Regards,
Joe

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, carl easton <shavintel16@y...> wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> I support the original Shavian. Mainly because it still needs to be prolificly
transliterated with as much public-domain books. I also believe one also use
Quickscript and other Shaw revisions for books as well. As for Shavian becoming
another T.O. -- I doubt it will be because of the revisions and besides the Original
Shavian needs to become more established through more literature than Androcles
and the Lion. I believe in democracy of the Shaw writing systems. For me anyways
the original Shavian is the easiest one the learn.
>
> best of regards,
>
> Carl

Hi Steve

Your question in the last post.

Shavian is more or less isomorphic with the IPA. The first argument
you have to win is why should an ESL teacher use Shavian rather than
the IPA?

I would to say that I do like IPA, I learned it in my first
Linguistic course at University. But it has some drawbacks compared
to the Shaw Alphabet. First it is phonetic instead of phonemic, it is
confusing because it uses English Letters, but gives them a non-
English pronunciation in a few cases.
Also, there is no good keyboard mapping, because it uses a lot more
than 48 letters. You'd have to determine a subset of IPA for writing
English.

Shavian doesn't have these problems? I prefer to teach Shavian to any
ESL student, who isn't already very familar with the Roman Alphabet.

Regards, Paul V.


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> > Hi Steve
> >
> > You said in your last response you said that
>
> "In English we take the step because we don't want to be cut off
> from the past. We don't just want to be literate. We want to be
> literate in the traditional code."
>
> > While I agree Shavian as a Secondary or Alternate Alphabet as a
> > first step is better than nothing, I think that the only that
> > prevents the Shaw Alphabet from replacing the Roman Alphabet for
> > English, is the lack awareness of its availability, by the people
> > who need it.
>
> Shavian is more or less isomorphic with the IPA. The first argument
> you have to win is why should an ESL teacher use Shavian rather than
> the IPA?
>

Hi Robert
I never argue with poetry.
First I translate it into plain English and then
I pick holes in it.

As an old time Computer Programmer, I believe in change. In the
patient evolution of a product after a lot of trials and tests. But
the new version has to be given a new name, or perhaps a Revision
Date. (i.e. Shaw 2001)

Unfortunately, our group is basically fairly conservative when it
comes to changing anything.
For most of us, it took a great effort to become conversant in the
Shavian Alphabet, and we are not interested in adding new
indeterminacies.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. I think our group has enough Chiefs, a few too few Indians and
an over-abundance of renegades lurking out there in the Darkness.
We need to encourage more unwary travellers to join our merry band
and not frighten them away with some of our primitive tribal rituals.
Anybody else see Krippendorf's tribe (movie)

P.P.S. High Priests? Scary analogy. Which letter will we sacrifice up
to the G-d of petty consistency today?


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, robert McBroom
<mcbroom1946@y...> wrote:

> Who would argue with someone who can write like that?
> i.e.:
>
> "A radical new way of writing, if there is to be any
> hope of tempting the
> doubtful, disarming the hostile, and overcoming the
> indifference of the uninterested,
cannot just be overwhelmingly beautiful,
> severely practical, and
> mostly logical — it must be...."
>
> So, yes. there should always be room for improvement.
> Otherwise Shavian will become in time just another
> T.O.
>
> As The Man himself wrote: "The plain working truth is
> that it is not only good for people to be shocked
> occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress
> of society that they should be shocked pretty often."
>
> Will Shavian change? The problem is that our group has
> a lot of acolytes, but, alas, no priest.
>
> Not. of course, that I would want one.
>
>
> =====
> Bob McBroom Woodstock NY- /byb /mk/brMm /wUdstak /nV /jDk
"wun simbel iz az gUd Az anuHD prOvFdid evrIwun atacez H sEm mIniN tM
it." - /JPJ /bxnRd /SY

Paul,

Comments below --Steve
Paul wrote:
Shavian is more or less isomorphic with the IPA. The first argument
you have to win is why should an ESL teacher use Shavian rather than
the IPA?

I would to say that I do like IPA, I learned it in my first
Linguistic course at University. But it has some drawbacks compared
to the Shaw Alphabet.

First it is phonetic instead of phonemic,
SB: This has not prevented people from coming up with an IPA based broad
phonemic representation of broadcast English. Sweet, one of the developers of the
IPA, did it back in the 1890's. [See Abercrombie, English Phonetic Texts].


it is confusing because it uses English Letters, but gives them a non-
English pronunciation in a few cases.

SB: I wouldn't call them non-Englishi. The sound-symbol correspondences
are generally Latin based and there are a few words in English that retain
their Latin pronunciation.
English letter pronunciation was Latin based thru the Middle English period.
Then came the great vowel shift that affected most of the long vowels. A is
now more commonly associated with /ae/ and /eI/ than with its original /ä/ .
The /ä/ sound now tends to be taken over by the letter <o> in GA.

Also, there is no good keyboard mapping, because it uses a lot more
than 48 letters. You'd have to determine a subset of IPA for writing
English.
And this has been done. The subset has only 40 symbols in some notations.
Here is one of them. These would have to be remapped in Latin 1. All the
symbols
are available in Unicode.

ä ö/Q æ û b c d ð e E.....
3 3`3r & &r f g h i I j/y
J k l m n ñ ó ô p r



http://www.foolswisdom.com/users/sbett/IPA-SAMPA-Dan.html

Shavian doesn't have these problems? I prefer to teach Shavian to any
ESL student, who isn't already very familar with the Roman Alphabet.

Regards, Paul V.
How many ESL students have you taught Shavian in place of the IPA?

Hi Steve

I would love to have an internally consistent alphabet for English
that meets the main requirement of not being easily with the Roman
Alphabet.
But when I look at your subset of IPA for English, I have some
concerns with the 16 Vowel Letters. The 24 Consonant letters map
pretty much right on to the Shavian Letters and so are great.

First,
there are 3 vowel letter pairs that are indistinguishable for the
majority of American English Speakers.
alms/odd
earth/urth
aware/aware

Next you are missing vowel letters for the 3 common English
Dipthongs, I, OW and OI as in "Hi, Cowboy"

And even though you have 2 ways to write, "er" or "ur",
you don't have the other 4 Rhotic vowel sounds.
"ir", "ar", "or" and "air" as in "Here are more airplanes."

By my count, you are 4 letters short.
Can you increase the size of the IPA subset?

Regards, Paul V.
_____________________attached_______________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Paul,
>
> Comments below --Steve
> Paul wrote:
> Shavian is more or less isomorphic with the IPA. The first
argument
> you have to win is why should an ESL teacher use Shavian rather
than
> the IPA?
>
> I would to say that I do like IPA, I learned it in my first
> Linguistic course at University. But it has some drawbacks
compared
> to the Shaw Alphabet.
>
> First it is phonetic instead of phonemic,
> SB: This has not prevented people from coming up with an IPA based
broad
> phonemic representation of broadcast English. Sweet, one of the
developers of the
> IPA, did it back in the 1890's. [See Abercrombie, English
Phonetic Texts].
>
>
> it is confusing because it uses English Letters, but gives them a
non-
> English pronunciation in a few cases.
>
> SB: I wouldn't call them non-Englishi. The sound-symbol
correspondences
> are generally Latin based and there are a few words in English
that retain
> their Latin pronunciation.
> English letter pronunciation was Latin based thru the Middle
English period.
> Then came the great vowel shift that affected most of the long
vowels. A is
> now more commonly associated with /ae/ and /eI/ than with its
original /? .
> The /? sound now tends to be taken over by the letter <o> in GA.
>
> Also, there is no good keyboard mapping, because it uses a lot
more
> than 48 letters. You'd have to determine a subset of IPA for
writing
> English.
> And this has been done. The subset has only 40 symbols in some
notations.
> Here is one of them. These would have to be remapped in Latin 1.
All the
> symbols
> are available in Unicode.

Paul,

You say that the IPA is four symbols short.
Here is the IPA Shavian correspondence chart
What is missing?


source: http://www.foolswisdom.com/users/sbett/shavian-short.html
http://www.foolswisdom.com/users/sbett/14-unifon-ipa-shavian16.gif

Hi Steve

I would love to have an internally consistent alphabet for English
that meets the main requirement of not being easily [confused?] with the
Roman
Alphabet.

But when I look at your subset of IPA for English, I have some
concerns with the 16 Vowel Letters. The 24 Consonant letters map
pretty much right on to the Shavian Letters and so are great.

First,
there are 3 vowel letter pairs that are indistinguishable for the
majority of American English Speakers.
alms/odd älmz äd in most IPA based dictionary keys
earth/urth 3rth in IPA, ur /^r/ is a common way to write /3r/.
aware/aware &war
merry/marry mEri / mari with meri and meIri being very close.
Next you are missing vowel letters for the 3 common English
Dipthongs, I, OW and OI as in "Hi, Cowboy"
aI, aU, oi as in "hai caUboi" Unifon: hI cqbQ KB Shavian: hF cQbq
And even though you have 2 ways to write, "er" or "ur",
you don't have the other 4 Rhotic vowel sounds.
"ir", "ar", "or" and "air" as in "Here are more airplanes."
i@` a@` ô@` E@` "hi&r är moUr e&pleInz."
By my count, you are 4 letters short.
Can you increase the size of the IPA subset?

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Paul,
>
> You say that the IPA is four symbols short.
> Here is the IPA Shavian correspondence chart
> What is missing?

Hi Steve
In your display, some of the representative letters seem to vary
from the actual IPA symbol. Also
There are a lot of apparently IPA vowels in your display
that are represented by Diagraphs.
Using Diagraphs to represent a Phoneme doesn't
make any sense. You can not read a diagraph and know for sure, how
it is pronounced. It is kludge and it doesn't count as symbol.

for example, there is "ur" and "schwa+r" (an upside down e)
ur is pronounced as in "er" not "oor" as I might of expected.
(i.e. Boer, sure, whore, Coors, bluer, moo-er)
Or for example the word career. Is it pronounced caw-reer or
car-ear. You can not tell with a Diagraph. How about "barrier"
Is it beir-ree-er or be-rear or even bare-rear.

In trying to make the SHaw Alphabet more managable in this way you
are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Regards, Paul V.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Joe" <allegrox_2000@y...> wrote:

> I associate the tall letter "ha-ha" with the Roman letter h and
> "hung" with the letter eng. Read may not have made this
> association himself, though similar associations with other
> letters would seem to support it.


Read's 'ha' and 'hung' letters (as I believe they were meant to be)
appear to me to reflect the closed upward, respectively downward,
loops of the lower-case `h' and `g' in the
curvilinear handstyle once
generally taught before the (re)introduction of the straight-line,
semi-italic style. This method of writing with its sinuous loops, and
all letters joined, would have been familiar to Read and his
generation, and may still be seen today. I would think it
inconceivable that he would have deliberately refuted tradition
in such a way (by reversing them), as this would have only confused
anyone at the time who might have been attracted to his new
alphabet. It certainly would have been a curious thing to do.

regards,
dshep

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Joe" <allegrox_2000@y...> wrote:
>

> I don't think there's any reason to hang on to this error (no pun intended).
> My point, though, is really that we don't have to hang on to anything. If
> not T.O., then not Androcles' Shavian.....
> That goes for all other revisions, as well, as long as they're reasonable and
> well-supported.
>
> Regards,
> Joe


You are so right.

dshep

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink"
<pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:


> For most of us, it took a great effort to become conversant in the
> Shavian Alphabet, and we are not interested in adding new
> indeterminacies.

This is the real reason for opposing any change whatsoever, isn't it?


> Hi Robert
> I never argue with poetry.
> First I translate it into plain English and then
> I pick holes in it.

Pick away.


dshep
(lurker in the dark)