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Hi Star
I don't want to be too derogatory to English. It has a lot of redundant
letters. "c", "k", "q" and "x" (Alec/Alex) can all represent the same
sound.
Likewise, "c" and "s". Likewise "j" and "g". Likewise "y" and "i".

But all this variation allows English to distinguish different words
with similar pronunciation in the writing/spelling.
It makes it an efficient code to write down ideas.
But it is just plain ridiculously difficult to learn.
What good is an efficient system that nobody knows how to use properly.
Over time it gets more and more screwed up.
Regards, Paul V.
__________________________________attached___________________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Star Raven
<celestraof12worlds@y...> wrote:
You forgot to mention a major failing of two of the
> others, that they use the Roman Alphabet. Like learning Hiragana to
> read Japanese or Cyrillic to read Russian, it is, in my opinion, a
good idea to learn Shavian to read English.
Mostly, as we have pointed out
> in the past, because English is mainly a Gallic language, with it's
> bases in German (Anglo Saxon) and Norman French (a mix of Norse and
> Gallic), with only a brush of Latin, greek, and maybe a couple of
> others, but not so much left that we should write in only the Roman
> alphabet (a greek word).
>
>
> I think my comp may be having trouble with the fonts, but that may be
> because I don't recall downloading them in the year since I've had my
> computer.

paul vandenbrink wrote:

>I don't want to be too derogatory to English. It has a lot of redundant
>letters. "c", "k", "q" and "x" (Alec/Alex) can all represent the same
>sound.
>Likewise, "c" and "s". Likewise "j" and "g". Likewise "y" and "i".
>
>
My understanding is that the most fundamental concept of an alphabet is
that it consists of a series of symbols, each with a one-to-one
correspondence to a phoneme of the language being represented. Although
the analogy is not totally apt, having more than one symbol for the same
phoneme makes about as much sense as having more than one symbol for a
number. For historical reasons, we have arabic and roman numbers. We
don't mix them together, e.g. 56MMV9, since the result is gibberish. It
makes no sense to use an alphabet with more than one symbol per phoneme.

The comment that it is advantageous, or somehow efficient, to
distinguish words of similar pronunciations, but different meanings,
with different spellings seems wrong to me. Despite the prevalence of
the written word in today's world, I would hazard that most people still
hear more language in a day than they read. Context lets us distinguish
between words sounding alike or almost alike. If a word is so similar
to another that communication is hampered, my suspicion is that another
word would be coined that won't promote confusion. I doubt that "to",
"too" and "two" developed because they could be understood visually
despite their aural unity. I find it nonsensical to claim that this is
in some way an "efficient code."

>But all this variation allows English to distinguish different words
>with similar pronunciation in the writing/spelling.
>It makes it an efficient code to write down ideas.
>But it is just plain ridiculously difficult to learn.
>What good is an efficient system that nobody knows how to use properly.
>Over time it gets more and more screwed up.
>Regards, Paul V.
>__________________________________attached___________________________
>
>--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Star Raven
><celestraof12worlds@y...> wrote:
> You forgot to mention a major failing of two of the
>
>
>>others, that they use the Roman Alphabet. Like learning Hiragana to
>>read Japanese or Cyrillic to read Russian, it is, in my opinion, a
>>
>>
>good idea to learn Shavian to read English.
> Mostly, as we have pointed out
>
>
>>in the past, because English is mainly a Gallic language, with it's
>>bases in German (Anglo Saxon) and Norman French (a mix of Norse and
>>Gallic), with only a brush of Latin, greek, and maybe a couple of
>>others, but not so much left that we should write in only the Roman
>>alphabet (a greek word).
>>
>>
>>I think my comp may be having trouble with the fonts, but that may be
>>because I don't recall downloading them in the year since I've had my
>>computer.
>>
>>

THE CONCEPT OF AN ALPHABET
was...Comparing Shavian to UNIFON, ENgliS and Pitman's Phone...

Paul and PG,

Stange as it may seem, there are many scholars who dispute this view.
Some even dispute that highly phonemic orthographies acceleate literacy.

-Steve

My understanding is that the most fundamental concept of an alphabet is
that it consists of a series of symbols, each with a one-to-one
correspondence to a phoneme of the language being represented. Although
the analogy is not totally apt, having more than one symbol for the same
phoneme makes about as much sense as having more than one symbol for a
number. For historical reasons, we have arabic and roman numbers. We
don't mix them together, e.g. 56MMV9, since the result is gibberish. It
makes no sense to use an alphabet with more than one symbol per phoneme.

The comment that it is advantageous, or somehow efficient, to
distinguish words of similar pronunciations, but different meanings,
with different spellings seems wrong to me.
If you can live with homophones in speech, you can live with them in the
writing system.
On the other hand, once you have heterographic homophones, it is hard to
break the habit.
The SSS House Stile, for instance, respells mail as male.
I find this annoying to have to give up well established word signs or
logograms.

The apologists for English spelling will argue that some dialects do not
pronounce mail and male the same. They are not true homophones.
--Steve

Despite the prevalence of
the written word in today's world, I would hazard that most people still
hear more language in a day than they read. Context lets us distinguish
between words sounding alike or almost alike. If a word is so similar
to another that communication is hampered, my suspicion is that another
word would be coined that won't promote confusion. I doubt that "to",
"too" and "two" developed because they could be understood visually
despite their aural unity. I find it nonsensical to claim that this is
in some way an "efficient code."

>But all this variation allows English to distinguish different words
>with similar pronunciation in the writing/spelling.
>It makes it an efficient code to write down ideas.
>But it is just plain ridiculously difficult to learn.
>What good is an efficient system that nobody knows how to use properly.
>Over time it gets more and more screwed up.
>Regards, Paul V.

stbetta@... wrote:

> THE CONCEPT OF AN ALPHABET
> was...Comparing Shavian to UNIFON, ENgliS and Pitman's Phone...
>
> Paul and PG,
>
> Stange as it may seem, there are many scholars who dispute this view.
> Some even dispute that highly phonemic orthographies acceleate literacy.
>
> -Steve
>
> My understanding is that the most fundamental concept of an
> alphabet is
> that it consists of a series of symbols, each with a one-to-one
> correspondence to a phoneme of the language being represented.
> Although
> the analogy is not totally apt, having more than one symbol for
> the same
> phoneme makes about as much sense as having more than one symbol
> for a
> number. For historical reasons, we have arabic and roman
> numbers. We
> don't mix them together, e.g. 56MMV9, since the result is
> gibberish. It
> makes no sense to use an alphabet with more than one symbol per
> phoneme.
>
> The comment that it is advantageous, or somehow efficient, to
> distinguish words of similar pronunciations, but different meanings,
> with different spellings seems wrong to me.
>
> If you can live with homophones in speech, you can live with them in
> the writing system.
> On the other hand, once you have heterographic homophones, it is hard
> to break the habit.
> The SSS House Stile, for instance, respells mail as male.
> I find this annoying to have to give up well established word signs or
> logograms.

Steve:

I understand your last point and agree with you on that. On the other
hand, when we are talking about the adoption of an alternative alphabet
such as Shavian or QS, since they start fresh without well established
word signs, then I presume you would feel no such annoyance at spelling
homophones the same as you would not then be giving anything up.

Paige

Hi Paige
I merely presented my own inference, that given the success of the
Roman Alphabet in writing English, we can not write it off as being
totally inadequate.
Given the huge number of words available in Literary English (Over a
Million) it makes sense that there will be a lot of phonemic overlap
(homonyms) and so the use of redundant letters to differentiate
words will obviously leads to more efficient processing.
Also obviously, this does not in anyway impinge the obvious benefits
in using Shavian to write down simple reported speech.

Now, Spoken speech usually involves a vocabulary of only 10,000 to
20,000 words and people avoid using confusing homonyms. (They would
use "Also" instead of "too", for example.)
Along with all the other benefits, Shavian uses less letters to
represent a word, and in that sense is a much more efficient code.

I was talking about 2 different kinds of English. It should be
obvious to you, now, which one I consider the most important.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. Mixing Shavian and Roman Spellings is possible at the word
level, because the letter symbols are so different.
I agree; It would be crazy to intermix Shavian and Roman Letters in
the same word.
______________________________attached________________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Paige Gabhart <pgabhart@s...>
wrote:
>
> stbetta@a... wrote:
> > Strange as it may seem, there are many scholars who dispute this
view. Some even dispute that highly phonemic orthographies
accelerate the development of literacy.
> >
> > -Steve
> >
> > My understanding is that the most fundamental concept of an
> > alphabet is
> > that it consists of a series of symbols, each with a one-to-
one
> > correspondence to a phoneme of the language being
represented.
> > Although
> > the analogy is not totally apt, having more than one symbol
for
> > the same
> > phoneme makes about as much sense as having more than one
symbol
> > for a
> > number. For historical reasons, we have arabic and roman
> > numbers. We
> > don't mix them together, e.g. 56MMV9, since the result is
> > gibberish. It
> > makes no sense to use an alphabet with more than one symbol
per
> > phoneme.

Paige wrote: -----------------------------------------------

Steve, I understand your last point (see below) and agree with you on that.
On the other
hand, when we are talking about the adoption of an alternative alphabet
such as Shavian or QS, since they start fresh without well established
word signs, then I presume you would feel no such annoyance at spelling
homophones the same as you would not then be giving anything up.

SB: --------------------------------------------

Paige,

Correct. There is no annoyance in a Shaw alphabet spelling.


The advantage of Shavian and its new alphabet is that there
is no connection with familiar old alphabet word signs.

We probably need to make more of this feature. It was certainly
important to Shaw and Twain.

--Steve

------------------------------------------------------
> The comment that it is advantageous, or somehow efficient, to
> distinguish words of similar pronunciations, but different meanings,
> with different spellings seems wrong to me.

> SB: If you can live with homophones in speech, you can live with them in
> the writing system.
> On the other hand, once you have heterographic homophones, it is hard
> to break the habit.
> The SSS House Stile, for instance, respells mail as male.
> I find this annoying to have to give up well established word signs or
> logograms.

Paige wrote: -----------------------------------------------

Steve, I understand your last point and agree with you on that. On the
other
hand, when we are talking about the adoption of an alternative alphabet
such as Shavian or QS, since they start fresh without well established
word signs, then I presume you would feel no such annoyance at spelling
homophones the same as you would not then be giving anything up.

SB: --------------------------------------------

Paige,


The advantage of Shavian and its new alphabet is that there
is no connection with familiar old alphabet word signs.

We probably need to make more of this feature. It was certainly
important to Shaw and Twain.

--Steve

Paige Gabhart wrote:

>word would be coined that won't promote confusion. I doubt that "to",
>"too" and "two" developed because they could be understood visually
>despite their aural unity. I find it nonsensical to claim that this is
>in some way an "efficient code."
>
to, too and two, or course, were once pronounced differently. When
their pronunciation merged, the spelling didn't, so we have a mess!

They used to be pronounced, roughly: toh (but short), toh (long), and
twoh, like its cousin, twain.

There's still a difference between to and too, two: to is normally
unaccented. That's one good use for the use of the abbreviation for
"to", the letter 𐑑 (tot). If I'm writing "to" I use a 𐑑 (tot), while
if I'm writing "too" or "two" I spell it out, 𐑑𐑵 (tot-ooze).

By the way, anybody who can't see the Shavian letters in my messages and
signature, I highly recommend downloading a Unicode Shavian font.
Here's two (𐑑𐑵):
Andagii http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/unicode-font.html
ESL Gothic Unicode http://shavian.ravenscall.net/fonts/

If you're using Windows, and still can't see them after installing the
fonts and rebooting (Windows LOVES to be rebooted!), check out this page
for assistance:
http://www.i18nguy.com/surrogates.html

--
Ethan Lamoreaux - in Shavian, ·𐑰𐑔𐑩𐑯 ·𐑤𐑨𐑥𐑩𐑮𐑴

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

stbetta@... wrote:

> THE CONCEPT OF AN ALPHABET
> was...Comparing Shavian to UNIFON, ENgliS and Pitman's Phone...
>
> Paul and PG,
>
> Stange as it may seem, there are many scholars who dispute this view.
> Some even dispute that highly phonemic orthographies acceleate literacy.
>
> -Steve

Well, it's true, ideographic/logographic writing systems can be very
accurate, as they can have a separate symbol for each word. But that
doesn't mean they are easy to learn! Try learning a few thousand Han
characters, for instance.

𐑢𐑧𐑤, 𐑦𐑑𐑕 𐑑𐑮𐑵, 𐑲𐑛𐑾𐑜𐑮𐑨𐑓𐑦𐑒/𐑤𐑪𐑜𐑩𐑜𐑮𐑨𐑓𐑦𐑒
𐑮𐑲𐑑𐑦𐑙 𐑕𐑦𐑕𐑑𐑩𐑥𐑟 𐑒𐑨𐑯 𐑚𐑰 𐑝𐑺𐑰 𐑨𐑒𐑿𐑮𐑩𐑑, 𐑨𐑟 𐑞𐑱
𐑒𐑨𐑯 𐑣𐑨𐑝 𐑩 𐑕𐑧𐑐𐑼𐑩𐑑 𐑕𐑦𐑥𐑚𐑤 𐑓𐑹 𐑰𐑗 𐑢𐑻𐑛. 𐑚𐑳𐑑 𐑞𐑨𐑑
𐑛𐑳𐑟𐑯𐑑 𐑥𐑰𐑯 𐑞𐑱 𐑸 𐑰𐑟𐑰 𐑑 𐑤𐑻𐑯! 𐑑𐑮𐑲 𐑤𐑻𐑯𐑦𐑙 𐑩 𐑓𐑿
𐑔𐑬𐑟𐑩𐑯𐑛 ·𐑣𐑨𐑯 𐑒𐑨𐑮𐑩𐑒𐑑𐑼𐑟, 𐑓𐑹 𐑦𐑯𐑕𐑑𐑩𐑯𐑕.

--
Ethan Lamoreaux - in Shavian, ·𐑰𐑔𐑩𐑯 ·𐑤𐑨𐑥𐑩𐑮𐑴

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:
The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

Ethan,

Written English has more phonological cues than Chinese. This probably
makes it a little easier to learn. However, it does take a much longer time to
acquire 4000 meaning signs than it does to acquire 40 or so sound-signs.

I know of no living spelling scholar that supports much in the way of
spelling reform. They agree that skill in spelling is difficult to learn but not a
major problem. They don't think that adopting a more phonemic alphabet
would improve reading levels or correct the current problem where 50% of the
students read below grade level.

I think they are dead wrong but that is their position and they are not
swayed by any of the existing arguments or research.

They say that the i/t/a experiments did not accelerate literacy...and they
are correct with respect to traditional literacy. The i/t/a was taught using
a method designed to acquire word-signs.

--Steve

> THE CONCEPT OF AN ALPHABET

> Stange as it may seem, there are many scholars who dispute this view.
> Some even dispute that highly phonemic orthographies acceleate literacy.
>
> -Steve

Well, it's true, ideographic/logographic writing systems can be very
accurate, as they can have a separate symbol for each word. But that
doesn't mean they are easy to learn! Try learning a few thousand Han
characters, for instance.

Steve:

Does your reference to living scholars and their view of the utility of
spelling reform refer to Engish? I assume that it does. If so, what is
the situation regarding the percentage of students reading below grade
level in Italian, German or Spanish? If the situation in one or more of
those languages is significantly better from the situation in English,
isn't that a sign there is a structural problem with English? Perhaps,
the scholars think English students (around the world) are just dumber
than their European counterparts?

One other thought: 50% being below grade level sounds like a bell curve
where, by definition, half the students fall below average. If grade
level refers to something other than a bell curve, then when and how was
it set? Does that mean at some point in the past "grade levels" were
established in some abitrary fashion and now students don't read as well
as they did in the past?

Paige

stbetta@... wrote:

> Ethan,
>
> Written English has more phonological cues than Chinese. This
> probably makes it a little easier to learn. However, it does take a
> much longer time to acquire 4000 meaning signs than it does to acquire
> 40 or so sound-signs.
>
> I know of no living spelling scholar that supports much in the way of
> spelling reform. They agree that skill in spelling is difficult to
> learn but not a major problem. They don't think that adopting a more
> phonemic alphabet would improve reading levels or correct the current
> problem where 50% of the students read below grade level.
>
> I think they are dead wrong but that is their position and they are
> not swayed by any of the existing arguments or research.
>
> They say that the i/t/a experiments did not accelerate literacy...and
> they are correct with respect to traditional literacy. The i/t/a was
> taught using a method designed to acquire word-signs.
>
> --Steve
>
> > THE CONCEPT OF AN ALPHABET
>
> > Stange as it may seem, there are many scholars who dispute this
> view.
> > Some even dispute that highly phonemic orthographies acceleate
> literacy.
> >
> > -Steve
>
> Well, it's true, ideographic/logographic writing systems can be very
> accurate, as they can have a separate symbol for each word. But that
> doesn't mean they are easy to learn! Try learning a few thousand Han
> characters, for instance.
>
>
>
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