Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
--- "circtf" wrote:
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
> --- "dshepx" wrote:

> > Where do i check "view HTML source"? I don't seem
> > to be able to find any such box anywhere.


> "View HTML Source" is right below the textbox when
> you're using the Rich-Text Editor.


Oddly enough it isn't; below the textbox that is. The only
thing there is the "What language is this text in" box.

confounded,
dshep

On Jan 5, 2006, at 3:42 PM, Philip Newton wrote:

>> 12.with wiT
>
> wiH

Actually, this word can be pronounced either way. I read somewhere that
it's pronounced wiT before voiceless sounds and wiH before voiced ones.
I always used to pronounce the former in all positions, as most
Americans seem to do, so it seemed a bit odd to me. I've grown to like
wiH, but both are probably correct.

>> 27.from frum
>
> Difficult :) I'd write "from", though in actual fact my pronunciation
> is probably closer to "frum".

Androcles has from, but I'd agree with your pronunciation.

>> 58.into intU
>
> intM

Actually, Androcles has intU for that one. I always think of it as
intM, of course, but I usually hear it with the vowel reduced so that
it's usually like the first.

>> 98.after AftD
>
> Meh. For me, this is "yftD", but that's more RP. If Shavian is to be
> based on northern English, then AftD is probably best. Though
> _Androcles_ uses "y" in words such as "after" and "can't".

I could live with either, or both.

> without wiHQt

Or wiTQt for some.

> *en

I don't see why this word shouldn't qualify, or why "de" shouldn't for
that matter. I would pronounce this one en, and "de" usually sounds
like da or di to me. I am surprised, though, that they came up so high
in the list.

> again agen

Or agEn.

> every evrI

Are there many dialects that have evDi for this word?

> *les

I usually hear this as le, though like "en" and "de" above, I don't
hear it often.

> *def

What is this? The only prominent hits on Google show it mostly as an
alternate spelling of "deaf", an abbreviation for "definition" (high
def) and in a few names like Mos Def.

> against agenst

Or agEnst.

> new nV

I don't disagree with this, though I would point out that most
Americans will expect nM.


> between batwIn

Or bitwIn.

Now I guess I should tackle the next hundred words:

both bOT
find fFnd
done dun
name nEm
told tOld
look lUk
having hAviN
heard hxd
seen sIn
let let
going gOiN
better betD
home hOm
moment mOmant
knew nV or nU
side sFd
something sumTiN
course kPs (or kODs)
among amuN
full fUl
enough inuf (or anuf)
woman wUman
father fyHD
soon sMn
words wxdz
gave gEv
end end
Gutenberg gMtanbxg
almost YlmOst
cannot kAnot
small smYl
er* (a vocalized pause with a lot of variation)
door dP (or dOD)
room rMm
water wYtD
want wont or wunt(?)
however hQevD
brought brYt
given givan
word wxd
whose hMz
use Vz / Vz
nor nP
quite kwFt
light lFt
best best
does duz
morning mPniN
till til
myself mFself
since sins
present prezant / prizent
turned txnd
used Vzd (with variations Vst and Vs before "to")
themselves Hemselvz
rather rAHD or ryHD
until until
power pQD
others uHDz
felt felt
thou HQ
money muni
mother muHD
began bigAn
less les
war wP
next nekst
den den
within wiHin (wiTin)
form fPm
large lRJ
poor pUD
certain sxtan
death deT
year jC
y*
together tageHD
matter mAtD
kind kFnd
stood stUd
order PdD
often The AHD gives Yfan, ofan, Yftan, often
sent sent
half hAf, hyf
herself hDself
friend frend
wife wFf
anything eniTiN
keep kIp
true trM
means mInz
hundred hundrid
round rQnd
point pqnt
state stEt
thy HF
received risIvd
white wFt
believe bilIv
passed pAst

That makes 300. We should start collecting these somewhere.

Regards,
Joseph Spicer
𐑡𐑴𐑕𐑩𐑓 𐑕𐑐𐑲𐑕𐑼

Hi Philip
Thanks for checking the first 100 words. I will respond
and incorporate your spellings in my next
post. Here is my re-iterization of the second 100 words.
You can see where we differred by the ? marks.
Regards, Paul V.
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Philip Newton > > Here are the
next 100 most common English words.
101. down dQn
102. good gUd
103. men men
104. own On
105. most mOst
106. never nevD
107. where wX
108. old Old
109. day dE
110. work wxk
111. those HOz
112. come kum
113. shall ? Sel / SAl
114. himself himself
115. came kEm
116. way wE
117. without wiHQt
118. life lFf
119. make mEk
120. go gO
121. long ? lYN lyN loN
122. being bIiN
123. well wel
124. through TrM
125. might mFt
126. say sE
127. am Am
128. *en
129. too ? t / tM
130. many menI
131. even Ivin / Ivan
132. again agen
133. back bAk
134. here hC
135. people pIpal
136. think TiNk
137. every evrI
138. same sEm
139. under undD
140. last ? lyst / lAst
141. went went
142. thought ? Tyt / TYt
143. *les
144. found fQnd
145. take tEk
146. still stil
147. hand hAnd
148. place plEs
149. also YlsO
150. while wFl
151. just Just
152. *def
153. against ? agenst / agEnst
154. die dF
155. though HO
156. young juN
157. years jCz
158. get get
159. ever evD
160. things TiNz
161. give giv
162. part pRt
163. nothing nuTiN
154. face fEs
165. off ? of / yf {as in yftD}
166. right rFt
167. left left
168. once wuns
169. another anuHD
170. god ? god / gyd
171. world ? wxld / wDald
172. house hQs
173. saw sY
174. three TrI
175. new nV
176. always YlwEz
177. took tUk
178. put pUt
179. head hed
180. love luv
181. each Ic
182. *mrs ? misiz / misaz {a list of common abbrev. are found at
bottom}
183. night nFt
184. between batwIn
185. son sun
186. few fV
187. because ? bikoz / bikuz / bakuz
188. mind mFnd
189. tell tel
190. whom hMm
191. thing TiN
192. heart hRt
193. far fR
194. lord lPd
195. seemed sImd
196. set set
197. whole hOl
198. days dEz
199. got got
200. country kuntrI

Common Abbreviations
1. Dr. (Doctor) dyktD doktD
2. Mr. (Mister) mistD
3. Mz. (Miz) miz
4. Mrs.(Mistress) misis misaz
5. Sr. (Senior) sInjD
6. Jr. (Junior) JMnjD

Regards, Paul V.
P.S. Should Abbreviations be in the main list of common words
or the original English word itself. It is funny that there is no
way to spell Mrs. out in full. Misses :)

On 1/6/06, wurdbendur@... <wurdbendur@...> wrote:
> On Jan 5, 2006, at 3:42 PM, Philip Newton wrote:
>
> > new nV
>
> I don't disagree with this, though I would point out that most
> Americans will expect nM.

*nods*

> > between batwIn
>
> Or bitwIn.

Ah - the shwi thing again.

> want wont or wunt(?)

Always "wont" for me, I think.

> use Vz / Vz

One of those is probably meant to be "Vs" (the noun, as opposed to the verb).

> present prezant / prizent

(or "prazent" for the second)

> money muni

I'd spell that "munI".

It may come down to the "y-at-the-end-of-the-word" thing; I'm not sure
what phoneme it actually represents, but by sound it "feels" like
long-ee ("I" in Shavian). For example, "sitI, penI, munI, evrI,
luvlI".

> poor pUD

or "pP" for many (not including me, I think).

> together tageHD

"tUgeHD" or even "tMgeHD" for me.

> often The AHD gives Yfan, ofan, Yftan, often

I'd prefer the varieties with "o" if we're going to use that phoneme
for British-style "short o". (My variety is "ofan", FWIW.)

> herself hDself

I'm tempted to write it "hxself" even if the first syllable is not the
stressed one.

> passed pAst

or pyst.
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

On 1/6/06, paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink11@...> wrote:
> 121. long ? lYN lyN loN

"y" definitely feels wrong to me.

I think that if we're looking for a standard spelling, we should use
British-style "short-o" in this and similar words, in which case "o"
is the appropriate Shavian letter to my mind.

People representing their own particular speech may use other symbols.
For example, those with cot/caught merging might use always o, always
Y, or both at once (perhaps depending on traditional spelling or the
time of the day); y feels wrong to me, though.

> 129. too ? t / tM

I thought the abbreviation "t" was only for the word "to", not for
"two" or "too".

> 140. last ? lyst / lAst

*nods* "lyst" for me; not sure whether it should be "lyst" or "lAst"
in Standard Shavian. (Androcles uses "y" in similar words, but I'm not
sure whether that really represents Northern English.)

> 142. thought ? Tyt / TYt

TYt only, IMO.

> 153. against ? agenst / agEnst

Joe already noted this - apparently a pronunciation preference
difference between various speakers; similarly with "again".

> 165. off ? of / yf {as in yftD}

I don't think it's the same phoneme as in "after"... I could see "Yf"
for some people, but "yf" seems wrong to me.

> 170. god ? god / gyd

short-o, IMO.

> 1. Dr. (Doctor) dyktD doktD

short-o

> 4. Mrs.(Mistress) misis misaz

"misiz", surely?
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...m>

When the topic first came up recently, of getting a standardized
spelling for the 1000 most common English words in Shavian, it sounded
like a very sensible and useful idea to me. But now I am not so sure.

First of all, trying to standardize only the first 1000 words,implies
that the remaining words, which are generally multisyllabic, would be
impossible to standardize phonetically. There are just too many ways
to pronounce those words among different individuals and different
countries. some people would use schwas; some would use the clearer
vowel sounds, etc.

But it did seem like we should be able to come together on the
pronunciation of the simple one and/or two syllable words of the first
1000. But I am amazed at the differences in spelling proposed for
just the one syllable words! Consequently, now I'm not sure it's
possible to achieve even this limited goal. For each word, I found
the way I would say (and write) the word, generally the standard
American way of speaking, but I could still make out the words using
the other spellings.

And maybe it's not so important anyway. I have always been able to
read all the postings on this group in Shavian. If people write with
care and make an effort to use the characters which represent the
sounds that they hear, I don't think we will have a problem. I for
one, am one of those people who can't tell hear the difference between
cot and caught. But whichever way that sound might be heard or spelled
by another, I think I could figure out the word easily enough.

If the time ever comes when Shavian does become much more widely used,
then that may be the time to start standardizing, not really before.
Then maybe we could morph our group into something like the French
academy which determines everything relating to the French language.
But I don't think we are quite there yet.

Just my two cents worth,

Dana Durkee

On Jan 6, 2006, at 10:15 PM, Dana C Durkee wrote:

> First of all, trying to standardize only the first 1000 words,implies
> that the remaining words, which are generally multisyllabic, would be
> impossible to standardize phonetically. There are just too many ways
> to pronounce those words among different individuals and different
> countries. some people would use schwas; some would use the clearer
> vowel sounds, etc.

I think it may be the other way around, actually. The most common words
seem to be the ones that vary the most while less common ones seem not
to change so much. But if we're going start standardizing, we might as
well start with the most useful words.

> But it did seem like we should be able to come together on the
> pronunciation of the simple one and/or two syllable words of the first
> 1000. But I am amazed at the differences in spelling proposed for
> just the one syllable words! Consequently, now I'm not sure it's
> possible to achieve even this limited goal. For each word, I found
> the way I would say (and write) the word, generally the standard
> American way of speaking, but I could still make out the words using
> the other spellings.

I had my doubts as well, but I wouldn't suggest that we necessarily
restrict the list to one spelling per word. Rather, we should try to
find the core spellings that suit the most dialects, and the writer can
choose the most comfortable one. Most of us are used to seeing two or
three dialectal or alternative spellings for a few words, and we get by
fine with that. So, I think that's about where we should aim for
Shavian. If we can restrict the spelling to no more than one for each
major dialect group, we'll probably be able to understand each other
better without sacrificing too much. I hope so, anyway.

> And maybe it's not so important anyway. I have always been able to
> read all the postings on this group in Shavian. If people write with
> care and make an effort to use the characters which represent the
> sounds that they hear, I don't think we will have a problem. I for
> one, am one of those people who can't tell hear the difference between
> cot and caught. But whichever way that sound might be heard or spelled
> by another, I think I could figure out the word easily enough.

You have a good point. I've rarely had any difficulty understanding
anybody's accent here or in the Ikonboard. But in the event that any of
us should, say, publish written works in Shavian (something I'm
determined to do someday), we should have guidelines to follow for more
widely acceptable spelling.

> If the time ever comes when Shavian does become much more widely used,
> then that may be the time to start standardizing, not really before.
> Then maybe we could morph our group into something like the French
> academy which determines everything relating to the French language.
> But I don't think we are quite there yet.

I guess we're kind of like that now, but much smaller. :)
It's true that we don't really need the standards right now, but it
can't hurt to have them. And it'll be something to build on later if,
as you say, that time ever comes.

Regards,
Joseph Spicer
𐑡𐑴𐑕𐑩𐑓 𐑕𐑐𐑲𐑕𐑼

Most common words - a word of warning.

Such lists are compiled from a corpus and may give unexpected results.

'Swedish' common words include 'the' - the corpus included all press
matter printed in Sweden over a set period.

In a mixed ENG-US/ENG-UK corpus words like 'centre' 'labor' (good
tests for spell-checkers, thesauri) would register wrongly.

A corpus of spoken English might be expected to include expletives,
contractions, interjections, particles, hesitations, noises - which
would get filtered out.

A literary corpus includes proper names - with Androcles making the
running for Shavian.
(I'd like some guidelines about the use of the namer dot -
conflicting examples in Androcles)

We already have our most useful list of four words comprising a sixth
of our printed output.

I ran 'Pride and Prejudice' through an indexer to get the word
frequency count. IIRC there were about 1,500 different words to
transcribe, perhaps a few hundred more if I had filtered out the most
common (closed-category grammatical) words. I can do the same for
any easily available classic in text format, but the last time I
looked GBS was only sparsely covered.
jb

Hi Dana & Joseph
The object of the previous exercize was not to standardize the
Shavian spelling of first 1000 of the most commonly used English
word.
It was just to familarize New Readers with some of the most common
spellings of some of the most common words. That's why Philip and I
provided some of the common British variant spellings. If you can
recognise the most common words, you can save you analytical
abilities for the multisyllabic tongue twisters the literate English
speakers love to use. I will continue with the next 100 words, when I
get chance.
Rather than start from scratch, let's just see what people are using.
Regards, Paul V.
P.S. also me need to factor in a list of the top 100 common English
Abbreviations.
_____________________attached_________________________________



--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, wurdbendur@g... wrote:
> First of all, trying to standardize only the first 1000
words,implies
> that the remaining words, which are generally multisyllabic, would
be mpossible to standardize phonetically. There are just too many
ways to pronounce those words among different individuals and
different countries. some people would use schwas; some would use
the clearer
> > vowel sounds, etc.
> Most of us are used to seeing two or
> three dialectal or alternative spellings for a few words, and we
get by
> fine with that. So, I think that's about where we should aim for
> Shavian. If we can restrict the spelling to no more than one for
each
> major dialect group, we'll probably be able to understand each
other
> better without sacrificing too much. I hope so, anyway.

> But I don't think we are quite there yet.
> I guess we're kind of like that now, but much smaller. :)
> It's true that we don't really need the standards right now, but it
> can't hurt to have them. And it'll be something to build on later
> if, as you say, that time ever comes.

Hi Joe
I am going to continue with the list of common English words,
more as a teaching tool for New Learners, who don't have access to a
copy of Androcles and the Lion.
We are putting down multiple spellings where-ever there are
variations in pronunciation, and hopefully each New Learner can find
a spelling that matches up with his pronunciation.
I notice 3 problems or areas of spelling that create a lot of the
variations for most people.
1. When to use the "Ado" or Schwa instead of a more distinct vowel.
2. When to use "Ah" (Broad A) and when to use the British "On" sound.
3. When to use the shorter unstressed "er" sound "Array", or the
longer more stressed "ur" sound "Err/Urge".
I think rather than randomly choosing between these similar sounds,
a New Learner should figure out which one predominates in his own
speech and go with it.
So for me, with my decidedly softer General American Accent, it is
very rare for me to use either the British "on" "James Bond" sound or
longer "ur" sound, so I restrict the use of those Shaw Letters to a
few exceptional words. The "Urge" letter I only use when the "er/ur"
sound starts or is in the middle of the syllable and is followed with
a strong consonant. (i.e. merge, urge, burn, fern, turn, learn, Turk,
curt)
or in a few exceptions at the end of the word(i.e. con-cur, stir,
fur, blur)
I would use "er" in most cases. (i.e. jour-ney, far-mer,bu-tter, tur-
ner, her-der, girl, twirl, mirr-or)
I am not looking for a standard for everyone, but more an internal
consistency in my own Shavian spelling. I think that is what we
should all strive for.
Regards, Paul V.
_______________attached___________________________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, wurdbendur@g... wrote:
> On Jan 6, 2006, at 10:15 PM, Dana C Durkee wrote:
I had my doubts as well, but I wouldn't suggest that we necessarily
> restrict the list to one spelling per word. Rather, we should try
to find those core spellings that suit the most dialects, and the
writer can
> choose the most comfortable one. Most of us are used to seeing two
or three dialectal or alternative spellings for a few words, and we
get by fine with that. So, I think that's about where we should aim
for
> Shavian. If we can restrict the spelling to no more than one for
each
> major dialect group, we'll probably be able to understand each
other better without sacrificing too much. I hope so, anyway.