Sorry for the previous repeat. My computer increasingly
has a mind of its own, and an ornery one at that.
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink"
<pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
>
> The problem with changing the Shaw letters is that for
> almost 50 years people have used the Shaw Alphabet
> quite adequately.
Yes, but not by very many people. I should think that the
greatest potential ally in an attempt to propogate the
Shaw alphabet would be the numerous English teachers in
secondary and high schools around the world, who —
while probably unable to justify including such an idealistic
alternative as part of their curriculum — might find at least
an occasional opportunity to mention the Shaw alphabet's
existence, perhaps with a brief demonstration. There might
just be one or two students (maybe, just maybe) per school
who find this interesting enough to follow up and learn more,
and one or two students times the number of schools would
amount to a substantial base in an internet-connected world
that might — just might, some day reach critical mass, to use
an expression from another field.
For the English teachers of the world to be sufficiently
interested in offering this brief presentation of the Shaw
alphabet they would have to be convinced themselves that
it was a worthwhile effort. Let us recall, they can be a pretty
picky bunch — always insisting we not split infinitives or
commit other, similar crimes against humanity. They would
certainly notice and count as a minus the sole example of an
unvoiced/voiced reversal, a clear contradiction in an otherwise
logically constructed system and consider it a minus, in fact a
glaring error, detracting from the beauty and yes, consistency
of the whole. These are people who notice small things and
consider them important, as the glue that holds everything
together as it were, even if the rest of us do not — and they
are usually right, though we may have thought them unduly
critical and carping when our school essays were returned with
an abundance of red marks.
The reason for having, or wanting or insisting upon consistency
is that it facilitates instruction and thus eases the burden of
comprehension, if this is not something English teachers are
keenly aware of and have to cope with every day, I don't know
what would be. Anything that makes simple sense must, just
must be easier to teach and learn, and they would not be happy
at having students gleefully pointing out a contradiction. For
this reason I appeal for its correction; the Shaw alphabet will be
easier to teach if it is as logical and consistent as it can be. As
an issue this will not go away even if I were to (as some
might wish), because it stands out as a repudiation of the basic
organizational scheme of the Shaw alphabet, and a whole string
of future readers (which all should hope for) will notice it, call
attention to it, ask about it, and question why ... ad infinitum.
If the Shaw alphabet remains but a plaything for a few then my
remarks are merely overblown hyperbole — you may think them
that in any event. But, I submit again, to more painlessly attract
a wider audience and provide sceptics no purchase, this alphabet
ought to be readily defensible, without contradiction, and as
foolproof as possible. Put the simple blunders right and be done
with it. After all, there are ample subjects to debate as it is: how
best to bridge the Atlantic gap (if indeed it should be), should
there be national versions (what about Strine?), should there be,
at least a literary, standard, what if anything to do about dialects,
what exactly was meant by Northern English anyway, etc., etc.
On the theory that any writer wishes to be published, even if in
an obscure alphabet, a new generation of enthusiasts might be
enticed (if their teachers were to point them in this direction) to
submit short pieces of original observation, written in Shawscript
as best they could devise, for general perusal. This might be a
more promising approach than the translation (transposition?
transformation?) of existing books, which in all likelihood will
still remain easier to read in the original. If this were to happen
then usage would sort itself out.
There is another consideration, for what it's worth. David
Crystal, who has written or edited many books on language,
wrote recently that if English ever becomes the world language
as opposed to being merely the most-used second language in
the world, there is the possibility that these new speakers will
eventually take the language down new paths, in part to
acommodate their previous speech and grammatical patterns,
so that the same fate could happen to English as happened to
Latin in Europe. The prevalence of modern communications
would alleviate this, perhaps even prevent it. But then again
perhaps these new speakers would prefer to follow their own
way, because they could. At some point during this century the
number of English-speakers in India is expected to surpass that
of Britain and North America combined, and eventually they
might choose to no longer defer to the precedence established
by 'native' speakers.
Part of the reason we maintain our present spellings is that they
do connect us to our past. With a little effort etymology can be a
rewarding subject; others, in other parts of the world, will have no
such interest. In time, faced with their own educational problems,
they will have little patience in perpetuating our follies. Who
better
then than the various peoples of the Indian peninsula, accustomed
as they are to a variety of speech forms and, especially, scripts of
all types, to devise a more rational system of English spelling —
unless one already existed, was widely known, and admired for its
usefulness and attractiveness.
dshep