Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

Hi Steve
I have two points to make concerning my previous responses.
Even tho, ITA serves as a transitional teaching alphabet, that
does not exclude it from being used as an actual working alphabet,
with all that that entails, including individual letters for each
Phoneme that it represents. Not Diagraphs.
Simplification of the printed letters to make them easier to write
would be useful, but I am more concerned that the Alphabet can be
typed.
A written script would have different critera.

Secondly, while any addition to the Alphabet to complete the
necessary Phonemes is a change of sorts. (i.e. adding a period for
the Schwa sound)
I really didn't consider that you would expect that such a Minor
addition would requires a new name for the Alphabet.
Obviously, I wouldn't have such qualms.

Regards, Paul V.

_____________attached___________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Paul,
>
> My comments are inserted below:
>
> PV: I really don't understand the idea of a transitional alphabet.
> It is like you are trying to have your cake and eat it too.
> I.T.A. needs a digital font that maps each character to a single
key.
>
> Otherwise, there is no comparison to the Shavian Alphabet.
>
> SB: The i/t/a represents most phonemes. The schwa is an exception
to the
> rule.
> You seem to be disturbed by the shape of the letters. Some look
like
> ligatured digraphs.
>
> A transitional alphabet is a regularized writing system designed to
teach the
> traditional one.
> See the bicodal approach for the rationale of starting first with
an easy
> code.
> www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/bicodal.htm
>
> PV: By the way, you are incorrect.
> I do not like the EE diagraph and I do dislike the other diagraphs.
> I dislike all Diagraphs. However the Diagraphs for Aep and Eel,
have
> developed into quite respectable looking letters. If you look, you
> will see what I mean.
>
> SB: I was trying to paraphrase your remarks. Evidently what you
really
> wanted to say was that you dislike the letterforms for EE and AE
less than the
> other digraphic unigraphs.
>
> The i/t/a digraphs are not true digraphs any more than æ is a
digraph.
> They are just complicated letterforms. They represent what would
be on the
> keycaps if there was an i/t/a typewriter. Complicated letterforms
are not
> optimized for handwriting.
>
> PV: As for the Schwa sound, if you didn't want to represent it with
the
> defunct x letter, why not just indicate a Schwa with an period.
>
> SB: I don't feel that I have the right to make changes in someone
else's
> scheme without calling the result something else. Here are some
>> But the Examples on your site were quite clear, and ITA definately
was the best
> of the 3 alphabets that you displayed.
>
> SB: I am surprised that you like the i/t/a better than the IPA.

ASSIGNING i/t/a SYMBOLS TO THE KEYBOARD

Paul,

You bring up an important consideration in the digital type era. The i/t/a
has the same problem as Shavian. To type it, the letters have to be assigned
to the keys on the keyboard. This means that the ae digraph might have to be
assigned to A, ee to E, ie to I, and so on.

I would probably use Unifon or something close to it for keyboard i/t/a.

Please elaborate on your preference of the i/t/a over the IPA.

--Steve
Hi Steve
I have two points to make concerning my previous responses.
Even tho, ITA serves as a transitional teaching alphabet, that
does not exclude it from being used as an actual working alphabet,
with all that that entails, including individual letters for each
Phoneme that it represents. Not Diagraphs.

Simplification of the printed letters to make them easier to write
would be useful, but I am more concerned that the Alphabet can be
typed. A written script would have different critera.

Secondly, while any addition to the Alphabet to complete the
necessary Phonemes is a change of sorts. (i.e. adding a period for
the Schwa sound)

I really didn't consider that you would expect that such a Minor
addition would requires a new name for the Alphabet.
Obviously, I wouldn't have such qualms.
Of course, I have qualms about your calling your revised Shavian revised
Shavian.
Once you make signficant changes in an orthography, it should not be called
by the same name. Adding a new unique sound-sign for a phoneme.
> PV: I really don't understand the idea of a transitional alphabet.
> It is like you are trying to have your cake and eat it too.
> I.T.A. needs a digital font that maps each character to a single key.

> Otherwise, there is no comparison to the Shavian Alphabet.

> SB: The i/t/a represents most phonemes. The schwa is an exception
to the rule. You seem to be disturbed by the shape of the letters. Some look
like ligatured digraphs.

> A transitional alphabet is a regularized writing system designed to teach
the traditional one. See the bicodal approach for the rationale of starting
first with an easy code. www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/bicodal.htm
the Examples on your site were quite clear, and ITA definately
was the best of the 3 alphabets that you displayed.

> SB: I am surprised that you like the i/t/a better than the IPA.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:

> I too think that any highly phonemic alphabet should have a
> unique symbol for schwa.
> but I think I understand why Pitman did not want one.

I suspect inasmuch as he had distinguished simple vowels from
the tense ones and diphthongs that he thought he could safely
rely upon everyone to understand that any simple vowel could
become in unstressed positions even simpler: to wit, comma,
label, pupil, censor, focus. Of course, the same argument could
apply to Shavian and I've often found it tricky to decide which
form is needed in any particular situation. A lot depends not only
upon word stress but sentence stress as well.

regards,
dshep
 

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink" > wrote:
>
> Hi Hugh & dshep
>
> I think these sugggestions for change are getting out of
> hand.

I still regard it as correction.

> I would only be interested in changes, that simplify the
> writing of English in the Shaw Alphabet.

I could not agree more.

> Dshep, what you are talking about, descenders, would spoil
> the look of a whole group of Shaw Letters.

Why would it do that? Spoil? — come on. You're just shocked.
Descenders are nothing but vertical lines. You would think I had
added an ornamental flourish. Defined consonants would give
form to some of the more serpentine words that can occur when
short vowels, nasals, and approximants come together in an
indistinct mass..

> Also the Nasal and Liquid Letters quite properly make
> up a distinct category of sounds that quite rightly and
> logically for that matter belong in the Short Category.

Quite rightly? Logically? Whatever could you mean? Are
nasals consonants? Is the lateral? Are initial and medial 'r's?
Well?

Is it really legitimate to appeal to logic in some places but refuse
its validity in others? See below

Only final 'r' is special because it represents a variable sound,
sometimes a consonant, sometimes not, depending upon the
speaker, and that was the whole point of that particular letter-
form, to serve as a flexible compromise acceptable to both rhotic
and non-rhotic speakers alike, each believing it to sound as it it
should in their particular speech-form.

> The Short Category includes all the Vowel sounds, but also
> those Consonant sounds, which can act without a Vowel.
> Yew, Loll, Nun, Mem, Array and other Liquid Letters, can
> stand on their own as Syllabic Consonants.

Yes, but not always, or even mostly. Usually they require a vowel
to convey meaning, as in simple words such as all, in, am, on, ill,
etc, and even in the case of syllabic consonants a weakened vowel
may sometimes or often be heard, again, depending upon speaker.
The beauty of having a schwa is that it is always ready to do service
in the most menial of tasks, such as tagging syllabic consonants.
And the 'yew' is unfortunately a tall letter.

Why not visually distinguish between consonants and vowels?
Supply a good reason why one shouldn't when the opportunity
is present.

> Hung, although a Nasal, is not used that way in English,
> except maybe in some African place names.It probably
> could be used as a Syllabic Consonant.

It once was a word of some importance. The Runic alphabet had
a letter for 'ing'. All the Runic letters were also words, and 'ing'
apparently was a word of some mystery, and may have meant an
ur-God or primal divinity, older than Woden, Thor and that lot,
or perhaps some undefinable or primeval life-force, or even the
first man — stories vary. The church put an end to that early on,
and the meaning was lost. Some etymologists point it out as the
root of the word Angle, as in Anglo-Saxon, the region of Angeln
in Jutland, whence the Angles came, and hence England, where
they found a new home. The Romans recorded a people living
thereabouts called the Ingveones, who may have been the Angles.
Ing may also have been a real person, some great tribal chieftain
lost in the mists of prehistory. One tale has it that warriors steeled
themselves for battle by rhythmically chanting "ing-ing-ing,
ing-ing-ing", using repetitive resonants for a diametrically
opposite purpose than do Buddhist monks with their unending
"aummmmmmmmmmm..." The given names Ingrid, Ingemar,
and the like are still popular in Scandinavia.

> I realize that you find it annoying, that there is this
> fly in the ointment,

I'm not annoyed, I'm amused at the arguments persistently used
to deny the undeniable and defend the indefensible — something
along the lines of, well, that's the way it was so it must be right.
Dr Pangloss would be pleased. Once more, though you may choose
to continue to ignore it or prefer pretense, no amount of diversion
can alter the fundamental and obvious fact that the sound represented
by the letter 'h' is unvoiced, that by 'ng' is unvoiced, and there is
no good reason why they should be displayed incorrectly. Is there?
Why be deliberately wrong? Makes no sense.

> in an otherwise perfect system, which can't be easily
> corrected.

But it can be, very easily. Simply exchange the keywords for
ha/hung and err/air. What could be simpler?

> But Hey, a lot of people have made that observation. And
> az I have pointed out, this pair of letters Hung and Ha-Ha
> don't represent related sounds, like all the other Letter
> Pairs. They are both left-overs that just got thrown
> together,

But thrown together incorrectly, topsy-turvy as it were, without
rhyme or reason.

Why should mistakes be condoned?

Why? Pourqoi? Warum? Hvorfor?

> and as such the Voiced/Unvoiced relationship doesn't make
> sense anyway.

Amazing that you should think so, and choose in this instance to
dismiss logic (see above). The structural clarity, beauty even, of
the Shaw alphabet is this separation and differentiation of sounds
into readily identifiable groups: simple vowels, tense vowels, voiced
consonants, unvoiced consonants — all the better for initial
instruction. Children today must learn the alphabet as a complete
abstraction, as there is no connection between sound and sign, and
do so because we give them no choice. Adults that haven't learned
to read at an age when one didn't wonder why about such things
find it excrutiatingly and embarrasingly difficult. Here is an alpha-
bet that makes that connection, with structure, with an orderly
arrangement that makes sense, but an order and arrangement which
you apparently discount as of no value. Surely you don't believe the
Shaw alphabet was put together in a fashion similar to that used to
concoct a secret code, with random assignment of shape to sound
to keep one's diary private, and that such niceties as a consequent
system and application of reason that could enjoy wide appeal do
not really matter? Surely not!


regards,
dshep

dshep,

SB: If you are transcribing continuous speech you have to worry about
sentence stress.
If you are transcribing segmented overpronounced words, you don't.

A phonemic transcription needs only to represent relative stress in
multi-syllable words.
Relative word stress can be ignored.

The only consistently unstressed words are the function words, particularly
<a> and <the>
Word-signs can be used for many function words and Shavian does this:
the = H, to = t, of = v, a = a, or = or

--Steve
> SB: I too think that any highly phonemic alphabet should have a
> unique symbol for schwa.
> but I think I understand why Pitman did not want one.

DS: I suspect inasmuch as he had distinguished simple vowels from
the tense ones and diphthongs that he thought he could safely
rely upon everyone to understand that any simple vowel could
become in unstressed positions even simpler: to wit, comma,
label, pupil, censor, focus. Of course, the same argument could
apply to Shavian and I've often found it tricky to decide which
form is needed in any particular situation. A lot depends not only
upon word stress but sentence stress as well.
SB: Remember Pitman is more concerned about easy transition to tradspel than
he is about having an accurate picture or description of normal speech.

Dshep and Hugh,

It is usually very difficult to upgrade an orthography.
The more it is published and the greater its popularity, the more attrified
it becomes.

If you upgrade Shavian, I think you have to call it something else.

PMF is an attempt to upgrade Shavian by
1. Adding more features to facilitate learning - e.g., pictographic mnemonics
2. Restablishing historical links - i.e., using more historical letter forms

Since no one uses PMF and nothing has been published in this writing system,
it is very open to suggestions for changes. I would appreciate comments,
critiques, and suggestions.

www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/pictography.htm

PMF does not distinguish between consonants and vowels any better than
Shavian.
vowels tend to be short but this is not an absolute. Some consonants e.g.,
the syllabics are also short.




Unifon is still being toyed with. This is possible because there is no
significant
Unifon literature. Instead of pushing transcribed readers, Unifon promoters
wanted
children to create their own literature in a writing to read program. It
worked much
better than the i/t/a which was tied to a transcribed basal reader.

Data Control Unifon is the newest version of the Unifont. It can be
downloaded free of
charge at www.fieger.com and www.dafont.com





If you can view this graphic, my name is written in PMF.

Why not visually distinguish between consonants and vowels?
Supply a good reason why one shouldn't when the opportunity
is present.

> Hung, although a Nasal, is not used that way in English,
> except maybe in some African place names.It probably
> could be used as a Syllabic Consonant.

It once was a word of some importance. The Runic alphabet had
a letter for 'ing'. All the Runic letters were also words, and 'ing'
apparently was a word of some mystery, and may have meant an
ur-God or primal divinity, older than Woden, Thor and that lot,
or perhaps some undefinable or primeval life-force, or even the
first man — stories vary. The church put an end to that early on,
and the meaning was lost. Some etymologists point it out as the
root of the word Angle, as in Anglo-Saxon, the region of Angeln
in Jutland, whence the Angles came, and hence England, where
they found a new home. The Romans recorded a people living
thereabouts called the Ingveones, who may have been the Angles.
Ing may also have been a real person, some great tribal chieftain
lost in the mists of prehistory. One tale has it that warriors steeled
themselves for battle by rhythmically chanting "ing-ing-ing,
ing-ing-ing", using repetitive resonants for a diametrically
opposite purpose than do Buddhist monks with their unending
"aummmmmmmmmmm..." The given names Ingrid, Ingemar,
and the like are still popular in Scandinavia.

> I realize that you find it annoying, that there is this
> fly in the ointment,

I'm not annoyed, I'm amused at the arguments persistently used
to deny the undeniable and defend the indefensible — something
along the lines of, well, that's the way it was so it must be right.
Dr Pangloss would be pleased. Once more, though you may choose
to continue to ignore it or prefer pretense, no amount of diversion
can alter the fundamental and obvious fact that the sound represented
by the letter 'h' is unvoiced, that by 'ng' is unvoiced, and there is
no good reason why they should be displayed incorrectly. Is there?
Why be deliberately wrong? Makes no sense.

> in an otherwise perfect system, which can't be easily
> corrected.

But it can be, very easily. Simply exchange the keywords for
ha/hung and err/air. What could be simpler?

..................................................
..................................................


And now for something completely different.


One of the original members of this group and
therefore someone due a little respect, complained
recently, and rightly so, that we spend all our time
arguing about rather than in the Shaw alphabet.
So, in order to partly atone for my sins as one of
the worst offenders, I intend to offer in the days to
follow, in ShawScript, some excerpts from a source
popular in some circles, namely the Tao Te Ching.
For those of you unfamilar with this work, it is a
compilation of homilies intended to encourage
good behaviour, but couched in a manner sometimes
vague, sometimes mysterious, and it is this mystery,
this — to use what I imagine to be a Zen term —
almost becoming, that has helped maintain an interest
in this collection of sayings for two-and-a-half
millennia. The reference to Zen was deliberate because
as I (probably incorrectly) understand it, Zen is a
continuation if in modified form of Taoism.

I am not especially attracted to the mysterious myself,
but am intrigued by the difficulties involved in conveying
what is considered by many (millions apparently) a source
of wisdom from one cultural sphere to another, and from
one language to another, in this instance from languages
so different as Chinese and English — and ancient Chinese
at that. My local bookshop has a half-dozen versions
available,and the differences between them are often
startling. According to the preface in one of them, the Tao
Te Ching is the most widely translated book in English after
the Bible, but as one of them admitted, it is more a question
of interpretation rather than translation. It is not really a
a full-sized book either, a booklet really, containing 81 short
(but obscure) verses, and often as many pages and more
in explanation and discussion.

The difficulty begins straight away with the title and opening
verse. Ching means 'book' as in I Ching, the book of changes,
familiar to those attracted to that particular field of interest
and its fascinating prophetic hexagrams. Tao (apparently
pronounced Dao), however, means something like the 'way'
or 'path', and sometimes 'name', or 'worthwhile thing', and
these variants are put to use in a variety of ways to add
dimension to the work, often in the form of wordplay and
double meaning, even simple puns. Its presumed author
is someone known as Lao T'zu, who may or may not have
been a real person (and who may or may not have been a
contemporary of Confucious). It is also a title which also
means old man, sage, or esteemed scholar — perhaps after
the fact. All this is second-hand knowledge, acquired by
browsing, and as I believe another one of the older members
of this group is conversant in Chinese, I hope he will correct
my misconceptions.

In contrast to the seriousness of Confucianism, the other Chinese
source of right conduct, Taoism prefers a more light-hearted, and
what appears to the novice as ambivalent, approach to the world.
Confucianists incidentally, again from one the prefaces, have always
regarded Taoism as deliberately unclear foolishness, but in response
the Taoists only laugh. The interesting thing however is that the
two together, in combination and competition, as Yin and Yang as
it were, have satisfactorily supplied practically all the spiritual
needs of this most populous nation, and religion of any sort has
only had a marginal effect upon Chinese civilization.

To everyone's general dismay, sorry, and at the risk of having the
sky fall in, the method of transcription I intend to use, and of
course you needn't bother to read any of them if this offends
your sense of propriety, is that which I have been pleading for:
namely the reversal of \h\ and \ng\ as well as \err\ and \air\.
Actually I don't intend to use the latter two at all, not for any
reason of principle but because they are I think out of scale with
the other letters and difficult to discern at the smaller font sizes,
composed as they are of tiny little squiggles while most of the
other letters are clear strokes (I would like to avoid the 'ah' and
'awe' letters as well, as they are no better, but here I have no
choice while using the existing fonts). This omission also allows
me to use æ+r for air which is the way I pronounce that word
and others like it anyway (but e+r for words like 'where').
I also add oh+r, which I distinguish from o+r (= aw+r), as in
the contrast four/for. In America this distinction is maintained
by the American Heritage dictionaries and the larger editions
of Webster's, but abandoned in Albion, and in the American
versions of British dictionaries (Oxford, Longman', Chalmers
etc). I excuse this blatant hubris on the grounds that both
Shaw himself and the designated model his alphabet was to
have been patterned after, HRH George V (and George VI as
well), also maintained this range of diversity, though I do so
without the latter's dignified gravity and the former's delight-
ful lilt. Professor J. C. Wells of Cambridge, responsible for the
SAMPA pages, and pronunciation editor for either the Chalmers'
or Longman's dictionaries, can't remember which, refers to this
choice of vowel spread as old-fashioned. So be it.

In addition I shall not use abbreviations, as they are, to my mind,
a simplification that does not simplify, only adding to abstraction.
I think of all this as mere correction, but this notion so offends the
world-view of some that I shall be forced to call it a revision, and
as the enumeration v.2.0 has already been appropriated I believe to
designate a vowel-diminished version for use in the American Mid-
west, I shall, in an attempt at whimsy, call mine ReadShaw Mk.III,
a vanity that recalls happy days spent assembling model Spitfires.

So, not only will the method of transcription be a challenge, but so
will the message, once deciphered. Something to ponder. You may
come to discover your level of tolerance for the cryptic. So will I.
And if they serve no other purpose, you may use them as templates
for your own versions, all at no extra charge



Excerpts to follow later.
dshep

DSCHP: (I would like to avoid the 'ah' and
'awe' letters as well, as they are no better, but here I have no
choice while using the existing fonts).

This omission also allows
me to use æ+r for air which is the way I pronounce that word
and others like it anyway (but e+r for words like 'where').
Is this the marry-merry distinction? arr=air /ær/, err= for /Er/ where error
/Er@`/

DSCHP: I also add oh+r, which I distinguish from o+r (= aw+r), as in
the contrast four/for. In America this distinction is maintained
by the American Heritage dictionaries and the larger editions
of Webster's, but abandoned in Albion, and in the American
versions of British dictionaries (Oxford, Longman', Chalmers
etc). I excuse this blatant hubris on the grounds that both
Shaw himself and the designated model his alphabet was to
have been patterned after, HRH George V (and George VI as
well), also maintained this range of diversity, though I do so
without the latter's dignified gravity and the former's delightful lilt.

SB: Shaw believed that the King's English was the dialect to be represented by
the writing system. In other countries, it was common to use the dialect
of court as the model for speech and the writing system. For some reason,
this never happened in England - the writing system was never adjusted to
represent the way English was spoken by the king.

One can say that between 1200 and 1500, English was not the dominant language
of court. However, by the time the Royal Society was formed, 1611, there was
a King's English and a court dialect that could have been selected.
Professor J. C. Wells of Cambridge, responsible for the
SAMPA pages, and pronunciation editor for either the Chalmers'
or Longman's dictionaries, can't remember which, refers to this
choice of vowel spread as old-fashioned. So be it.
J.C. Wells is the former chairman of the Linguistics department at University
College, London. He is the author of some of the Longman Dictionaries and
Pronunciation Guides.

Like his predecessors at the UCL, Daniel Jones and Gimson, who were former
chairs of the Linguistics department, Wells is also the President of the
Simplified Spelling Society.

Past Presidents of the Spelling Society include the Editor of the Oxford
English Dictionary and Sir James Pitman. They all believed that English should be
written as it is spoken and that moving to a more phonemic representation of
the dominant dialect would reduce the burden on children, accelerate literacy,
and increase the reading and writing abilities of the masses.

Hi folks,

I just barely posted a new article in the Ikon board at www.shavian.org. It is entitled how to use all the compound Shavian letters. I would like to hear your responds to it.

thanks,

best of regards,

Carl


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. Learn more.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "dshepx" wrote:
>
> ..................................................
> ..................................................
>
>
> Professor J. C. Wells of Cambridge, responsible for the
> SAMPA pages, and pronunciation editor for either the
> Chalmers' or Longman's dictionaries, can't remember
> which, refers to this choice of vowel spread as old-
> fashioned. So be it.


Correction:

Chambers, not Chalmers. Once published by Edinburgh
University (with whom it may still be affiliated) to rival
the Oxford dictionaries. Perhaps a guide to Northern
English?

Professor J. C. Wells is with University College London
not Cambridge, but is the author (at least one of them)
of SAMPA (the Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic
Alphabet), a project designed to reproduce all the sounds
found in modern European languages, a EU sort of thing,
using ordinary typewriter keys — not pretty, but supposedly
precise.

dshep