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Hi DShep
I will try to elucidate my questions more clearly.
As the letter "h" following some other letter can indicate more
than one alternate pronunciation (i.e. linch, Bach, Loch),
I was merely trying to acertain which of a number of possibilities
you meant. Bah of Bah, Humbug
Bah of Baa Baa Black Sheep
etc.

Roman style diagraphs is simply using 2 letters when 1 is adequate
(i.e the addition of letter h to indicate an alternate prounciation) .
Also for example using multiple letters to represent a Dipthong or
Tripthong
for which there is already an assigned Shavian letter.
Regards, Paul V.

P.S. Ar, me hearties, we need to speak louder to be heard.

__________________attached____________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, dshep <dshep@...> wrote:
>
>
> reply to message 1604 from paul vandenbrink, who wrote:
>
>
> > In reference to your first question about meaning, I wanted
to
> > know how you pronounced "baa" You used it as reference
> > word, but how could I guess exactly how you pronounced it?
> > Baa, I need plain common examples.
>
> I did not write 'baa'; I wrote 'bah', to rhyme with 'AH, LA,
etceterAH'.
>
> > However, when we are writing our English phonemically, we
> > have to go with what we hear. All other suggestions would
only
> > be temporary in any case given the evolution/ devolution in
the
> > pronunciation of English. I don't speak like George
Washington
> > anymore and it would be foolhardy to speak according to some
> > old style, that is unfamilar to the majority of English
speakers,
> > just because some groups have preconceived (out-of-date)
> > notions of the proper pronunciation for me.
>
> I don't think that was what I was advocating.
>
> > P.P.P.S. The combination of the "u" sound with the r-sound
produces
> > something very close to the ar (AD) sound in Argh, not "err"
>
> How can it do that? u + r = urge/err/purr/spurt/dirt/word, not argh.

Alas, too many Bonanza episodes.
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "dshepx" <dshep@...> wrote:
> Right. Horse can also be pronounced, jocularly, as 'haws', spelled
> 'hoss' in some parts of the west.

Hi Philip
Thank goodness the Cot-Caught (Don-Dawn) merger has not yet become
the standard for General American English.
Regards, Paul V.
P.S. I would pronounce the sentence.
Don Knotts is long gone. /dyn /nyts iz lYN gyn.
The vowel sounds are very similar but the vowel in "Long"
is clearly longer than the vowel in gone.
_____________attached_________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Philip Newton"
<philip.newton@...> wrote:
>
> However, that doesn't mean that the words "knot" and "nautical" are
> related; it's merely a coincidence that they have the same vowel sound
> for people with the cot-caught merger *and* that they (can) occur in
> the same context.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
>

On 3/28/06, paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink11@...> wrote:
> P.S. I would pronounce the sentence.
> Don Knotts is long gone. /dyn /nyts iz lYN gyn.

And I as "/don /nots iz loN gon".

> The vowel sounds are very similar but the vowel in "Long"
> is clearly longer than the vowel in gone.

This is the lot-cloth split, I think -- where I have the same (short,
open/low) "on" sound in both sets of words, people with the split have
a longer and higher vowel in the CLOTH group (which includes "long").
See also section 3.3 in Wells's essay and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_the_low_back_vowels#Lot-cloth_split
. And yet another possible reason to decrease the number of symbols in
the orthography, since it's yet another split that not everyone has.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>

Philip Newton skribis:
>
> . And yet another possible reason to decrease the
> number of symbols in the orthography, since it's yet
> another split that not everyone has.


If we keep decreasing the number of symbols, perhaps
we can get the alphabet down to 26 characters. :-)

--Ph. D.

Ph.D. skribis:
> If we keep decreasing the number of symbols, perhaps
> we can get the alphabet down to 26 characters. :-)

Bt f crs! Fr strtrs, w cn gt rd f ll th vwls... yngstrs ths dys sndng txt
msgs gt b jst fn wtht thm!

Chrs,

Phlp

Knot to be flippant, but I was making a joke when I put "knot" and
"nautical" together, as I'm sure everyone understood.

Out of curiosity, if people expected English spelling to be a relatively
accurate graphic representation of speech rather than a semi-ideogram, does
anyone believe that would inhibit such changes as the "cot" "caught" merger,
or are dialects already too ingrained by the time a person learns to read?

Paige

----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip Newton" <philip.newton@...>
To: <shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 1:00 AM
Subject: Re: [shawalphabet] Re: Phonological history of English vowels


> On 3/27/06, paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink11@...> wrote:
> > Hi Philip
> > As I child I was told in the old days sailors measured their speed by
> > stringing out a line knotted at various precise intervals. By Counting
> > out how many of those Knots that the ship went by in some small time
> > interval, they could make an estimate of their speed
> > Nautical Miles per Hour)
> > and then calculate how many Nautical Miles they had travelled.
> > I assume that was more or the way it was done in the old days?
>
> That's what I had heard, too.
>
> However, that doesn't mean that the words "knot" and "nautical" are
> related; it's merely a coincidence that they have the same vowel sound
> for people with the cot-caught merger *and* that they (can) occur in
> the same context.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

On 3/28/06, pgabhart@... <pgabhart@...> wrote:
> Out of curiosity, if people expected English spelling to be a relatively
> accurate graphic representation of speech rather than a semi-ideogram, does
> anyone believe that would inhibit such changes as the "cot" "caught" merger,
> or are dialects already too ingrained by the time a person learns to read?

Well, you can see how many instances there are of "spelling
pronunciations" (such as "fore-head" instead of "forrid" for
"forehead"); there are some words, but not very many.

I'd say that in general, pronunciation is not often based on spelling
(except for unfamiliar or rare words), and that there's often a stigma
attached to spelling pronunciations in those cases.

And anyway, I think you've hit on something with the "dialects
[including accent/pronunciation] being too ingrained by the time a
person learns to read".

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

Hi Phil
I am assuming you are Joking.
I don't see how you could have a decent English Alphabet with less
than 40 letters. If I had my way, I would throw in a letter for the
voiceless "w" (wh), although I don't use it myself and a syllabic "l"
for words such as girl, all, file, table and Old.

Thanks again for pointing out that article on the Lot - Cloth split.
It fits me to a tee.
I was beginning to think my handling of the Lower Back and Mid vowels
was so idiosyncratic (Outlandish) that we were talking about two
different things. But now at least, I have a name for it.
I have the almost standard American Father-Bother merger but not the
Cot-Caught merger and I have split Lot-Cloth and moved the Cloth
words in with Caught.

I hear the broad A of British Received Pronunciation (father) as the
same, single vowel sound of Bother.
And since I speak Rhotic English, I don't have to worry about the
Cart-Caught merger, and so I probably lengthen the Awe (Caught) sound,
over what an RP English Speaker would use.

Regards, Paul V.
____________________attached________________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Ph.D." <phil@...> wrote:
And yet another possible reason to decrease the
> > number of symbols in the orthography, since it's yet
> > another split that not everyone has.

> If we keep decreasing the number of symbols, perhaps
> we can get the alphabet down to 26 characters. :-)

Hi Philip
You are hitting to close to home, Philip.
I set up a spelling system called the Revised Shaw Abjad
(Abjad = Consonant based alphabet) a while back
where I minimized the use of vowels and put more emphasis
on syllable boundaries.
I thought the vowel sounds of the 5 Roman Vowel letters and
all the Vowel Diagraphs were so screwed up, that the average
literate Englishman isn't making use of that information
anyway and so it could be discarded as extraneous.
I created a working system, but it is too much of stretch for most
people.
I retain the vowel letter, only when the vowel sound begins or ends a
syllable, or is the syllable itself. And of course, I retained all
the R-sound letters. I lump the R-sound letters in with the Consonant
letters. So I would write your message something like this in Shavian
Mapping.
b-t uv kPs! fP stRtDz, wI c-n g-t r-d uv Yl Hu vQalz... y-Nstxz H--z
d=z R s-nd-N t-kst m-seJ.z g-t bF j-st f=n w-TQt H-m!

* Schwa = ., Short = -, Long = --, Dipthong = =
It doesn't save space, but it does simplify the writing of Vowel
letters.

Regards, Paul V.
__________________________________attached_________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Newton, Philip"
<Philip.Newton@...> wrote:
>
> Ph.D. skribis:
> > If we keep decreasing the number of symbols, perhaps
> > we can get the alphabet down to 26 characters. :-)
>
> Bt f crs! Fr strtrs, w cn gt rd f ll th vwls... yngstrs ths dys
sndng txt
> msgs gt b jst fn wtht thm!
>
> Chrs,
>
> Phlp
>