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Hi Joseph
Thanks
You must be psychic or have been thinking along the same lines.
You really clarified and brought out my point that the abbreviations
are not haphazard in Shavian, according to need, but represent a
simple standard reduction of a single Vowel letter, for common
prepositions, conjunctions and other Grammar function words.
This almost the opposite of Abbrev.'s in Roman where it is usually
Nouns and Names that are Abbreviated.
Thanks again Paul V.
P.S. four (for,4) and two (to, too, 2) have a lot in common,
and I have no problem assigning "Foe" as an abbreviation for "for"
as it is totally in line with the other abbreviations, if you
consider "or" to be a single vowel sound.
____________________attached_____________________
Re: [shawalphabet] Re: Trans. The Mystic Tower - Part 3
paul vandenbrink wrote:
I was willing to go along and use the "Foe" letter for "for", for 2
reasons.
(It is consistent with the 4 other abbreviations and the name Foe is
close to sounding like "for", anyway.)

Joseph added:
I'll also add that it was used in the Shaw Script newsletter, which
is at least precedent from Kingsley Read himself. With the four word-
signs in Androcles, H v n t, Read established three kinds of
reductions (where C=consonant and V=vowel):

CV -> C
Ha -> H
tM -> t
VCC -> C for n
And -> n
VC -> C
ov -> v

The second was obviously chosen because "and" is often reduced in
speech to a syllabic n. Otherwise it's not very productive, but the
idea could be applied to other words. It could also be called the
same as the last, if you allow a C to stand for a cluster. If we
follow the other two, we could have a lot more word-signs available
to us:

CV -> C
do, go, see, who, we, for, etc.
d, g, s, h, w, f ...

VC->
up, am, is, us, etc.
p, m, z, s ...

Of course, we couldn't use all possible abbreviations because of
conflicts, like with see vs. us, who vs. he. And given the brevity of
these abbreviations and the functional load of the words they
represent, I think they may be a bit cryptic in practice. A few like
this are mentioned in the Notes on the Spelling at the back of the
book, and they do include for, be, with, he, are (which is still
redundant), so, and do.

But a second set of abbreviations was also given with the more useful
form CVC -> CC (again C can be a cluster):
that, was, but, from, had, has, been, were
Ht, wz, bt, fm, hd, hz, bn, wr (but given that wx is already only
two letters, I don't see the point of an abbreviation)
I'll also add that these should only be used in cases where the
medial vowel is indistinct or pronounced with some variation. Note
that "with" could be put in this group, except that the final
consonant also varies between H and T in different dialects
(Androcles uses H, while my dialect has T). This is probably the
reason that it was given as w with the other list.
It seems these are the only kind of extended abbreviations that are
mentioned specifically in Androcles, and no limit is implied for for
either. But all would be nonstandard, or at least informal.

but I don't feel that using Dubya to replace "with" meets that
criteria. We can't afford to weaken the "Shavian" Alphabet, by adding
inconsistencies.
No matter how great the need, we can not corrupt the existing system
into Chaos.
I would rather add a new symbol to represent "with" and "without".
Maybe the plus sign with a circle around it. And Without could be
represented with a circle with a minus sign in it.
The Roman Alphabet added Ampersand for And and @ for "at" or "per".

The idea of our word-signs is to give some suggestion of the
pronunciation without being too specific, thus allowing some
variation in pronunciation without having the written words tied too
closely to any one dialect. I don't think making up a symbol would
accomplish that, though it might get the meaning across. Unicode
already has codepoints for mathematical operators that look like
this, so I guess typing them wouldn't be too hard: ¨', ⊖. Use them if
you like, but I think I'll just write out the words.

P.S. four (for,4) and two (to, too, 2) have a lot in common,
and I have no problem creating Foe as an abbreviation for "for"
as it is totally in line with the othe abbreviations, if you
consider "or" to be a single vowel sound.

Lesson 2 – Strong Sharp Consonants

This lesson will teach you about four more Shavian letters. The four
consonant sounds that they represent are markedly less common than
the sounds we discussed in the first lesson.
In fact it is impossible to find a single sample word that uses all
four of these sounds.
So we will make up a new imaginary word. And also provide an
extravagant definition of that word.
The word is Twee-zhur-zeeth judge.

So what is a twee-zhur-zeeth judge and what is a tweezhur-zee?.
(Tweezhur sounds in-between a tweezer or seizure, and zeeth rhymes
with teethe or breathe)
The tweezhur-zee is a specific kind of habitual minor criminal.
The tweezhur-zee is usually a juvenile delinquent, almost always
male, who has aged to the point where he is expected by society to
leave home and become a responsible adult. He usually resists
leaving. A sizable percentage become eccentrics later in life and
ultimately get into trouble and end up being institutionalized for
one reason or another.
Tweezhur-zeeth is the attitudes, attributes or actions of a tweezhur-
zee.
But just because you act twee-zhur-zeeth (aggressively immature), it
doesn't mean that you are a
twee-zhur-zee.
A twee-zhur-zeeth judge is a parole officer or family court judge who
has to decide whether to give someone acting twee-zhur-zeeth another
chance to go straight.
After all just because you act devilish, it doesn't necessarily mean
that you are a devil.
Generally, they encourage a potential twee-zhur-zee to go into the
army, or seek anger management training.

twIZDzIH JuJ (twee-zhur-zeeth judge)

You will learn these four Shaw letters, and you will see how these
Consonants can be used with the some simple vowel markers to produce
some common English words. Normally, English written in the Shaw
Alphabet can get by quite nicely with Consonant Letters and just a
few of the Shaw Vowel letters.

So first, we look at the Strong Sharp Consonant Letters, Zoo, Genre,
They, Judge pronounced as Zee, Jee, Thee and Jee respectively. The
first Jee is pronounced like the common French girl's name Gigi and
the second Jee sounds like the "G" in the common expression Gee Whiz.

Zoo (i.e. zipper)

z zipD

Genre (i.e. measure)

Z meZD
These two letters (Genre and Zoo) are both found in the
word, "Treasure". treZD


The remaining two letters in this group are:

They (i.e. paths)

H pAHz

Judge (i.e. junk)

J JuNk

Here is the first Sample sentence. It uses most of the Strong Sharp
Consonants.
"All's well, that ends well."

Ylz wel, Hat endz wel


All of these Shaw letters can all be found in one or another of the
words in the following sample sentence,
"The Judge disagreed, so the guards measured all the zebras again."

H JuJ disagrId, sO H gRdz meZxd Yl H zIbrAz agEn.

Here is another sample sentence that uses the Strong
Sharp Consonants.
"John zigzagged back and forth over the sands, until he
found the jewels and the rest of the treasure."

JYn zigzAgd bAk n fPT OvD H sAndz, until hI fQnd H jValz n H
rest v H treZD.

The Roman letter "z" is very rare in written English, because even
when the "z" sound is pronounced at the end of words such
as "as", "was", "ones" and "dogs", it is inappropriately written as
an "s" in the Roman Alphabet.
When writing with the Shavian Alphabet, you must always spell the
word the way that it sounds.
Note for example, that the "Judge" sound is occasionally written with
a "g" or "dg" letter or letter diagraph in Roman letters.

For example, the "s" at the end of the words, "Zebras" and "as".

Specifically you spell it with a Zoo, in the Shaw alphabet. You
will find that Zoo is a relatively common letter in English, when
words are spelled phonetically. They and Judge are also pretty common
English sounds. The letter. "They", is also used as an abbreviation
for the Definite Article, "The" .
It is also used as the first letter of many common English pronouns,
(i.e. that, those, these, this, there, though, they, etc.)
The final Strong Sharp Consonant, Genre is rarely used except in
French Loanwords.

In order to write correctly with the Shavian alphabet, you must
always pay close attention to the actual sounds of the words. The
Shavian Alphabet is completely and consistently phonetic.


Learning Hints

You will see a lot of new letters in the Samples above. You are not
expected to recognize their pronunciation at this point. You simply
try to find the 8 letters we learned in the last two lesson.
You also should try and figure out which letters represent Consonant
sounds (Large either Tall or Deep), which letters represent Vowels
(Smaller and Short) and which represent Liquid sounds (Roundish).
We will go into more details on this in the following lessons.


Just to make the Samples a little clearer, we will also talk about a
new vowel letter, Awe
which is used at the beginning in both of the samples.

Y (Awe)

Ylz (alls)

/JYn (John)

Awe is not clearly represented in the Roman Alphabet. It is a Long
Vowel, in fact a longer more distinct soft "o" sound.
The most common way it is represented in the Roman Alphabet, is with
the "au" or "aw" Diagraph, in words such as Law, Saw, Jaw, Caw,
Caught, taught, dauntless, taunt and dawg. but it is also can be
represented an "o" or an "ou" Diagraph in words such as, long , bond,
strong, brought, bought, fought.
Rarely, it is even represented by the letter "a" in words such as
calm, yacht and talk.

It is always represented in Shavian with letter, Y (Awe).

Yahya writes:
> I get the digest in Outlook in HTML format, default font Georgia,
> Latin characters + {w, j, W, J}. I can't change my default font to
> the Shavian font, or then everything written in OT would beconme
> garbled.

Can you view the Shavian without having to specify a font on the Yahoo
Groups website? Thats with the cshaws2.ttf font installed on your system.

I just view all the new messages through a RSS reader. Which displays
the yahoo group page with the correct font usage. If the group goes private
,no public messages, then the RSS feed wont be available. I hope that does
not happen.

===

For those that can not view the shavian font. I converted the Mystic Tower
parts 1,2, and 3 (more parts comming) plus the Princess of Canterbury and
Mr. Fox into bitmap images.

May have to click on the images for full size.

Mystic Tower: - 40kb, 73kb, 52kb
http://img349.imageshack.us/img349/849/shmyst1uq2.png
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/516/shmyst2nx8.png
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/8554/shmyst3pp0.png

Princess of Canterbury: - 47kb
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6618/shpricanted3.png

Mr. Fox: - 51kb
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/3782/shmrfoxfw6.png


Regards,
Brian

Hi Brian,

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Algeri" wrote:
>
> Yahya writes:
> > I get the digest in Outlook in HTML format, default font
Georgia, Latin characters + {w, j, W, J}. I can't change my default
font to the Shavian font, or then everything written in OT would
beconme garbled.
>
> Can you view the Shavian without having to specify a font on the
Yahoo Groups website? Thats with the cshaws2.ttf font installed on
your system.


Yes. Eg, when I look at message 1934:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shawalphabet/message/1934

the Shavian portion (transliteration fo the OT version) appears
quite correctly. The message subject alone appears in mixed-case
extended Latin.


> I just view all the new messages through a RSS reader. Which
displays the yahoo group page with the correct font usage. If the
group goes private ,no public messages, then the RSS feed wont be
available. I hope that does not happen.

No need for that, is there?


> For those that can not view the shavian font. I converted the
Mystic Tower parts 1,2, and 3 (more parts comming) plus the Princess
of Canterbury and Mr. Fox into bitmap images.
>
> May have to click on the images for full size.
>
> Mystic Tower: - 40kb, 73kb, 52kb
> http://img349.imageshack.us/img349/849/shmyst1uq2.png
> http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/516/shmyst2nx8.png
> http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/8554/shmyst3pp0.png
>
> Princess of Canterbury: - 47kb
> http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6618/shpricanted3.png
>
> Mr. Fox: - 51kb
> http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/3782/shmrfoxfw6.png

Thanks for all your efforts. But now that I have the Shaw No. 2
font installed, I could read them on the Internet, eg on the Yahoo!
Groups site instead. Can you please point me to the relevant
messages or files? (The Texts folder in the group's Files section
doesn't seem to have them.)

Regards,
Yahya

Yahya writes:
> No need for that, is there?

As long as the messages remain viewable too non-list members the RSS will
work.

> Can you please point me to the relevant messages or files?

Msg 1964 Mr. Fox
Msg 1937 The Mystic Tower Pt 3
Msg 1932 The Mystic Tower Pt 2
Msg 1927 The Mystic Tower Pt 1
Msg 1922 The Princess of Canterbury
Msg 1906 Genesis A & B Lines 1 - 46 *(forgot about that one)
Msg 1902 Lady of Shalott Part 3
Msg 1901 Lady of Shalott Part 2
Msg 1895 Lady of Shalott Part 1
Msg 1718 Rosaline

All the transliterations that I have posted here, plus others, are on my website:
http://shavian.metabright.com/

Regards,
Brian

Thanks, Brian!

I've bookmarked your site for reference, and read "The Cat-Maiden"
there.

Regards,
Yahya


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Algeri" wrote:
...
> All the transliterations that I have posted here, plus others, are
on my website:
> http://shavian.metabright.com/
>
> Regards,
> Brian

hF grMp,

a translitarESen v a SPt pOam wiT ilustrESen.

mE hAv t klik on H imEJ f fUl sFz. H *pdf fFl hAz
H SYvWn font embeded. F lFk H *png imAJ betx.

bitmAp - 88 kb
http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/9756/bluejay8fl3.png

*pdf - 35 kb
http://shavian.metabright.com/files/pdf/Bluejay.pdf


regRdz,
/brFAn /AlJxI
http://shavian.metabright.com/

Hi Yayah
Sorry, I haven't posted for a while.
And my comment below was uncalled for and inexact.
I was actually suggesting that your priorities for the attributes
of a good Alphabet allowed for a modicum of confusion.
Obviously that is not the case.
Regards, Paul V.
> Paul: Is creating confusion, high on your priorities?
> Yayah: Now, that was uncalled for! Did I insult you?

P.S. The best expanded alphabet that I have seen
using the Roman Alphabet as a base, is the Pitman Phonetic
Alphabet which can be found at www.omniglot.com
I actually created an enhanced version with 15 extra letters,
which an average person can read
without a lot of trouble or training.
The only Diagraphs allowed are for dipthongs, and the 4 or 5
alternate consonant sounds indicated with silent h, in the Roman
Alphabet.
________________attached_________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "yahya_melb" <yahya@...> wrote:
>
> I haven't decried its usefulness; I simply asked whether it was
> necessary if the same ends sould be met mroe economically using the
> current alphabet.
>
>
> > Making use of Capitals to indicate the alternate sounds of
English
> is a Kludge. Just like putting in an "h" after a Consonant or a
> Silent "e" at the end of the word. ...
>
> Consonant + h is a digraph; "silent" e is worse, a "split
digraph".
> Using the majuscule forms (capital letters) is not using digraphs;
> it's using a single character to represent as single phoneme; thus,
> it is a phonemic spelling, which is what I thought we all wanted.
>
>
> > ... Capitalization has a number of useful functions in the Roman
> Alphabet, so providing additional meaning thru Capitals is not
> practical in a real world.
>
> None of those functions are essential. e. e. cummings dispensed
> with them entirely, and his poetry is still widely read; nobody has
> found it necessary to respell it using capitals. English uses them
> to start sentences (but not clauses) and proper names like Paul;
> German uses Them to start every Noun, like this; and so, once, did
> English; yet Nothing essential was lost by changing that Practice.
>
>
> > Is creating confusion, high on your priorities?
>
> Now, that was uncalled for! Did I insult you?
>
> Regards,
> Yahya
>

Information on the Pitman Phonetic alphabet is not on Omniglot as of
August 9, 2006. I myself have been trying to find information on it
for some time but all of my web searches have come up with no usable
information or quite sketchy, incomplete profiles of the alphabet.
Though Shavian is better (at least in writing speed and compactness)
some information on Pitman's alphabet would be quite welcome.
P.S: You were not talking about the I.T.A, right?

I think I used to have some information about the Pitman phonetic alphabet,
but not now. Was it the same as Pitman shorthand? - Certainly not the same as
Initial Teaching Alphabet (I.T.A.), though Pitman was involved with ITA.

When I worked in New York City in the mid 1960's, Pitman shorthand was still
the usual shorthand in NYC, while the rest of the country used Gregg. I think
it was still being taught in the schools in NYC then, though the need for
shorthands was declining because of the rapid acceptance of practical (i.e.
magnetic tape based) dictation equipment at that time. I remember one of the
secretaries (I'd guess born around 1910) showing me how it was written - the
thickness of a stroke (how hard you pushed on the pencil) determined some phonemic
feature, voicing I think.

Bob Richmond