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paul vandenbrink wrote:
> Hi Philip
> Thanks for pointing out that Wikipedia file.
> A lot of people complain to me that Shavian spelling
> generates too many Homonyms, a lot more than Roman spelling, anyway.
> So now I can point to that large list of words where Shavian spelling
> would actually distinguish words that are Homonyms in Roman spelling.
>
> Unfortunately, while I totally agree on the benefit of making the
> Ado/Up split, the Array/Err split is more problematic with my
> undistinguished Canadian pronunciation.
> While, I do hear the Err(Urge) sound in a few words (i.e. Urge,
> purge, endured, concur, infer, insure, sure, Sir),
> and also a few from your list (i.e. permit) but then again the Err
> (Urge) sound shows up when I am using permit verb in the command
> sense.
> "Per-mit me to take your order."
> I think in the American pronunciation the stressed Err(urge) sound
> is uncommon and usually replaced by the unstressed Array (er) sound.
>
> Regards, Paul V.
> P.S. Any other Americans who wonder where the Err went.
> "Err, excuse me for asking."
> ________________attached_____________________
>
I consider myself fairly typical of American speakers, and I always use
both stressed (URge) and unstressed (bettER) varieties of that sound.
PerMIT (verb) and PERmit (noun) are two different words the way I
pronounce them.

Unrelated remark: In my pronunciation, insure and sure are pronounced
inSMD n SMD.
Thus, I pronounce "surely" and "Shirly" differently: SMDlI vs GSxlI. HO
hwen Fm lEzI, HXz lFklI t bI litl kontrAst.

--
Ethan

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust --Psalm 91:4a

As far as I know, none of the "rules" alluded to below are described
in any guide to the Shavian alphabet. Instead, neophytes like myself
find an alphabet table where each letter has one word to describe it
and two of those words are pronounced differently in America; see the
Merriam Webster's pronunciation of Egg and Array. So as I see it, the
one big issue with Shavian is the lack of explicitly stated rules.

Here, Hugh talks about three difficulties, two of which are rules that
are not explicitly stated even in his own post.
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@...>
wrote:
>
> Group,
>
> Paul V's post reminds me of far more important anomalies for us as a
> community to settle than which way round hung/haha are or whether or not
> compound letters and abbreviations are everybody's cup of tea.
Perhaps, now
> we're once again in a critical mood, we could have a look at them?
>
> 1. There are still issues differentiating 'ah' and 'on' in the
States. It's
> one of the only sound pairs almost every single person on this list uses
> interchangeably. I'm quite certain that a large number of people simply
> don't differentiate in their speech, and get confused as to which one to
> use. We have a choice here to rectify this now or forever be seeing
"pot"
> written "paht". We either consolidate 'ah' and 'on' into one phoneme
as Cut
> Shavian did (which would leave Brits* with one less phoneme), or we
simply
> say to those who are uncertain: "use 'on' always and learn the
handful of
> odd words that take 'ah'" (from sources such as the AHD). Doing
either of
> these will remove the stateside issue with this letter pair.
>

OK, this is the father/bother merger we're talking about right? And
probably lots of people who don't have this merger, merge these sounds
when they're lazy. Maybe we could do without this distinction just as
we do without the schwa schwi distinction. Makes sense to me, but I
can live with this problem.

> 2. There are still issues differentiating 'up'/'ado', and 'err'/'array'.
> It's clear that although obvious to those with any linguistic
training, not
> everyone else can identify the stress in their speech and use these
letters
> in the correct contexts. Maybe all that needs to be done is to emphasize
> exactly how to detect stress in your speech if you are not
immediately aware
> of it. Possibly people in doubt could submit recordings of them saying
> certain words, such as "forward", "foreword", "circumference",
> "furtherable", "perturber", "suburban", etc., and have their stress
pointed
> out to them.
>

Is the problem really one of differentiation? The assumption here is
that there is a rule that "UP" is used for the stressed vowel and
"Ado" is used for the unstressed vowel. Another assumption is that
people are aware of this rule. Here, there is a huge problem for the
neophyte: We aren't told about this! Nothing says, "Hey, stop racking
your brain trying to figure out the difference between these vowel
sounds. They're the same sound, but one is stressed and the other is not."

Now it makes sense to me that these letters (can be)/are used this
way, and Androcles and the Lion does seem to use them this way, but
wouldn't it be easier if this information were given upfront rather
than gleaned from the passages of Androcles and the Lion, or
discovered burried in the depths of this group's archived messages.

> 3. 'Air'/'egg+roll', 'ear'/'if+roll', 'err'/'up+roll'. This is another
> Atlantic difference -- Brits* observe vowel length differences,
while many
> (most?) US speakers do not. Many US speakers say the word pairs
> "merry"/"Mary", "ferry"/"fairy" and "very"/"vary" exactly the same,
where
> Brits would say the 1st are short and the 2nd are long. This leads
to words
> such as "America" being spelt "Am-air-ica", "mirror" spelt
"m-ear-or" and
> "current" spelt "c-err-ant". This might be a little more difficult
to solve.........

Here again there is an unspoken assumtion that there is a rule that
states: AIR, ERR, and EAR are used for long sounds and the individual
letters are used for short ones. I have never seen such a rule stated
anywhere, but I suppose we could use the letters that way. Does
Androcles support this? Well, the first syllable in the name,
Ferrovious is spelled with "egg-roar" instead or "air", but is that
because the vowel sound is shorter, or because we're supposed to have
a syllable break between the "egg" and the "roar"? Isn't it a rule the
you can't have a syllable break between the sounds of a ligature,
because that changes the sound?

Neither rule is explicitly written, so how is a neophyte to know about
them or to know if they are valid rules? Based on the alphabet table,
merry and marry ARE spelled/spelt the same, as are ferry and fairy.
And the name Array might suggest to someone who pronounces it as
Merriam Webster does, that there can be a syllable break in the middle
of a ligature.

> We need a consensus here. Maybe we could spend a little time focusing on
> these 3 issues, and hopefully working out resolutions to them? When we
> decide what we're going to recommend, we should document our
solutions for
> the benefit of all current and future users.
>
> Hugh B
>
> * = When I say "Brits", I mean anyone whose dialect is similar in
phonology
> to British English. Irish, South Africans, Australians, New
Zealanders, you
> all know who you are!

Hugh approaches all three issues as if the rules have been
communicated and understood, but people have difficulty applying them.
This may be true for point number 1, but is it really true for points
2 and 3? Where can a someone go to find these rules? Even in Hugh's
post, these rules are not explicitly stated, but rather one has to
infer them. Not to pick on Hugh, but these "rules" are not even on his
own site at: http://mixsynth.fearfulsilence.com/shavian/. Nor are they
to be found on anyone else's site (that I've visited), or on wikipedia.

So if these rules aren't stated clearly for someone to learn, how can
we then expect them to follow those rules? And if they aren't stated
anywhere, are they really rules at all, or are they just our/your/my
rules?

We do need a consensus, but a consensus about what the rules ARE.
Deciding to change them may be premature, as I suspect many people may
not be aware of these "rules" at all. Lets start at the beginning
here; the CURRENT rules should be documented for the benefit of all
users. This lack of documentation is a bigger problem than any other.

So here are some rules to decide on before any changes are made:

1. Is "UP" just the stressed form of "ADO"?

2. Is "ERR" just the stressed form of "ARRAY"?

3. Are "AIR" and "ERR" only for "long" syllables? How about "OR", and
"ARE"? And while we're at it, what about "EAR", "IAN" and "YEW"?

4. Can a syllable break occur between the sounds of a ligature?

And here are my thoughts:
1. Yes, there is no other difference between these sounds, and this is
how they are used in Adrocles. It is also a handy distinction to make.

2. Yes, this follows from point 1, as these are the same sounds, just
combined with the Roar sound.

3. No. I don't see clear evidence for this rule in the alphabet table
or elsewhere, nor do I see a pressing need to spell "long" sounds
differently. This rule would also complicate point 4.

4. No. A syllable break would change the sound of the vowel
significantly. Two seperate letters can signify that a syllable break
is between them, while the ligature is a merged sound.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
paul vandenbrink would have us believe
that velcro is a Swiss invention (or
discovery). Whereas...


His iz untrM!


velkrO (And uHD Vsfal inavESanz),

woz a gift frum grEtfal ilIgal Elianz

frum QtD spEs; grEtfal ta bI alQd

ta liv on His plAnat undD Ha wocfal

F ov "men in blAk", a sMpD-sIkrat

guvDnmental EJansi. Yl is ravWlad

in a mMvi ov Ha sEm nEm.


grEtfali,
/dSep

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "dshepx" <dshep@...> wrote:
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
> paul vandenbrink would have us believe
> that velcro is a Swiss invention (or
> discovery). Whereas...
>
>
> His iz untrM!
>
>
> velkrO (And uHD Vsfal inavESanz),
>
> woz a gift frum grEtfal ilIgal Elianz
>
> frum QtD spEs; grEtfal ta bI alQd
>
> ta liv on His plAnat undD Ha wocfal
>
> F ov "men in blAk", a sMpD-sIkrat
>
> guvDnmental EJansi. Yl is ravWlad
>
> in a mMvi ov Ha sEm nEm.
>
>
> grEtfali,
> /dSep
>

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
dshep attempted to make use of the rich-
text editor to write directly in Shavian,
which works, but does not transmit. Or
at least, does not appear as written on
the ShawGroup web page. As usual, he
must be doing something wrong.

Forgive the repetition; i am simply trying
to recall the proper way to manage postings.

This will be a test:

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
paul vandenbrink would have us believe
that velcro is a Swiss invention (or
discovery). Whereas...



His iz untrM!


velkrO (And uHD Vsfal inavESanz),

woz a gift frum grEtfal ilIgal Elianz

frum QtD spEs; grEtfal ta bI alQd

ta liv on His plAnat undD Ha wocfal

F ov "men in blAk", a sMpD-sIkrat

guvDnmental EJansi. Yl is ravWld

in a mMvi ov Ha sEm nEm.


grEtfali,
/dSep

The Shavian part of your message displays all right in Apple
Mail.app, unless someone else tries to quote it, as I am doing.

James Vipond
jvipond@...

On 2007 Mar 15, at 2:43 pm, dshep wrote:

> Forgive the repetition; i am simply trying
> to recall the proper way to manage postings.
>
> This will be a test:
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
> paul vandenbrink would have us believe
> that velcro is a Swiss invention (or
> discovery). Whereas...
>
>
>
> His iz untrM!
>
>
> velkrO (And uHD Vsfal inavESanz),
>
> woz a gift frum grEtfal ilIgal Elianz
>
> frum QtD spEs; grEtfal ta bI alQd
>
> ta liv on His plAnat undD Ha wocfal
>
> F ov "men in blAk", a sMpD-sIkrat
>
> guvDnmental EJansi. Yl is ravWld
>
> in a mMvi ov Ha sEm nEm.
>
>
> grEtfali,
> /dSep

jipI!

stil grEtfal,
/dSep

dshep wrote:
>
> Forgive the repetition; i am simply trying
> to recall the proper way to manage postings.
>
> This will be a test:
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com <mailto:shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com>,
> paul vandenbrink would have us believe
> that velcro is a Swiss invention (or
> discovery). Whereas...
>
>
>
> His iz untrM!
>
>
> velkrO (And uHD Vsfal inavESanz),
>
> woz a gift frum grEtfal ilIgal Elianz
>
> frum QtD spEs; grEtfal ta bI alQd
>
> ta liv on His plAnat undD Ha wocfal
>
> F ov "men in blAk", a sMpD-sIkrat
>
> guvDnmental EJansi. Yl is ravWld
>
> in a mMvi ov Ha sEm nEm.
>
>
>
>
> grEtfali,
> /dSep
F TiNk V mFt bI rFt HX, /dSep! kan mAnkFnd rWlI bI sO smRt Az wI lFk t
klEm? ;-)

jP test wxks Just fFn hC.

cCz!

--
Ethan

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust --Psalm 91:4a

James Vipond wrote:
> The Shavian part of your message displays all right in Apple
> Mail.app, unless someone else tries to quote it, as I am doing.
>
> James Vipond
> jvipond@...
>
You need to respond using html email if you wish to retain the original
fonts, and thus the correct letter forms. Since I don't have a Mac, I'm
not familiar with Mail.app, but I assume it can write html since it
displays it.

𐑿 𐑒𐑩𐑯 𐑷𐑤𐑢𐑱𐑟 𐑿𐑟 𐑿𐑯𐑦𐑒𐑴𐑛, 𐑑𐑵! <-- Unicode Shavian

Unicode works even in plain text, as long as your operating system is
configured correctly, and you have a unicode Shavian font installed.

--
Ethan

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust --Psalm 91:4a