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/kOrAn. F dQnlOded a kopi from proJekt /gMtenburg n rIsentli red som
kurent koments v /mOhAmed on H websFt At abundanthOp.net. Aniwon nO wat
H bUk sez abQt H After deT eksperiens?

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re: on more shavian refinement

Hello PV,

Well, it would work, and my preferred alternative seems to generate
nothing much but intense trauma. I did however look up Edward
Shapard's rendition of the "Wizard of Oz" in the files--it was the
existence of this worthy effort that apparently brought about last
month's eruption--and I think (but then I would) that it looked very
fine indeed, and more importantly, read more easily than a normal
transcription would do because of the additional visual clues (but
then I would think that).

.. .. .. ..

Read's choice of keywords were not always the most helpful that could
be imagined. His goal of course was to use a word that began with the
sound intended but this system fails if there is not universal
agreement about that particular sound, as you have discovered. Had he
chosen "urge" instead of "err" there would not have been a problem.
There is a problem with "on" as well as that word can have three
distinct pronunciations which has caused some strife within the
group, and "egg" also appears to cause confusion. If "edge" were used
instead as the keyword this problem might disappear.

.. .. .. ..

By spelling hurry as [hDrI] you seem to indicate that the final vowel
would be the principal, stressed vowel, and would be pronounced /
huhREE/ rather than HUHree. The same problem arises with words such
as happy, silly, and all similar words, which would be written hæPEE,
siLEE. This problem arises because Read didn't give us an unstressed/
semi-stressed alternative for the long-i, or schwi, this being a
relatively recent innovation, and anyone wishing to use the weak ee-
sound rather than the schwa, at the end of such words are obliged to
use Shavian [I], a vowel otherwise stressed. Thus [I] becomes an
allophone, stressed or unstressed depending upon position. If [a] is
used for all unstressed vowels, as Read assumed it would, the problem
of stress distortion disappears, but in doing so also becomes an
allophone, that is, actual pronunciation would depend upon dialect or
habit, and this could be thought of as being contrary to the spirit
of the Shaw alphabet. We do this however already with the syllable-
final-r of the compound vowels -ir, -er, -ar, and -or, which, using
the same letter, may be pronounced as an "r" or as a lengthened
vowel, again depending upon dialect. Which choice (of allophone) is
the less intrusive?

An alternative that will not please many is to adapt a new letter,
say Greek iota, an i with a diminutive tail, as a new letter for the
i-sound of "sit", while retaining the simpler stroke [i] for the
schwi. Iota actually does represent the short-i sound in Greek, and
not eye-ota as we generally pronounce it in English. I hope this
suggestion does not generate the usual outrage but instead lead to a
discussion of how the Shaw alphabet could realistically be improved--
if for no other reason then to keep up with change.

as ever,
dshep



--Apple-Mail-204--201638275
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re: on more shavian refinement

Hello PV,

Well, it would work, and my preferred alternative seems to generate
nothing much but intense trauma. I did however look up Edward
Shapard's rendition of the "Wizard of Oz" in the files--it was the
existence of this worthy effort that apparently brought about last
month's eruption--and I think (but then I would) that it looked very
fine indeed, and more importantly, read more easily than a normal
transcription would do because of the additional visual clues (but
then I would think that).

.. .. .. ..

Read's choice of keywords were not always the most helpful that could
be imagined. His goal of course was to use a word that began with the
sound intended but this system fails if there is not universal
agreement about that particular sound, as you have discovered. Had he
chosen "urge" instead of "err" there would not have been a problem.
There is a problem with "on" as well as that word can have three
distinct pronunciations which has caused some strife within the
group, and "egg" also appears to cause confusion. If "edge" were used
instead as the keyword this problem might disappear.

.. .. .. ..

By spelling hurry as [hDrI] you seem to indicate that the final vowel
would be the principal, stressed vowel, and would be pronounced /
huhREE/ rather than HUHree. The same problem arises with words such
as happy, silly, and all similar words, which would be written hæPEE,
siLEE. This problem arises because Read didn't give us an unstressed/
semi-stressed alternative for the long-i, or schwi, this being a
relatively recent innovation, and anyone wishing to use the weak ee-
sound rather than the schwa, at the end of such words are obliged to
use Shavian [I], a vowel otherwise stressed. Thus [I] becomes an
allophone, stressed or unstressed depending upon position. If [a] is
used for all unstressed vowels, as Read assumed it would, the problem
of stress distortion disappears, but in doing so also becomes an
allophone, that is, actual pronunciation would depend upon dialect or
habit, and this could be thought of as being contrary to the spirit
of the Shaw alphabet. We do this however already with the syllable-
final-r of the compound vowels -ir, -er, -ar, and -or, which, using
the same letter, may be pronounced as an "r" or as a lengthened
vowel, again depending upon dialect. Which choice (of allophone) is
the less intrusive?

An alternative that will not please many is to adapt a new letter,
say Greek iota, an i with a diminutive tail, as a new letter for the
i-sound of "sit", while retaining the simpler stroke [i] for the
schwi. Iota actually does represent the short-i sound in Greek, and
not eye-ota as we generally pronounce it in English. I hope this
suggestion does not generate the usual outrage but instead lead to a
discussion of how the Shaw alphabet could realistically be improved--
if for no other reason then to keep up with change.

as ever,
dshep



--Apple-Mail-212--201561819
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary=Apple-Mail-213--201561819

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 5:58 AM, dshep <dshep@...> wrote:
> An alternative that will not please many is to adapt a new letter, say Greek
> iota, an i with a diminutive tail, as a new letter for the i-sound of "sit",
> while retaining the simpler stroke [i] for the schwi. Iota actually does
> represent the short-i sound in Greek, and not eye-ota as we generally
> pronounce it in English.

I think you mean "Iota actually *did* represent the short-i sound in Greek".

Greek is still spoken, and iota is still used, but the sound it makes
is more similar to the "i" of, say, Italian or Spanish, which is more
similar to English's "eat" sound than to "it", even when it's
pronoucned short.

> I hope this suggestion does not generate the usual
> outrage but instead lead to a discussion of how the Shaw alphabet could
> realistically be improved--if for no other reason then to keep up with
> change.

I'd like shwi, to match my 'lect as well.

However, "standard" Shavian doesn't match my 'lect in all matters,
anyway (mostly the use of "short a" in words such as "master" rather
than the "ah" sound I use there), and it's even further removed for
many speakers of American varieties, so I'm not sure whether this is a
necessity.

Also, I'd worry that "an i with a diminutive tail" would be easily
confused with "egg".

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

On Thursday 2008 April 10 23:40:49 Philip Newton wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 5:58 AM, dshep <dshep@...> wrote:
> > An alternative that will not please many is to adapt a new letter, say
> > Greek iota, an i with a diminutive tail, as a new letter for the i-sound
> > of "sit", while retaining the simpler stroke [i] for the schwi. Iota
> > actually does represent the short-i sound in Greek, and not eye-ota as we
> > generally pronounce it in English.
>
> I think you mean "Iota actually *did* represent the short-i sound in
> Greek".
>
> Greek is still spoken, and iota is still used, but the sound it makes
> is more similar to the "i" of, say, Italian or Spanish, which is more
> similar to English's "eat" sound than to "it", even when it's
> pronoucned short.
>
> > I hope this suggestion does not generate the usual
> > outrage but instead lead to a discussion of how the Shaw alphabet could
> > realistically be improved--if for no other reason then to keep up with
> > change.
>
> I'd like shwi, to match my 'lect as well.
>
> However, "standard" Shavian doesn't match my 'lect in all matters,
> anyway (mostly the use of "short a" in words such as "master" rather
> than the "ah" sound I use there), and it's even further removed for
> many speakers of American varieties, so I'm not sure whether this is a
> necessity.
>
> Also, I'd worry that "an i with a diminutive tail" would be easily
> confused with "egg".
>
> Cheers,
> Philip

The greek 'iota' is the source for latin 'j'. It doubled as a 'short-i' and
the 'y' similar to a Hebrew 'yodh'.

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 6:51 AM, jeff <akousw@...> wrote:
>
> The greek 'iota' is the source for latin 'j'.

Yes, and Latin 'i', since the two were originally not distinguished.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?

Especially since we're talking about pronunciation - English
pronounced 'j' like /dZ/, Spanish like /x/, German like /j/, ... So
the pronunciation of a letter depends on the language.

> It doubled as a 'short-i' and the 'y' similar to a Hebrew 'yodh'.

If you mean "short-i" as in the sound in English, a) do we know that?
(We don't have any recordings of people speaking Ancient Greek, so
anything we know is reconstructed somehow.) b) it's not the value in
Modern Greek any more.

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

re: on more shavian refinement

Philip writes:

>I think you mean "Iota actually *did* represent the short-i sound
in Greek".

Yes, quite right. I was thinking about them good ole days two+
millennia ago.
I understand that Modern Greek has retained all the old vowel letters
but pronounces half of them as /ee/. Isn't there a name for this
development--iotacisation or something like that, where everything
gravitates towards the vowel sound that requires the least effort--/
ee/ in other words.

>I'd like shwi, to match my 'lect as well.

>However, "standard" Shavian doesn't match my 'lect in all matters,
>anyway (mostly the use of "short a" in words such as "master" rather
>than the "ah" sound I use there), and it's even further removed for
>many speakers of American varieties, so I'm not sure whether this is a
>necessity.

Well, you could write mystD. Why not? Wasn't there a character in one
of those Mad Max films called mystD blystD? We must accept spelling
differences that reflect pronunciation differences, as there is yet
no "correct" standard, is there? Unless of course we all agree to
accept the AH as our guide, which would be fine with me.

>Also, I'd worry that "an i with a diminutive tail" would be easily
>confused with "egg".

Yes, one would have to be careful about that. It would have to be
kept vertical, and could be given a little fishhook tail that turn
upwards a bit--that should be enough to distinguish the two. Or
perhaps a little tick-mark. I know this was a radical and probably
unwelcome suggestion, but how else does one deal with words like
happy, hurry, silly, merry, jolly, etc which when written with a
final [I] appear to put the stress on the wrong vowel, as the long
vowel is usually expected to be the stressed vowel if there are but
two? For myself i just use the [a] no matter what as that avoids that
problem.

pragmatically,
dshep

re: on more shavian refinement

Philip also writes:

>If you mean "short-i" as in the sound in English, a) do we know that?
>(We don't have any recordings of people speaking Ancient Greek, so
>anything we know is reconstructed somehow.) b) it's not the value in
>Modern Greek any more.

How do we know how Ancient Greek was pronounced? I have
no idea, except that classicists seem to be fairly confident
about it. Didn't Erasmus work it all out some centuries ago?
Somebody must have. I have however met Greeks who insist
that Socrates spoke the same Greek that is spoken today,
which seems unlikely. If so they certainly have a bunch of
redundant letters.

redundantly,
dshep

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:10 AM, dshep <dshep@...> wrote:
>
> I understand that Modern Greek has retained all the old vowel letters but
> pronounces half of them as /ee/.

Sort of :)

It's a bit like how half the Proto-Indo-European vowels seem to have
turned into /a/ in Sanskrit, I suppose.

> >I'd like shwi, to match my 'lect as well.
>
> >However, "standard" Shavian doesn't match my 'lect in all matters,
> >anyway (mostly the use of "short a" in words such as "master" rather
> >than the "ah" sound I use there), and it's even further removed for
> >many speakers of American varieties, so I'm not sure whether this is a
> >necessity.
>
> Well, you could write mystD. Why not? Wasn't there a character in one of
> those Mad Max films called mystD blystD? We must accept spelling differences
> that reflect pronunciation differences, as there is yet no "correct"
> standard, is there?

Well, I was going by _Androcles_ and Shaw's request to represent
"Northern English" as the basis of the written standard; as I
understand it, that variety of English doesn't use the so-called
"broad A", so the vowel sounds in "pass" and "mass" are the same, also
in "class" and "classic", whereas I have "broad A" in the first word
of each pair and "flat A" in the second.

> Unless of course we all agree to accept the AH as our
> guide, which would be fine with me.

IIRC the AHD also uses "flat A" for such words - making it a fairly
useful guide to (what I think was intended to be) standard Shavian
spelling.

On the third hand, the foreword to _Androcles_ does suggest that
everyone should write the way they speak, and leave standardisation to
printers and editors.

> >Also, I'd worry that "an i with a diminutive tail" would be easily
> >confused with "egg".
>
> Yes, one would have to be careful about that. It would have to be kept
> vertical, and could be given a little fishhook tail that turn upwards a
> bit--that should be enough to distinguish the two. Or perhaps a little
> tick-mark.

I'm not against such an extra letter in principle.

However, I can imagine that it could start a slippery slope for adding
new letters required for phonemes that other groups distinguish, for
example "wait" and "weight" (vowel), "horse" and "hoarse" (vowel), or
"which" and "witch" (consonant).

It's pretty much impossible to produce a phonemic writing system that
will represent all varieties of spoken English; it'll invariably have
to make more distinctions than some do (so they have to learn how to
spell words) and/or fewer distinctions than others do.

Making the maximum number of distinctions possible seems undesirable
to me, since then you'd have to learn the spelling of lots and lots of
words (since your own pronunciation is not a good guide as to which of
two or three or four possible letters is the correct spelling), so a
good compromise requires underdifferentiation in some cases.

> I know this was a radical and probably unwelcome suggestion, but
> how else does one deal with words like happy, hurry, silly, merry, jolly,
> etc which when written with a final [I] appear to put the stress on the
> wrong vowel, as the long vowel is usually expected to be the stressed vowel
> if there are but two?

As for that, I think that in RP it was considered proper to pronounce
it with a final short [i], which I think you can hear in the "posh"
speech of people some years ago (I think it's getting less).

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

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:27 AM, dshep <dshep@...> wrote:
>
> I have however met Greeks who insist
> that Socrates spoke the same Greek that is spoken today,
> which seems unlikely. If so they certainly have a bunch of
> redundant letters.

It did originally have redundant letters (e.g. two or three ways to
write /s/ IIRC) -- comes from the fact that they inherited their
alphabet from other people. (Similarly, the Romans, who inherited the
Greek alphabet, initially had three letters -- C, K, Q -- for much the
same sound; eventually, they tossed K and used Q only before
semi-vowel V and C in other places.)

But yes. Imagining that Greeks spoke the way they do today seems
unlikely. (I've also heard a Frenchman claim that they pronounced it
like French -- such as epsilon-upsilon being pronounced like ø --,
which seems even more unlikely to me.)

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