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As everyone is surely aware there is a fierce contest underway for
the Democratic Party nomination. Senator Clinton was successful in
Pennsylvania in portraying her opponent, Senator Obama, as an out-of-
touch elitist, a tactic that will probably be successful again today
in West Virginia. This possibility arose because Senator Obama, when
mixing with "the people" was unable to conceal his disdain for greasy
or fattening food and his lack of interest in beer. And!!, in their
last debate, he pronounced either as "eyether". Gasp! Quick re-
thinking of campaign strategy and rapid search for compensatory
action. Now, in his speeches, it has become "eether".

Make of that what you will,
dshep

Forgot to add this, the discovery of which prompted the previous
message:

"There is an aprocryphal story which relates that when Dr Johnson was
asked in the eighteenth century whether neyether or neether was the
correct pronunciation, the sturdy old Conservative roundly replied,
'Nayther".

quoted from "The Sounds of Standard English" by Thomas Nicklin,
Oxford, 1920

aprocryphally,
dshep

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, dshep <dshep@...> wrote:
>
> Forgot to add this, the discovery of which prompted the previous
> message:
>
> "There is an aprocryphal story which relates that when Dr Johnson
was
> asked in the eighteenth century whether neyether or neether was
the
> correct pronunciation, the sturdy old Conservative roundly
replied,
> 'Nayther".
>
> quoted from "The Sounds of Standard English" by Thomas Nicklin,
> Oxford, 1920
>
> aprocryphally,
> dshep


Oh, I'd raylly rayther he hadn't sayd that!

Yahya

a simpel meTod fOr 1-diJit numberz mFt bI t jMz obJekts HAt rFm wiH H
number:


0= zIrO = hIrO

1=bun

2=SM

3=trI

4=dOr

5=hFv

6=stiks

7=heven

8=gEt

9=wFn

````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````\
````

>Yahya wrote:

>Oh, I'd raylly rayther he hadn't sayd that!

Well, it does make sense, when you consider
"yeas and nays" or "ayes and nays" still used
occasionally in certain circumstances.

circumstantially,
dshep

original message;

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
--- dshep wrote:
>
> Forgot to add this, the discovery of which prompted the
> previous message:
>
> "There is an aprocryphal story which relates that when
> Dr Johnson was asked in the eighteenth century whether
> "neyether" or "neether" was the correct pronunciation,
> the sturdy old Conservative roundly replied, "Nayther".
>
> quoted from "The Sounds of Standard English" by Thomas Nicklin,
> Oxford, 1920

If Shavian need be adaptable, wouldn't that basicaly imply some sort of
digraphable feature?

On Thursday 2008 May 08 07:47:21 Philip Newton wrote:
> On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 2:13 PM, Star Raven <celestraof12worlds@...> wrote:
> > dshep, as usual, your arguments are very well thought out. You've nearly
> > got me convinced, AND since it's only fair that the alphabet remain even
> > (49 is a sucky number) then it should be /hw/ and /?/ added. Except, is
> > there enough distinction between oar/or,
>
> Is there enough distinction between "cot" and "caught" to warrant two
> separate letters? What about "pen" and "pin"?
>
> I say yes, in both cases, but others may disagree.
>
> Since I merge "horse" and "hoarse", I don't know how speakers with the
> distinction feel about the difference, but I can imagine that it's
> similar.
>
> > or would it be more necessary to use
> > Poor/pour. Not only is it a sound that even I can understand, it's also a
> > combination sound, so my aesthetic self likes it as well.
>
> I wouldn't mind a separate letter for that, either.
>
> > Anyway, the slippery slope goes as follows: We've
> > added two letters to represent sounds Read might not have deemed worthy,
> > but which are necessary to *General* American "RP" if you will. But if we
> > added a symbol for every phoneme,
>
> Careful: I don't think anyone proposed adding a symbol for every
> possible sound that the human vocal tract can make, since that would
> be an infinite number. But only for distinctions which are separate
> phonemes (i.e. pronunciation distinctions which serve to distinguish
> words) in at least one variety of English.
>
[un]voiced bilabial fricative, anyone? (lol)
> Which would, if we go the whole hog, still be quite a few more than
> some may be comfortable with, and some phoneme distinctions are only
> in fairly limited geographical use, so there's still a slippery slope
> - but not, I think, one that's as big as you seem to make it out to
> be.
>
> > we would lose the point of the alphabet, not to
> > mention make an already steep learning curve even steeper.
>
> That would indeed be the case unless we restricted the number of
> phoneme distinctions to those "commonly" made - for whichever value of
> "common" you pick.
>
> For example, I'd be for a "cot/caught" distinction but think that a
> "wait/weight" distinction is less likely to be useful and would lead
> to more people having to learn spelling rules (or look up words) than
> "necessary".
>
> > Every school
> > child would have to know some obscure symbol they may never encounter
> > because they might want to read a book written by a foreigner who
> > pronounces some letter or something slightly differently. We don't have a
> > letter for a rolled R as in Spanish, which would be different from one
> > used in French or Japanese. Should we include these as well?
>
> No, because those are not phonemes in English.
>
> If someone from Spain pronounces "r" with a trill, then they're
> pronouncing the English phoneme /r/ rather differently from most other
> people, but it's still the same phoneme.
>
> It's not a new phoneme unless someone uses both an unusual
> pronunciation *and* a more common one *in English* *to make a
> distinction between words*.
>
> > Or the S/TS difference?
>
> What's that?
>
> > To be frank, this *ISN'T* IPA. It's not international. It's an alphabet
> > for pronouncing English.
>
> Yes.
>
> And it's also not even a phone_t_ical alphabet for English (as IPA is
> the International Phonetic Alphabet) -- it's a phone_m_ic alphabet.
>
> So if someone pronounces "Kate, wait" the way I would say "kite,
> wight", they'd still use the letter "age" because it's the phoneme
> that counts, not the exact pronunciation.
>
> > Now, there are four major dialects, if you will, of
> > English: British, Canadian, American, and Australian/New Zealand. Each of
> > these places have their own pronunciations, but most are included in
> > Shaw.
>
> It's not the separate pronunciations that are important - it's how
> many distinctions they make.
>
> For example, some people pronounce "crass" and "glass" with the same
> vowel sound, and others with distinct vowel sounds. It's this
> difference that's important (IMO), not exactly where in the mouth the
> vowel is made, which may differ from place to place.
>
> > Should we include a soft K as in Hanukkah?
>
> Only if it's used in English words as a distinct phoneme that can
> differentiate words.
>
> And some do indeed include this as a phoneme in English due to the
> presence of such words as "loch", which some pronounce differently
> from "lock", but it's a fairly marginal phoneme and I'm not sure
> whether the number of speakers who make this distinction regularly is
> large enough to warrant making the distinction in the Shaw alphabet.
>
> Also, one could argue that "loch" is not an English word but a loan
> word from Scots (similarly with Chanukkah, chutzpah, Bach, etc.), in
> which case the pronunciation is irrelevant since we're no longer
> talking about English phonemes.
>
I would likely make a distinction, using the 'kh' digraph equivalent to 'ch' in English. This is an example of the transcription issue: transcription doesn't have to be, and indeed is usually not, 1-to-1.

Otherwise, anyone interested in developing 5 h's for some Semitic languages? how about aspirate/unaspirate consonants for languages like Sanskrit?

btw, Hanukkah = '/khAnMkkAh'? (The 'a' vowel in Chanukkah ('pathah', I believe) is usually transliterated as a short 'a', even if it doesn't sound like it in English.)
> Cheers,

I would have to argue that, if we do need to enhance Shavian, we should make
it a point to add only 3 more letters, and make sure that they can reasonably
mix within the original Shavian letters. I appreciate the
Readscript 'chech-mark' form for the wh (hw) letter.

I would also consider the oar/ore distinction along with a new letter for the
merry/air/err, if one exist (I am an American speaker, so I pronounce not
the 'err' as it is supposed, but recently learned it, so that I write merry
as Mairry in Shavian.)

H desemvirF


lEdeld sAmpliNz from riverz v TYt.

"wons a nMzpEper tucez a stOri, H fAkts or lost fOrever, Iven t H
prOtAgonists." --/norman mEler

"wizdom iz mIniNles until jUr On eksperiens hAz given it mIniN."
--/bergen evAnz

t trMli nO god wI must kom t nO Qr inermOst self. wons wI hAv lOkEted H
SFniN lFt At H kOr v Qr bIiN wI wil nO hM god iz. --212

"H trubel wiH H profit sistem hAz YlwEz ben HAt it waz hFli unprofitabel
t mOst pIpel." --I.bI. /wFt

"lANgwaJ iz H mEn instrument v mAn'z refjMzal t Aksept H wOrld Az it
iz." --JOrJ /stFner

An od litel bUk v fiziks: 'H mAni-wOrldz interpretESon v kwontum
mekAniks.' --530

"H dFnasYr'z elOkwent leson iz HAt if som bignes iz gUd, An OverabundAns
v bignes iz not nesesarili beter."

--/lI FakOka

"egzAJerESon iz H proses v enhAnsiN H esenSial kErAkteristiks v jUr
subJekt. it kAn bI jMzd in Ani stFl v drYiN...H first step jM tEk iz t
lUk awE from H subJekt n serc jUr rezerv v memOrIz n asOsiESon fOr HOz
kErAkteristiks HAt defFn H subJekt jM or drYiN."

--tom kinkEd

"H rOl v H rFter iz not t sE wat wI kAn Yl sE, but wat wI or unEbel t
sE." --/AnFs nin

wiHQt memOri wat litel hApines Her wUd bI!

fOr hApines iz somTiN wI seldom eksperiens. rAHer it iz somTiN wI
remember. --908

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.

Hi Star & Dshep
While the Glottal Stop is an important sound in English, I would not
bother adding an extra letter for it, until a lot more people can
recognize it their own speech. Still, It might be useful to a
General Letter to represent any Foreign or Unrecognizable Consonant
sound.
We could use it for the throaty K of Bach, Orchid, Chutzpah and
Hanukkah.
We could use the same letter for Glottal stop in Hawai'i and Uh'Oh.
They are both back in the throat sounds, anyway.
Regards, Paul V.
______________________attached_______________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Star Raven
<celestraof12worlds@...> wrote:
>
> dshep, as usual, your arguments are very well thought out. You've
nearly got me convinced, AND since it's only fair that the alphabet
remain even (49 is a sucky number) then it should be /hw/ and /?/
added. Except, is there enough distinction between oar/or, or would
it be more necessary to use Poor/pour.

Should we include a soft K as in Hanukkah?