Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 04:38, Thomas <tthurman@...> wrote:
> I would like to resolve this so that there could be some kind of a standard.  Then I and other people who configure keyboard layouts would know how best to do so.
>
> So: what way do you prefer?  Should the Q key generate Oil and Out, or Out and Awe?

Oil and Out.

I thought that was the standard, based on Ross DeMeyere's
8-bit/remapped-Latin Shavian fonts, which were (I think) the first
ones out there and (for me at least) set the standard to be followed.

I had never even heard of the mapping of Out and Awe onto Q -- nor of
namer dot onto B.

FWIW, the first mapping I was aware of had namer dot on / (forward
slash); the mapping to G seemed to come later for me. (Though it's
possible that Ross's fonts had it on both characters and I never
noticed the G mapping because it was also on /. I think it also had
Yew on both ü (u-umlaut) and V, so the duplicate namer dot thing is
possible.)

My favourite position for namer dot would be /, since that was what I
was first familiar with. Failing that, G, since that seems to have
become popular. (Though it could, of course, be on both.)

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

Maybe try to market it to university students. They always
like competitions and have the time. Unfortunately, unless there is a cash
prize involved, i think the response will be limited.

Thanks,
Mitch

On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 11:21 PM, stbett <stbett@...> wrote:

>
>
> Ideas on what might be done to promote the
> * 50th Anniversary of the Shaw Alphabet Competition.
> *
> I thought this milestone deserved being brought to the attention of a
> larger audience.
>
> So far, few have contributed ideas. Please do.
>
> After the competition was announced, 500 alphabeteers submitted entries.
>
> Millions learned about the event due to the media coverage it obtained.
>
> Can anyone think of a competition or event that would bring out this kind
> of response?
>
> I would think the goal would be first to expose people to Shaw's sound
> spelling ideas.
>
> A subsidiary goal would be to bring in a few hundred new members to
> the Shaw Alphabet discussion group.
>
>
> Shaw wanted a linear phonetic shorthand that could be typeset and
> handwritten.
>
> If we were doing this over, we might want to add typing or keyboard entry.
>
> One possible new competition might be to design a code and technology for
> fonetic texting.
>
> This would be a little more technical than the first competition since it
> could include
>
> the design of the interface: new keyboards, new kaypads, ....
>
> Any suggestions on how this might be set up?
>
>
>
> If you drop the surplus characters and clearly
> represent the sounds, a great deal of brevity is achieved.
>
> Brevity is good. Fewer characters mean more information per page
> Clarity of lack of ambiguity is good. It means that the code can be
> easier to learn and use.
>
> [image: QR-fool.jpg ryt-lyk-ful picture by majorbett]
>
> *Unigraf* compared to Quick-Write (*QicRyt*).
> Unigraf extends the traditional aphabet with
> ANSI diacritics. Unigraf lives with amgibuity.
> Not the same level as the traditional writing
> system with 14 ways to represent the same sound.
> QikRyt keeps the standard keyboard and does not
> distinguish similar sounds that could be guessed
> from context. *tok* could be talk, toke, tauk, taak.
> so it is not a pronunciation guide but it is sufficient
> to convey meaning.
>
>
> --- EARLIER COMMENTS:
>
> > Why not set up a non-profit as the Phonemic Spelling Council (to use an
> old name)
> >
> > You would need to specify your goals and aims. Check out
> www.spellingsociety.org
> >
> > What would be the educational benefit beyond learning
> > a nifty phonemic shorthand for English?
> >
> > Why would a teacher want to allow a student to write a paper on the Shaw
> alphabet?
> > Taking up class time to teach it might be asking too much.
> >
> > Are shorthand classes still being taught?
> > Is any kind of note-taking skill being taught?
> >
> > --Steve
> > sbett@...
> >
> >
> >
> > Re: [shawalphabet] Fiftieth birthday
> >
> > I've been thinking about highschools.
> >
> > The Shaw alphabet is somewhat unique in being both phonetic and
> shorthand, plus already being in unicode and will have been around for 50
> years, and it's connection with a famous English playwright..
> >
> > With a quick non-profit incorporation (5 signatures, $25, and 15 minutes
> at the secretary of state's office in NH) and some fund raising, we could
> distribute free learning materials to schools; some public domain books
> transliterated to Shavian, copies of Ubuntu Shavian Remix (Ubuntu with the
> shaw translations and fonts included), curricula which could be incorporated
> into another class such as English or a vocational class which already
> teaches various forms of shorthand.
> >
> > We may only get a few hundred teachers in different schools to request
> these, but it could effect thousands of students.
> >
> >
> > You know, in 2011 it'll be fifty years since the competition to design
> the alphabet. Â We should do something quite big to celebrate the
> anniversary and publicise the alphabet. Â What do you think?
> >
> > Thomas
> >
> >
> >
> > This is something I tried to post before but did not get thru.
> >
> > Phonetic shorthand vs. quasi-phonetic texting
> >
> > Phonetic texting is stuck with the existing keypads.
> > This makes it difficult to augment the alphabet or use a keypad code.
> >
> > One answer is to reduce the phonemicity of the code to what can be
> readily handled.
> >
> > QicRyt is one proposal for phonetic texting:
> >
> >
> >
> > Check out Adrocles and the Lion (Penguin Dual Reader) Probably available
> on Google Books.
> > In this book, the Shavian transcription require 2/3's the space required
> for the traditional notation.
> > The difference would not have been so clear if a condensed type had been
> used instead of a book face.
> >
> > GUS: Dt dipends on hw wel u cn si smol letrs...
> > Bt if no problm, y nt us dm tgedr wid QR - den ud sev ivn mor.
> >
> > SB: Can you recognize these magazine and store names in QR?
> > It is next to impossible to do so in Shavian until you memoirze the new
> sound-signs.
> > QR does not respell proper nouns but if they did....
> >
> >
> >
> > Lyf mag'zin y = why, wie, /aI/ @I/ /j/
> > McDon'lds apostrophe = schwa /@/ or /V/
> > Mesis e = /E/ /e/ or /eI/ ekr = acre or ecker
> > Sports 'tor'ti s = /s/ or /z/, t = /t/ or /theta/
> > Sacs Fift Avinu
> Coca Cola not much of a challenge here. koka kola
> >
> > Coca Cola there is no difference in QikRyt and even the Shavian can be
> recognized.
> > images may not display:
>
> > Ston Henj
> >
> > Stit syns
> >
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shawalphabet/files/shavian.swf
> > Simple text animation using Shavian spelling. You need a Flash player or
> Flash-equipped browser to view it.
> >
> >
> http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/its-offishal--english-iz-darned-hard-to-lurn-20091116-ii9z.html
> >
> > These images probably will not display but I thought I would experiment
> >
>
>
>

Are new symbols for sound signs a feature or a defect?
They have to be learned from scratch but there are no interfering
traditional meanings.

Thomas,

I agree that Shaw and Twain both thought that you could not use Roman
letters in a
reform because they already had too much "baggage". Using them in novel
ways ultimately
causes those not familiar with how they have been reasigned to lable
them as uneducated spellings.
Regularized English can look like misspelled English.

Twain could see no beauty in a reform that reassigns letters and uses
digraphs to represent the phonemes of English. Here is an example from
Saaspel. *www.saaspel.com

Th oonli acyurut waa tu fiind aut wot peepl want iz fr
th Society tu get scuulz tu trii aut nyu speling iidiaz.
reassignments: say see sigh sew sue = saa see sii soo suu

Shaw thought that many people would regard such spellings as uneducated.
--Steve

---
> > SB: In the case of Unifon, you only need to memorize 12 new or
slightly revised sound-signs.
> > With the Shaw Alphabet you have to start from scratch and lean all
40+ sound signs.

> THOMAS: That's not a bug, it's a feature. An explicit provision of
the alphabet was that it should not share any letters with the Latin
alphabet, so that Shavian text did not appear to be misspelt
Latin-alphabet text. (This wasn't entirely followed: So, Zoo, If, and
Oak are very close to very similar Latin-alphabet letters.)

> > SB: To view the Unifon script, you will need to download the latest
Unifon fonts and install them on your computer. This is easy to do and
almost semi-automatic. If you do not download the fonts, you will view
the keyboard code which is a mixed case notation. Unifon is all
uppercase.

> THOMAS: It does disturb me that we're in 2010 and people are still
remapping the Latin-alphabet codepoints. There are perfectly good Unifon
codepoints: http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/unifon.html . People
should use them.
> Thomas

Steve: I think there is one Unifon advocate that uses them. Can you
explain how to do this?

Reasons Why Shavian Never Caught On (found on the internet):

George Bernard Shaw was a spelling reformist too. When he died
in 1950, his will provided for a contest to design a new, phonetic
alphabet. A man named Kingsley Read won the contest with his
Shavian Alphabet, but alas, it never gained popularity for many
reasons, not the least of which was that it was based on the
phonetics of England's King George V.

More can be perused at:
http://everything2.com/title/spelling+reform

But, was it, really?--
wonders dshep

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "stbett" <stbett@...> wrote:
> I agree that Shaw and Twain both thought that you could not use Roman
> letters in a
> reform because they already had too much "baggage". Using them in novel
> ways ultimately
> causes those not familiar with how they have been reasigned to lable
> them as uneducated spellings.
> Regularized English can look like misspelled English.

I think it made more sense for Unifon than Shavian, at least initially, because (if I understand correctly) it was a bridge for children to reading the conventional spelling. So some amount of overlap was reasonable.

> > THOMAS: It does disturb me that we're in 2010 and people are still
> remapping the Latin-alphabet codepoints. There are perfectly good Unifon
> codepoints: http://www.evertype.com/standards/csur/unifon.html . People
> should use them.
> > Thomas
>
> Steve: I think there is one Unifon advocate that uses them. Can you
> explain how to do this?

Certainly. I've just written something up here:

http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/62438.html

(I post the link here rather than the text because I don't want to lose the links within it.) But there's probably far more I forgot to mention: do let me know if you have any questions!

Thomas

I have a number of versions of the Shavian transliterator around (a program that can be used to make Shavian-alphabet versions of programs). The most general of them is a tool called Sparkle. It does .po files, and in theory files in Mozilla's formats and .srt subtitles files.

I was thinking of packaging up Sparkle in case anyone else wants to use it, since it's pretty useful to me.

However, there's the question of what happens to words found during translation which aren't in the dictionary. At the moment, it spits out an HTML page with links to the dictionary pages so you can fill them in. That requires you to load the page in your browser and follow each link, which isn't very helpful. I was also thinking of making it able to output a simple XML file, where you could fill in transliterations; then it would have a switch to read the file back and update the wiki using the MediaWiki API. That's kind of clunky, though.

There is another solution: I could just add an HTML front end and make Sparkle into a web tool instead. You'd be able to upload translatable files, press a few buttons, and download them again in Shavian (or another altscript, at your choice, such as Unifon or Deseret); you'd also be given a list of words to fill in which weren't found in the dictionary, and they would be added to the wiki automatically.

I'm not sure who else would use such a tool, though, in either of its possible incarnations. Let me know if it would be interesting to you.

Thomas,

I would be interested in the web based app. Actualy what I am looking
for is an app that would work on urls.

It would take as input a URL and return in your web browser the web
page transliteration. Aditionaly the pages links would be changed.
The links when clicked would provide the linked webpage also
transliterated.

Either way I'd love to have Sparkel to play around with.

--Mitch

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Thomas <tthurman@...> wrote:

>
>
> I have a number of versions of the Shavian transliterator around (a program
> that can be used to make Shavian-alphabet versions of programs). The most
> general of them is a tool called Sparkle. It does .po files, and in theory
> files in Mozilla's formats and .srt subtitles files.
>
> I was thinking of packaging up Sparkle in case anyone else wants to use it,
> since it's pretty useful to me.
>
> However, there's the question of what happens to words found during
> translation which aren't in the dictionary. At the moment, it spits out an
> HTML page with links to the dictionary pages so you can fill them in. That
> requires you to load the page in your browser and follow each link, which
> isn't very helpful. I was also thinking of making it able to output a simple
> XML file, where you could fill in transliterations; then it would have a
> switch to read the file back and update the wiki using the MediaWiki API.
> That's kind of clunky, though.
>
> There is another solution: I could just add an HTML front end and make
> Sparkle into a web tool instead. You'd be able to upload translatable files,
> press a few buttons, and download them again in Shavian (or another
> altscript, at your choice, such as Unifon or Deseret); you'd also be given a
> list of words to fill in which weren't found in the dictionary, and they
> would be added to the wiki automatically.
>
> I'm not sure who else would use such a tool, though, in either of its
> possible incarnations. Let me know if it would be interesting to you.
>
>
>

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 18:21, Mitch "Narmical" Morris
<Narmical@...m> wrote:
>
> Actualy what I am looking
> for is an app that would work on urls.
>
> It would take as input a URL and return in your web browser the web
> page transliteration.  Aditionaly the pages links would be changed.
> The links when clicked would provide the linked webpage also
> transliterated.

So, something like translate.google.com?

If you did do something like that, another feature of
translate.google.com that I find nifty is that every sentence has a
tooltip/hover text consisting of the source text.

So if you're having trouble reading a particular word, you could hover
your mouse over the sentence and it would show you the original
Roman-alphabet text in the tooltip.

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

Philip,

Yes, like the way translate.google.com works.

Thanks for the tip!

--Mitch

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 12:36 PM, Philip Newton <philip.newton@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 18:21, Mitch "Narmical" Morris
> <Narmical@... <Narmical%40hotmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Actualy what I am looking
> > for is an app that would work on urls.
> >
> > It would take as input a URL and return in your web browser the web
> > page transliteration. Aditionaly the pages links would be changed.
> > The links when clicked would provide the linked webpage also
> > transliterated.
>
> So, something like translate.google.com?
>
> If you did do something like that, another feature of
> translate.google.com that I find nifty is that every sentence has a
> tooltip/hover text consisting of the source text.
>
> So if you're having trouble reading a particular word, you could hover
> your mouse over the sentence and it would show you the original
> Roman-alphabet text in the tooltip.
>
> Cheers,
> Philip
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@... <philip.newton%40gmail.com>>
>
>
>

Hi Dshep
Sorry, for being out of touch.
While I am against a prescriptive model for English, I wouldn't mind having a few model speakers who have a clear precise diction.

But I would think that King George VI, wouldn't be one of them.
He had a nervous stutter and an affected style of speaking, which while easy to understand, was quite different from normal speech.
He was a heavy smoker, to maintain his equanimity. He did a great job as a King, but his devotion to duty eventually killed him early.

I don't think that GBS anticipated Yootube, where anyone who wishes
can study and learn from the voice transcriptions of the Monarch, warts and all.

I think the real reason that the Shaw Alphabet never caught on, was because back in the 60's, it was too difficult, to provide a Library of Shaw reading material. What with Shaw Alphabet Fonts and automatic Shavian transliteration available on the computer today, those reasons are no longer insurmountable, for the average person.

I don't see any reaso why one of these portable E-books can not present Literature in Shaw format or Roman format, or even toggle back and forth between the 2 alphabets.

Any way glad to be back.
Regards, Paul V.
__________________________attached__________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, dshep <dshepx@...> wrote:
> Reasons Why Shavian Never Caught On (found on the internet):
>
> George Bernard Shaw was a spelling reformist too. When he died
> in 1950, his will provided for a contest to design a new, phonetic
> alphabet. A man named Kingsley Read won the contest with his
> Shavian Alphabet, but alas, it never gained popularity for many
> reasons, not the least of which was that it was based on the
> phonetics of England's King George V.
>
> More can be perused at:
> http://everything2.com/title/spelling+reform
>
> But, was it, really?--
> wonders dshep
>