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--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "dshepx" <dshep@g...> wrote:
> Thank you for your undogmatic manner; even though you
> reach the same unsurprising conclusion you do so without
> outrage.

Dogma is the thing that will destroy a person's belief in logic if the logic doesn't win
first. I was just won over by logic.

> There is, I think, a fundamental question that should be asked
> by anyone interested in the Shaw alphabet, and that is, what
> is the point of this alphabet — what is it for? If it is merely
> to be for the exchange of chit-chat among a small group of
> devoted followers then any clarity of conception that it may
> possess is of little importance, indeed, of none at all. Who is
> to care? As has been noted, all one need do is commit to
> memory whatever the sound-letter relationship happens to
> be, just as one would do for any code, no matter how
> consequent or however arbitrarily formed, and all will be fine.
> An extended morse code would do almost as well.
>
> If however there is hope or ambition for a greater role for the
> Shaw alphabet out among a wider public then a more stringent
> attitude should, I boorishly maintain, be taken about the nature
> and ability of this alphabet to satisfy the concerns of a much
> more sceptical audience. The number of years the alphabet has
> remained unsullied by complaint, the prejudices and preferences
> of the (vast) number of current users, and the existence of one
> out-of-print book will in no way deter future critics, especially
> educators (if the Shaw alphabet ever makes it to the schools)
> from insisting upon whatever changes are deemed necessary
> to ensure ease of instruction and comprehension. Ease of
> instruction for the instructors, ready comprehension for the
> instructed. And in the furtherance of these related aims, logic
> matters; logic matters a great deal, as it is the framework upon
> which usage builds and understanding rests.

I don't think these few letters have deterred anyone from learning Shavian. I decided to
learn Shavian because of it's incredible logic, even if these reversals don't make sense.
Oil and Out have more or less unique shapes, not related to other vowels like most of
the the other diphthongs are. Air and Err include the roar/ray shape ligatured to vowel
letters that don't exist by themselves. Why is this? No one complains about these
oddities. I only grumble silently about them. If we're going to fix up Shavian, let's not
just reverse some letters. Let's stamp out all these illogical features and make an
entirely new alphabet.
You also have to keep in mind that most students of Shavian don't know the difference
between voiced and voiceless sounds, or the other sounds that Read represented
featurally. The logic there won't help them any until they learn these things. And
despite what some will say, few of us really have a good understanding of our
phonemes. We simply recognize them in speech as different sounds, usually without
knowing or caring much about their relationships and such technicalities. This, of
course, is no reason to throw out the logic. The logic is good. But again we're faced
with little more than a difference of opinions. Who's right? Who's to say?

> Would it not be better for this group to take the lead in bringing
> this alphabet up to the standards that almost certainly will be
> required of it if it is to meet the demands of widespread use,
> rather than clinging to the way in which individual members
> happened to find it? If there is little interest in taking the Shaw
> alphabet beyond its current function I fear its existence as a
> curiousity is all but ensured, and a great potential benefit will
> be squandered through short-sightedness. I say again, offer the
> (English-speaking) world something too attractive to neglect,
> too reasonable to avoid, and perhaps, just perhaps, it might catch
> on.

If it were so easy, Shavian would probably already be a lot more popular than it is. I
think to get it to catch on, the thing we have to do is use it in plain sight of others rather
than relegating it to being the topic of our debates and the cypher for our diaries (or
journals, chit-chat, or what have you). Whether it's traditional Shavian or a new, more
logical Shavian, people won't take interest in it if they never see it. That said, I think I'm
going to start wearing some shirts from my Shavian store (http://www.cafepress.com/
shawstudio). (not a plug! honest!)

> This has certainly been a petty dispute, and I personally do not
> care who is right or wrong in this or any other issue, or who's
> fault any error was — I am interested in this alphabet and its
> future. I would like to see it have a future, and parochial
> reflexes overcome.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on that. The issue here is that we all have different
ideas of how to do that. If you hadn't noticed yet, I'm right in the middle of most issues,
and there's no exception here.

> The coastline idea is intriguing, but to me is too clever by half.
> If it were true however I would be much impressed at the
> unexpected degree of sophistication this would imply.

Is it really that sophisticated that Read, who wrote quite a bit in Shavian and proto-
Shavian as he was designing it, might have noticed that the coastlines were somewhat
indistinct and wished to alter them a bit? Maybe. But Read was certainly aware of the
coastlines, and emphasized their importance in the Quikscript manual.

> > Consonant clusters are almost always all tall or all deep, except
> > where Ing is involved
>
> Don't consonant clusters come as a mixed bag?

Well, I meant to say that tall and deep consonants are rarely mixed in the same cluster.

> consonant clusters as prefixes:
>
> with l (tall or deep and short):
> bl, kl, fl, gl, pl, sl;
>
> with r (tall or deep and short):
> br, kr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr, (th)r, wr;
>
> with y (tall or deep and tall):
> by, ky, dy, fy, hy, ly, my, ny, sy, ty, vy;
>
> with w (tall or deep and deep):
> kw, dw, gw, hw, sw, tw;
>
>
> consonant clusters as suffixes (these do have a tendency to
> couple in pairs of similar height, except for the anomaly
> ng+k, which is yet another reason for.....oh, never mind):

/N/ is tall, and so is /k/. This cluster, then agrees with the statement I made earlier.
When /N/ and /g/ come together, it's typically (in most dialects) in a medial position,
where there is a syllable break between them.
It may be interesting to note that when Tolkien wrote in Elvish for the cover page of
LotR, he wrote /rINg/ (7Tb if you have a Tengwar font) rather than /rIN/ (7Tg) as I would
pronounce it. I'm not sure if he made the distinction anywhere else (I don't see it, at
least), so it may have just been his Tengwar mode and not his pronunciation.

> with l (short and deep or tall)
> lb, lk, ld, lf, lm, lp, ls, lt, lz;
>
> with r, or r-substitute (short and deep or tall)
> rb, rk, rd, rf, rl, rm, rn, rp, rs, rt, rz;
>
> with k (short or tall and tall)
> lk, rk, sk;
>
> with b, maybe (tall or short and deep)
> lb, mb, rb;
>
> with p (tall or short and tall)
> lp, mp, sp;
>
> with s (tall and tall)
> ks, ps, ts, ths;
>
> with t (tall or short and tall)
> kt, lt, mt, nt, pt, rt, st;
>
> with z (deep or short and deep)
> gz, lz, mz, nz, rz;
>
> I'm sure there are more, and triple clusters besides

Consonants that regularly form clusters with either voiced or voiceless consonants are
typically short. If this were carried through logically to all the other letters, /w/ and /j/
should be short as well, except that they don't form these clusters quite as often. And I
defy you to find any words that begin with /dw/, /kj/ or /sj/. Also note that when <r>
precedes a consonant, it's always a vowel and doesn't belong on a list of consonant
clusters.

> > (Hay doesn't appear in clusters).
>
> You ignore the 'hw' (=when) and 'hy' (= hue) clusters, as do
> many people today. They still exist however.

Yes, I forgot these two. But by all rights, the 'w' and 'y' there should both be short, as
should /N/ by the above logic, and perhaps /h/ since it doesn't have a voiced
counterpart. Do we see any other tall consonants without an associated short one? Only
the ligature Yew.

> > */fit-al/ vs. /fi-dal/ (*fittle vx. fiddle)
> > /pup-et/ vs. */pu-bet/ (puppet vs. *pubbet)
> > */dAt-i/ vs. /dA-di/ (*datty vs. daddy)
>
> Couldn't they just as well be fid-el, bub-el, and dad-i?
> Just asking.

I suppose they could be. Maybe it's just my accent or some oddity of mine that I break
these syllables the way I do. My Webster's dictionary points out in its introduction (yes, I
was bored enough to read it) that syllable breaks are generally arbitrary in English. What
do you think about this? I've found that when an even number of consonants come
together, we usually break them in the middle. But what do we do with an odd number?
And in my accent at least, a lone medial consonant usually goes with the first syllable if
it's voiceless and with the next if it's voiced, though, I have a tendency to double such
medial consonants so that there's one in each syllable.

Shavians,

A few weeks ago someon asked, "What is the purpose of the Shaw Alphabet?"
The question was never answered. I don't pretend the following is a complete
answer
but perhaps it is a start. Please add your views. Indicate why Shavian would
be better than the IPA as a parallel writing system. source:
www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/shaw.htm

Another unanswered question was what font should be used when posting
samples of Shavian text. I think the moderator should make a determination so
everyone can download this font and display the text.

What is the purpose of the Shaw Alphabet?
_______________________________________

The purpose of the Shaw Alphabet is to correct the inadequacies of the
traditional English orthography which is deficient in consistency, ease of learning,
and ease of writing.
It does not provide a reliable guide to the way English is spoken.

PV: The Shaw alphabet was developed in the 1958 and 1959, at the specific
bequest of George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright. As a writer of spoken
English, he believed the Roman alphabet was inadequate to represent spoken
English.
SB: You can read exactly what Shaw believed in his 1941 preface to Wilson's
book, The Miraculous Birth of Language. It was not that the Roman alphabet was
inadequate as much as it was that it was not efficient.

In English, the letters of the alphabet represent not one but 4 or more sound
categories (phonemes). When phonemes are assigned to just one letter or
letter combination, the resulting word spellings no longer look right. To most
readers, the regularized orthography looks like uneducated misspelling.
English could be written in an augmented Spanish orthography which would be
about 85% phonemic, up from about 7% phonemic. Few people, however, would
accept this change.
Hir iz an egzammpl ov Spanglish www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/spanglish.htm
Hér iz an exampl øv WLO (Webster Latin 1)
hir iz An egzAmpal ov Da SY Alfabet

Shaw's solution was a new alphabet that did not have all of this historical
baggage.
PV: He believed that a phonetic alphabet tailored to English would both
improve and standardize English communication around the world, and reduce class
distinction based on accent.




Steve T. Bett, age 65
Austin, Texas
sbett@... 512-302-3014 www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett
retired professor, volunteer literacy instructor
moderator of Saundspel-The Phonology Forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel

Hi Shep

I said Hay doesn't appear in Consonant Clusters.
H is an aspirate and generally include with the Consonants.
but hw is a way of writing and unvoiced W sound (Semi-vowel),
not a Consonant cluster.
The real pronunciation of hw together can be found in the Spanish
pronunciation of Juan. (Hwon)
The y of hy in hue is again a semi-vowel at best.
I pronounce it, myself as a
part of the Vowel Dipthong. h(eu) = hV.
Do you have any clear cut English examples of h as part of a
Consonant Cluster.

Regards, Paul V.
__________________________attached______________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "dshepx" <dshep@g...> wrote:
>
> > (Hay doesn't appear in clusters).
>
> You ignore the 'hw' (=when) and 'hy' (= hue) clusters, as do
> many people today. They still exist however.
>
> regards,
> dshep

Hi Steve
It seems like you are asking 3 different questions in your attachment.
Let me have a go at answering the Main question.

What is the purpose of the Shaw Alphabet?

First some discussion.
You said:
"The purpose of the Shaw Alphabet is to correct the inadequacies of
the traditional English orthography which is deficient in
consistency, ease of learning, and ease of writing.
The T.O. does not provide a reliable guide to the way English is
spoken."
G.B. Shaw said:
"I want to create a phonetic alphabet tailored to Modern English
Pronunciation which would both improve and standardize English
written communication around the world, and reduce class distinction
based on accent."
This description of his motives, indicates his purpose in promoting
and contracting out the building of the Shavian Alphabet, was to
strengthen and expand the English Language, and to create a standard
pronunciation for easier understanding and education of the English
Masses. He was a Socialist after all, and his abiding interest was to
improve the lot of the poor, the ignorant and the unlettered.
In his time, the majority of Englishman had minimal Education.
The English women only had a substitute for what we would consider to
be a rational education.
Obviously making literature/literacy more accessible, produces a more
liberal egalitarian society, and which includes women.
I imagine he would be surprised how elitist, some of his supporters
have become.

As for me, I have a more pragmatic purpose for Shavian.
I like to read. And I believe that every language needs a tune up
every 5 or 6 hundred years, or else it becomes out of touch with the
Vulgar speech of the people. Look at Latin and all those fragmented
Romance languages. I would like to save English the trouble.
Look at the differeance between Spoken English and what passes for
English in modern literature.
It may already be too late.
We have to act now.
Save English as we speak it today.

Regards, Paul V.

___________________________attached___________________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Shavians,
> A few weeks ago someon asked, "What is the purpose of the Shaw
Alphabet?"
> The question was never answered. I don't pretend the following is
a complete
> answer
> but perhaps it is a start. Please add your views.

Another question would be:
"Why would Shavian be better than the IPA as a parallel writing
system".
> Another unanswered question was what font should be used when
posting
> samples of Shavian text. I think the moderator should make a
determination so
> everyone can download this font and display the text.
>
> What is the purpose of the Shaw Alphabet?
> _______________________________________
>
> The purpose of the Shaw Alphabet is to correct the inadequacies of
the
> traditional English orthography which is deficient in consistency,
ease of learning,
> and ease of writing.
> It does not provide a reliable guide to the way English is spoken.
>
>

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Joe" wrote:
>


> Dogma is the thing that will destroy a
> person's belief in logic if the logic doesn't
> win first. I was just won over by logic.
.....
> I don't think these few letters have
> deterred anyone from learning Shavian.
> I decided to learn Shavian because of
> it's incredible logic, even if these
> reversals don't make sense.

Certainly no one in this group have been
deterred, because we are actively interested,
perhaps even fascinated by Shavian, and need
no encouragement. I was thinking of everyone
else, whether they be indifferent, amused, or
hostile to the idea of learning a new alphabet,
and who obviously haven't. The number of people
today who can read or write a sentence in
Shavian could probably fit into a small room.

For others to be interested, to actually
overcome the inertia that such an undertaking
would entail, that is, to exert a little
effort for which there is no immediate benefit,
the Shaw alphabet has to shown to be, it seems
to me, as something really, really appealing,
without any feature that anyone could readily
identify as a fault and use as an excuse for
dismissing the whole idea. Wasn't there an
election in the United States recently? Was
not the slightest inconsistency in the two
opponents' positions or records used as proof
of undeniable perfidy and unsuitability of
holding office? That is what I have meant by
making it as foolproof as possible, by removing
the obvious flaws that critics will happily point
out to impede diffusion, not as an exercise
in perfection for perfection's sake. The members
of this group are enthusiasts, which is not to
be taken as criticism, but as a reminder that
such an attitude encourages blind spots. Others
will not be as enthusiastic, nor as forgiving,
and will need much persuasion — and what better
persuasion than that provided by a working
demonstration a well-nigh flawless alternative
alphabet?

> Oil and Out have more or less unique shapes,
> not related to other vowels like most of the
> the other diphthongs are.

This could be because they are the only two
that are diphthongs by everybody's definition.

> Air and Err include the roar/ray shape
> ligatured to vowel letters that don't exist
> by themselves. Why is this? No one complains
> about these oddities. I only grumble silently
> about them. If we're going to fix up Shavian,
> let's not just reverse some letters. Let's
> stamp out all these illogical features and
> make an entirely new alphabet.

They were meant to be ligatures of the 'egg' and
'ado' letters with the 'r', but given an extra little
twist so that there would be no confusion with 'array'.
It was a clever idea but one that spoils the scale of
these letters, I think.

> You also have to keep in mind that most students
> of Shavian don't know the difference between
> voiced and voiceless sounds, or the other sounds
> that Read represented featurally. The logic there
> won't help them any until they learn these things.

But good teachers do, if the Shaw alphabet could
ever be introduced into the schools in some form or
fashion. And even the self-taught shall eventually
stumble upon this important feature when using Shavian,
and marvel at its conception.

> And despite what some will say, few of us really
> have a good understanding of our phonemes.
> We simply recognize them in speech as different
> sounds, usually without knowing or caring much
> about their relationships and such technicalities.
> This, of course, is no reason to throw out the
> logic. The logic is good. But again we're faced
> with little more than a difference of opinions.
> Who's right? Who's to say?

So true. But haven't you learned a lot more about the
technicalities of language, or at least speech, simply
by using Shavian? I would think this should be an
English-teacher's dream, to be able to present a system
of writing that automatically improves one's grasp of
the mechanics of language.


> > Would it not be better for this group to take
> > the lead in bringing this alphabet up to the
> > standards that almost certainly will be required
> > of it if it is to meet the demands of widespread
> > use, rather than clinging to the way in which
> > individual members happened to find it?

> If it were so easy, Shavian would probably already be
> a lot more popular than it is.

Yes it would be. But it isn't, and something is needed.
Something convincing.

...


> > The coastline idea is intriguing, but to me is too
> > clever by half. If it were true however I would be
> > much impressed at the unexpected degree of
> > sophistication this would imply.

> Is it really that sophisticated that Read, who
> wrote quite a bit in Shavian and proto-Shavian
> as he was designing it, might have noticed that
> the coastlines were somewhat indistinct and wished
> to alter them a bit? Maybe. But Read was certainly
> aware of the coastlines, and emphasized their
> importance in the Quikscript manual.

It certainly is an intriguing notion.


> > Don't consonant clusters come as a mixed bag?

> Well, I meant to say that tall and deep consonants
> are rarely mixed in the same cluster.

Although there are instances of mixed clusters,\beautiful\,
Gwendolyn, for example, the above appears to be true

> > consonant clusters as suffixes (these do have a
> > tendency to couple in pairs of similar height,
> > except for the anomaly ng+k, which is yet another
> > reason for.....oh, never mind):

> /N/ is tall, and so is /k/. This cluster, then agrees
> with the statement I made earlier. When /N/ and /g/ come
> together, it's typically (in most dialects) in a medial
> position, where there is a syllable break between them.

Got a little confused there. Such are the perils of late-night
ruminations.

> It may be interesting to note that when Tolkien
> wrote in Elvish for the cover page of LotR, he
> wrote /rINg/ (7Tb if you have a Tengwar font)
> rather than /rIN/ (7Tg) as I would pronounce it.
> I'm not sure if he made the distinction anywhere
> else (I don't see it, at least), so it may have
> just been his Tengwar mode and not his pronunciation.

I believe that is because Tolkien was originally a professor
of Anglo-Saxon literature, and that is the way our forebears
are supposed to have spoken.

> Consonants that regularly form clusters with either
> voiced or voiceless consonants are typically short.
> If this were carried through logically to all the
> other letters, /w/ and /j/ should be short as well,
> except that they don't form these clusters quite as
> often.

I wonder perhaps if this was the reason Read chose to have
short consonants at all. Most clusters may well be with
either \l\ or \r\, and there would have been many more
double-talls and double-deeps, had only vowels been short.

> And I defy you to find any words that begin
> with /dw/, /kj/ or /sj/.

Dwell and dwelling — good strong words, been around a
long time; some people are named Dwight as in Dwight
D. Eisenhower, as well as Dwayne; I've heard Dweeb as
a slang attribute, and Frank Zappa actually named one
of his children Dweezil (OK, that's a little special).

There there's cute /kjut/, cue, cube, que, cure; and suit
/sjut/, sue, assume. The intrusion of the palatal before
the vowel can be slight or absent in the speech of many,
but I think everyone distinguishes cute from coot.

> Also note that when <r> precedes a consonant,
> it's always a vowel and doesn't belong on a list
> of consonant clusters.

Well, not in rhotic speech. Words such as 'hard,' 'shark,'
and the like can have very pronounced 'r's in the mouths
of some; it's often the tip-off of an American accent when
speaking some other language.

> > > (Hay doesn't appear in clusters).
> >
> > You ignore the 'hw' (=when) and 'hy' (= hue)
> > clusters, as do many people today. They still
> > exist however.

> Yes, I forgot these two. But by all rights, the
> 'w' and 'y' there should both be short, as should
> /N/ by the above logic, and perhaps /h/ since it
> doesn't have a voiced counterpart. Do we see any
> other tall consonants without an associated short
> one? Only the ligature Yew.

Having them short would have been an improvement, then all
the sonorants would be of similar height.

> > > */fit-al/ vs. /fi-dal/ (*fittle vx. fiddle)
> > > /pup-et/ vs. */pu-bet/ (puppet vs. *pubbet)
> > > */dAt-i/ vs. /dA-di/ (*datty vs. daddy)
> >
> > Couldn't they just as well be fid-el, bub-el,
> > and dad-i? Just asking.

> I suppose they could be. Maybe it's just my accent
> or some oddity of mine that I break these syllables
> the way I do. My Webster's dictionary points out in
> its introduction (yes, I was bored enough to read it)
> that syllable breaks are generally arbitrary in English.
> What do you think about this? I've found that when an
> even number of consonants come together, we usually
> break them in the middle. But what do we do with an
> odd number?

> And in my accent at least, a lone medial consonant
> usually goes with the first syllable if it's voiceless
> and with the next if it's voiced, though, I have a
> tendency to double such medial consonants so that
> there's one in each syllable.

How would you spell them in Shavian?
\fidal, pUpat, dAdi\ or \fiddal, pUppat, dAddi\?

........
cheers,
dshep

the Shaw alphabet could
ever be introduced into the schools in some form.
And even the self-taught, if they have a little insight might
eventually stumble upon this important feature when using Shavian,
and marvel at its conception and the internal consistency.

I am not just intrigued by the implicit coastlining of English words
words written in the Shavian Alphabet, but consider it an essential
factor for improved high speed reading.
We concentrate on the Phonetic aspect of the Shavian Alphabet, which
make it consistent and easy to learn, but we must remember it was
also designed to take less space and for words to be more
recognizable from a distance.
As people become more fluent with their reading, to read faster,
they try to recognise common short words by their outline or
coastline.

As we see that as Consononant clusters, are usually lumped together
as 2 or 3 talls, 2 or 3 deeps, a mixture of one short and one or
more talls or a mixture of one short and one or more deeps, they
form common easily recognisable patterns. As a valid English
syllable can only have a maximum of 2 Consonsant clusters, and the
clusters have to separated by a Vowel, which is almost invariably
represented by a short letter, it becomes a non-random pattern.
Patterns with an internal Logic are easier for our brains to
remember, even if we don't fully recognise them, consciously.

Look at the implicit pattern found in the first 10 Arabic Digits.


0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

^---------------------------------------------------------^

^-----------------^ ^------------------^
^------------------------------^
^------------------^
Especially if you remember one way to write a 7 is with a bar,
crossing the downstroke.
I think it helps kids to keep the digits straight in their mind in
the proper order.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. This is another unrecognised plus for the Shavian Alphabet.
Its hidden internal consistencies. For example, that vowels are
usually Short.
And it doesn't even require an understanding of voiced versus
unvoiced consonants.
_______________________________attached________________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "dshepx" <dshep@g...> wrote:
>
> > Oil and Out have more or less unique shapes,
> > not related to other vowels like most of the
> > the other diphthongs are.
>
> This could be because they are the only two
> that are diphthongs by everybody's definition.
>
> > Air and Err include the roar/ray shape
> > ligatured to vowel letters that don't exist
> > by themselves. Why is this? No one complains
> > about these oddities. I only grumble silently
> > about them. If we're going to fix up Shavian,
> > let's not just reverse some letters. Let's
> > stamp out all these illogical features and
> > make an entirely new alphabet.
>
> They were meant to be ligatures of the 'egg' and
> 'ado' letters with the 'r', but given an extra little
> twist so that there would be no confusion with 'array'.
> It was a clever idea but one that spoils the scale of
> these letters, I think.
>
> > You also have to keep in mind that most students
> > of Shavian don't know the difference between
> > voiced and voiceless sounds, or the other sounds
> > that Read represented featurally. The logic there
> > won't help them any until they learn these things.
>
> But good teachers do, if the Shaw alphabet could
> ever be introduced into the schools in some form or
> fashion. And even the self-taught shall eventually
> stumble upon this important feature when using Shavian,
> and marvel at its conception.
>
> > And despite what some will say, few of us really
> > have a good understanding of our phonemes.
> > We simply recognize them in speech as different
> > sounds, usually without knowing or caring much
> > about their relationships and such technicalities.
> > This, of course, is no reason to throw out the
> > logic. The logic is good. But again we're faced
> > with little more than a difference of opinions.
> > Who's right? Who's to say?
>
> So true. But haven't you learned a lot more about the
> technicalities of language, or at least speech, simply
> by using Shavian? I would think this should be an
> English-teacher's dream, to be able to present a system
> of writing that automatically improves one's grasp of
> the mechanics of language.
>
>
> > > Would it not be better for this group to take
> > > the lead in bringing this alphabet up to the
> > > standards that almost certainly will be required
> > > of it if it is to meet the demands of widespread
> > > use, rather than clinging to the way in which
> > > individual members happened to find it?
>
> > If it were so easy, Shavian would probably already be
> > a lot more popular than it is.
>
> Yes it would be. But it isn't, and something is needed.
> Something convincing.
>
> ...
>
>
> > > The coastline idea is intriguing, but to me is too
> > > clever by half. If it were true however I would be
> > > much impressed at the unexpected degree of
> > > sophistication this would imply.
>
> > Is it really that sophisticated that Read, who
> > wrote quite a bit in Shavian and proto-Shavian
> > as he was designing it, might have noticed that
> > the coastlines were somewhat indistinct and wished
> > to alter them a bit? Maybe. But Read was certainly
> > aware of the coastlines, and emphasized their
> > importance in the Quikscript manual.
>
> It certainly is an intriguing notion.
>
>
> > > Don't consonant clusters come as a mixed bag?
>
> > Well, I meant to say that tall and deep consonants
> > are rarely mixed in the same cluster.
>
> Although there are instances of mixed clusters,\beautiful\,
> Gwendolyn, for example, the above appears to be true
>
> > > consonant clusters as suffixes (these do have a
> > > tendency to couple in pairs of similar height,
> > > except for the anomaly ng+k, which is yet another
> > > reason for.....oh, never mind):
>
> > /N/ is tall, and so is /k/. This cluster, then agrees
> > with the statement I made earlier. When /N/ and /g/ come
> > together, it's typically (in most dialects) in a medial
> > position, where there is a syllable break between them.
>
> Got a little confused there. Such are the perils of late-night
> ruminations.
>
> > It may be interesting to note that when Tolkien
> > wrote in Elvish for the cover page of LotR, he
> > wrote /rINg/ (7Tb if you have a Tengwar font)
> > rather than /rIN/ (7Tg) as I would pronounce it.
> > I'm not sure if he made the distinction anywhere
> > else (I don't see it, at least), so it may have
> > just been his Tengwar mode and not his pronunciation.
>
> I believe that is because Tolkien was originally a professor
> of Anglo-Saxon literature, and that is the way our forebears
> are supposed to have spoken.
>
> > Consonants that regularly form clusters with either
> > voiced or voiceless consonants are typically short.
> > If this were carried through logically to all the
> > other letters, /w/ and /j/ should be short as well,
> > except that they don't form these clusters quite as
> > often.
>
> I wonder perhaps if this was the reason Read chose to have
> short consonants at all. Most clusters may well be with
> either \l\ or \r\, and there would have been many more
> double-talls and double-deeps, had only vowels been short.
>
> > And I defy you to find any words that begin
> > with /dw/, /kj/ or /sj/.
>
> Dwell and dwelling — good strong words, been around a
> long time; some people are named Dwight as in Dwight
> D. Eisenhower, as well as Dwayne; I've heard Dweeb as
> a slang attribute, and Frank Zappa actually named one
> of his children Dweezil (OK, that's a little special).
>
> There there's cute /kjut/, cue, cube, que, cure; and suit
> /sjut/, sue, assume. The intrusion of the palatal before
> the vowel can be slight or absent in the speech of many,
> but I think everyone distinguishes cute from coot.
>
> > Also note that when <r> precedes a consonant,
> > it's always a vowel and doesn't belong on a list
> > of consonant clusters.
>
> Well, not in rhotic speech. Words such as 'hard,' 'shark,'
> and the like can have very pronounced 'r's in the mouths
> of some; it's often the tip-off of an American accent when
> speaking some other language.
>
> > > > (Hay doesn't appear in clusters).
> > >
> > > You ignore the 'hw' (=when) and 'hy' (= hue)
> > > clusters, as do many people today. They still
> > > exist however.
>
> > Yes, I forgot these two. But by all rights, the
> > 'w' and 'y' there should both be short, as should
> > /N/ by the above logic, and perhaps /h/ since it
> > doesn't have a voiced counterpart. Do we see any
> > other tall consonants without an associated short
> > one? Only the ligature Yew.
>
> Having them short would have been an improvement, then all
> the sonorants would be of similar height.
>
> > > > */fit-al/ vs. /fi-dal/ (*fittle vx. fiddle)
> > > > /pup-et/ vs. */pu-bet/ (puppet vs. *pubbet)
> > > > */dAt-i/ vs. /dA-di/ (*datty vs. daddy)
> > >
> > > Couldn't they just as well be fid-el, bub-el,
> > > and dad-i? Just asking.
>
> > I suppose they could be. Maybe it's just my accent
> > or some oddity of mine that I break these syllables
> > the way I do. My Webster's dictionary points out in
> > its introduction (yes, I was bored enough to read it)
> > that syllable breaks are generally arbitrary in English.
> > What do you think about this? I've found that when an
> > even number of consonants come together, we usually
> > break them in the middle. But what do we do with an
> > odd number?
>
> > And in my accent at least, a lone medial consonant
> > usually goes with the first syllable if it's voiceless
> > and with the next if it's voiced, though, I have a
> > tendency to double such medial consonants so that
> > there's one in each syllable.
>
> How would you spell them in Shavian?
> \fidal, pUpat, dAdi\ or \fiddal, pUppat, dAddi\?
>
> ........
> cheers,
> dshep

Tim and others,

Ogden never wanted to link his simplified vocabulary reform to simplified
spelling or alphabet reform. He probably saw these as a competitors for
Shaws support. At one time, BASIC was supposed to receive funding from Shaw.

If one were to take the 10,000 word Oxford Pocket English Dictionary and
remove the redundancies of our rich language and eliminate the words that can
be replaced by combinations of simpler words, 90% of the concepts in that
dictionary can be achieved with 850 words.
The shortened list simplifies the effort to learn words as word signs.
The rules of usage are identical to full English so that the practitioner
communicates is perfectly good, yet simple, English.
We know this simplified language as Basic English, the developer is
Charles K. Ogden, and was released in 1930 with the book: Basic English: A General
Introduction with Rules and Grammar. He founded the Orthological Institute to
develop the tools for teaching Basic English. His most famous associate, I.A.
Richards, led the effort in the Orient, which uses the techniques to this day.

http://ogden.basic-english.org/wordalph.html
A
a , able , about , account , acid , across , act , addition , adjustment ,
advertisement , agreement , after , again , against , air , all , almost , among
, amount , amusement , and , angle , angry , animal , answer , ant , any ,
apparatus , apple , approval , arch , argument , arm , army, art , as , at ,
attack , attempt , attention , attraction , authority , automatic , awake .
Unifon Transcription:
A/c, Abcl cbqt ckqnt asid akrxs akt cdiScn cjustmcnt advcrtIzmcnt
cgrEmcnt aftcr . . . schwa-c (turned u)
Keyboard Shavian transcription
E/a Ebal abQt akQnt Asid Akros Akt adiSan ajustmant
AdvartFzmant agrImant Aftar . . . schwa-a
Does anyone want to produce a compete version in their favorite notation?
http://ogden.basic-english.org/words.html
OPERATIONS - 100 words
come, get, give, go, keep, let, make, put, seem, take, be, do, have, say,
see, send, may, will, about, across, after, against, among, at, before, between,
by, down, from, in, off, on, over, through, to, under, up, with, as, for, of,
till, than,
a , the, all, any, every, little, much, no, other, some, such, that, this, I
, he, you, who,
and, because, but, or, if, though, while, how, when, where, why,
again, ever, far, forward, here, near, now, out, still, then, there,
together, well,
almost, enough, even, not, only, quite, so, very, tomorrow, yesterday,
north, south, east, west, please, yes .
THINGS - 400 General words
account, act, addition, adjustment, advertisement, agreement, air, amount,
amusement, animal, answer, apparatus, approval, argument, art, attack, attempt,
attention, attraction, authority, back, balance, base, behavior, belief,
birth, bit, bite, blood, blow, body, brass, bread, breath, brother, building, burn,
burst, business, butter, canvas, care, cause, chalk, chance, change, cloth,
coal, color, comfort, committee, company, comparison, competition, condition,
connection, control, cook, copper, copy, cork, cotton, cough, country, cover,
crack, credit, crime, crush, cry ,current, curve, damage, danger, daughter,
day, death, debt, decision, degree, design, desire, destruction, detail,
development, digestion, direction, discovery, discussion, disease, disgust, distance,
distribution, division, doubt, drink, driving, dust, earth, edge, education,
effect, end, error, event, example, exchange, existence, expansion, experience,
expert, fact, fall, family, father, fear, feeling, fiction, field, fight,
fire, flame, flight, flower, fold, food, force, form, friend, front, fruit,
glass, gold, government, grain, grass, grip, group, growth, guide, harbor, harmony,
hate, hearing, heat, help, history, hole, hope, hour, humor, ice, idea,
impulse, increase, industry, ink, insect, instrument, insurance, interest,
invention, iron, jelly, join, journey, judge, jump, kick, kiss, knowledge, land,
language, laugh, law, lead, learning, leather, letter, level, lift, light, limit,
linen, liquid, list, look, loss, love, machine, man, manager, mark, market,
mass, meal, measure, meat, meeting, memory, metal, middle, milk, mind, mine,
minute, mist, money, month, morning ,mother, motion, mountain, move, music, name,
nation, need, news, night, noise, note, number, observation, offer, oil,
operation, opinion, order, organization, ornament, owner, page, pain, paint, paper,
part, paste, payment, peace, person, place, plant, play, pleasure, point,
poison, polish, porter, position, powder, power, price, print, process, produce,
profit, property, prose, protest, pull, punishment, purpose, push, quality,
question, rain, range, rate, ray, reaction, reading, reason, record, regret,
relation, religion, representative, request, respect, rest, reward, rhythm, rice,
river, road, roll, room, rub, rule, run, salt, sand, scale, science, sea
seat, secretary, selection, self, sense, servant, sex, shade, shake, shame, shock,
side, sign, silk, silver, sister, size, sky, sleep, slip, slope, smash,
smell, smile, smoke, sneeze, snow, soap, society, son, song, sort, sound, soup,
space, stage, start, statement, steam, steel, step, stitch, stone, stop, story,
stretch, structure substance sugar, suggestion, summer, support, surprise,
swim, system, talk, taste, tax, teaching, tendency, test, theory, thing, thought,
thunder, time, tin, top, touch, trade, transport, trick, trouble, turn, twist,
unit, use, value, verse, vessel, view, voice, walk, war, wash, waste, water,
wave, wax, way, weather, week, weight, wind, wine, winter, woman, wood, wool,
word, work, wound, writing , year .
THINGS - 200 Picturable words - picture list
angle, ant, apple, arch, arm, army, baby, bag, ball, band, basin, basket,
bath, bed, bee, bell, berry, bird, blade, board, boat, bone, book, boot, bottle,
box, boy, brain, brake, branch, brick, bridge, brush, bucket, bulb, button,
cake, camera, card, cart, carriage, cat, chain, cheese, chest, chin, church,
circle, clock, cloud, coat, collar, comb, cord, cow, cup, curtain, cushion, dog,
door, drain, drawer, dress, drop, ear, egg, engine, eye, face, farm, feather,
finger, fish, flag, floor, fly, foot, fork, fowl, frame, garden, girl, glove,
goat, gun, hair, hammer, hand, hat, head, heart, hook, horn, horse, hospital,
house, island, jewel, kettle, key, knee, knife, knot, leaf, leg, library,
line, lip, lock, map, match, monkey, moon, mouth, muscle, nail, neck, needle,
nerve, net, nose, nut, office, orange, oven, parcel, pen, pencil, picture, pig,
pin, pipe, plane, plate, plough/plow, pocket, pot, potato, prison, pump, rail,
rat, receipt, ring, rod, roof, root, sail, school, scissors, screw, seed,
sheep, shelf, ship, shirt, shoe, skin, skirt, snake, sock, spade, sponge, spoon,
spring, square, stamp, star, station, stem, stick, stocking, stomach, store,
street, sun, table, tail, thread, throat, thumb, ticket, toe, tongue, tooth,
town, train, tray, tree, trousers, umbrella, wall, watch, wheel, whip, whistle,
window, wing, wire, worm .
QUALITIES - 100 General
able, acid, angry, automatic, beautiful, black, boiling, bright, broken,
brown, cheap, chemical, chief, clean, clear, common, complex, conscious, cut,
deep, dependent, early, elastic, electric, equal, fat, fertile, first, fixed,
flat, free, frequent, full, general, good, great, grey/gray, hanging, happy, hard,
healthy, high, hollow, important, kind, like, living, long, male, married,
material, medical, military, natural, necessary, new, normal, open, parallel,
past, physical, political, poor, possible, present, private, probable, quick,
quiet, ready, red, regular, responsible, right, round, same, second, separate,
serious, sharp, smooth, sticky, stiff, straight, strong, sudden, sweet, tall,
thick, tight, tired, true, violent, waiting, warm, wet, wide, wise, yellow,
young .
QUALITIES - 50 Opposites
awake, bad, bent, bitter, blue, certain, cold, complete, cruel, dark, dead,
dear, delicate, different, dirty, dry, false, feeble, female, foolish, future,
green, ill, last, late, left, loose, loud, low, mixed, narrow, old, opposite,
public, rough, sad, safe, secret, short, shut, simple, slow, small, soft,
solid, special, strange, thin, white, wrong .

www.basiceng.com

http://www.basic-english.org/lang/spanish.html

http://www.basic-english.org/down/download.html



Steve T. Bett, Ph.D.
Austin, Texas
www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett
retired professor, volunteer literacy instructor
moderator of Saundspel-The Phonology Forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink" wrote:
>
> Hi Shep
>
> I said Hay doesn't appear in Consonant Clusters.
> H is an aspirate and generally include with the
> Consonants. But hw is a way of writing an unvoiced
> W sound (Semi-vowel), not a Consonant cluster.
> The real pronunciation of hw together can be found
> in the Spanish pronunciation of Juan. (Hwon)
>
> The y of hy in hue is again a semi-vowel at best.
> I pronounce it, myself as a part of the Vowel Dipthong:
> h(eu) = hV. Do you have any clear cut English examples
> of h as part of a Consonant Cluster.
>
> Regards, Paul V.


The sound represented by the letter 'h,' a clearly
discernible breathing, is a little special and has been
through the ages. In English it now is only seen to
occur initially and medially, but Scots retains a
terminal variant in the famous word "loch", as does
German. In Greek it is represented by a superscript.
By general consensus 'h' is considered a consonant
because it does not qualify as a vowel, all vowels
being by definition voiced and not subject to airflow
obstruction. The use of the term "semi-vowel" is an
attempt to isolate certain consonants that work
closely with and modify vowels, but 'h' is not one
of them, being a fricative.

In the past English had several other consonant
clusters beginning with 'h,' for example the words
"hrolf" and "hlaford" with the 'h' very prominently
heard. Over time, for whatever reason, people have
chosen to not use it, the process known as "h-dropping"
that Professor 'Enry 'Iggins and his genuinely human
contemporaries called attention to, found objectionable,
and succeeded in arresting, or at least slowing to some
extent.

If you listen attentively to panel discussions and the
like on television, when people try to speak clearly
and use their best enunciation, you should hear many
and I would suggest most people above the age of,
say, fifty, do clearly pronounce words such as what,
when, why, and the like with an aspiration and not
as the voiced variant wot, wen, and wye. As these
people distinguish between whine and wine, whether
and weather, which and witch, and between 'hue'
and 'who' as well, both these clusters are distinctive
phonemes, not merely an alternative way of writing,
and until this generation passes, and for my part I
hope beyond, consonant clusters with initial 'h' exist.

It is a human failing not to hear those distinctions one
doesn't ordinarily use oneself. I have tried on several
occasions, without noticeable success, to learn the
pronunciation of "Bharat", the official name of India,
in Hindi, in which /bh/ is a phoneme distinct from /b/.
It is a little too subtle for me, but hundreds of millions
of Indians apparently have no difficulty with it.

.............

I attempted to send new year's greetings to all, in spite
of last weeks terrible events, but for some reason the
message failed to post. I hope this succeeds.


dshep

Hi Shep
Thanks for the information on consonant clusters containing the
Aspirate "H" sound.
It is interesting to realize that the laudible, albeit difficult to
transcribe phonetic diversity, was at one time greater than what we
have today.
There seems to a tendency to even greater simplification of
pronunciation in Modern American English, than in the British Accents.
If Shavian every becomes prevalent, it will probably also exert a
standardizing influence on the pronunciation of Common English words.
It will be much easier to see the anomolies of eccentric
pronunciations and root them out.
Standard pronunciations will be there for all to see.

Beyond this Horizon, the case for English as a standard world
Language is much stronger with the addition of the Shavian Alphabet
to the mix.

Thanks for your wishes for the new year. Every year with faster
communication technology and increased migration of a steadily
growing world population, the world becomes a smaller more
interdependant place.
We all have to do our bit, to keep the message going.
Regards, Paul V.

P.S. Basic English is mainly useful as a learning tool. To quick
start peoples use of English. It is inadequate to read normal English
with out Computer assistance.

regards, Paul V.

_____________________attached___________________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "dshepx" <dshep@g...> wrote:
> The sound represented by the letter 'h,' a clearly
> discernible breathing, is a little special and has been
> through the ages. In English it now is only seen to
> occur initially and medially, but Scots retains a
> terminal variant in the famous word "loch", as does
> German. In Greek it is represented by a superscript.
> By general consensus 'h' is considered a consonant
> because it does not qualify as a vowel, all vowels
> being by definition voiced and not subject to airflow
> obstruction. The use of the term "semi-vowel" is an
> attempt to isolate certain consonants that work
> closely with and modify vowels, but 'h' is not one
> of them, being a fricative.
>
> In the past English had several other consonant
> clusters beginning with 'h,' for example the words
> "hrolf" and "hlaford" with the 'h' very prominently
> heard. Over time, for whatever reason, people have
> chosen to not use it, the process known as "h-dropping"
> that Professor 'Enry 'Iggins and his genuinely human
> contemporaries called attention to, found objectionable,
> and succeeded in arresting, or at least slowing to some
> extent.
>
> If you listen attentively to panel discussions and the
> like on television, when people try to speak clearly
> and use their best enunciation, you should hear many
> and I would suggest most people above the age of,
> say, fifty, do clearly pronounce words such as what,
> when, why, and the like with an aspiration and not
> as the voiced variant wot, wen, and wye. As these
> people distinguish between whine and wine, whether
> and weather, which and witch, and between 'hue'
> and 'who' as well, both these clusters are distinctive
> phonemes, not merely an alternative way of writing,
> and until this generation passes, and for my part I
> hope beyond, consonant clusters with initial 'h' exist.
>
> It is a human failing not to hear those distinctions one
> doesn't ordinarily use oneself. I have tried on several
> occasions, without noticeable success, to learn the
> pronunciation of "Bharat", the official name of India,
> in Hindi, in which /bh/ is a phoneme distinct from /b/.
> It is a little too subtle for me, but hundreds of millions
> of Indians apparently have no difficulty with it.
>
> .............
>
> I attempted to send new year's greetings to all, in spite
> of last weeks terrible events, but for some reason the
> message failed to post. I hope this succeeds.
>
>
> dshep

>> Oh by the way, I believe I have been banished from ever again trying the
>> patience of the tender souls at shavian.org. I tried twice this evening
>> to post a message without success. Oh well.

> Did you use Web mail?
> You can always post on the old Shavian site.

He meant the Ikonboard forum at www.shavian.org, not this Yahoo Group.

DShep - you haven't at all been "banished" - why would you be? Please let me
know the error message you were receiving (if any) and I will attempt to
sort it out so you can post.

Steve - I still get the feeling you think of me as an autocratic overlord of
the shawalphabet group, with powers to banish people I don't like. YOU can
be a moderator at the click of a mouse. Let me know if you want to be and
I'll make you one. Then you can banish ME if you like. :)

Hugh B

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