Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

cossyrosario wrote recently:

"Unless I've missed something, there doesn't seem to be a single
character for WH, like there is in QS."

No there isn't, and there should be. Contrary to what you might be
told there are still a lot of us around who use this sound,
especially in the inquiry words: what, when, where, which, and why.
For what (hwat) it's worth—and surely it is worth some
consideration—Shaw thought so too.

The problem I suspect is that people who have never used this sound
do not readily hear it in the speech of others and tend to doubt its
occurrence—even its existence. Something similar may happen, that
is, not hearing the sound in question, with the sound of the short-o
as in 'odd, stop, lock' etc., or the open-o of 'ought, ball,' or
even Shaw's name itself—frequently pronounced nowadays as 'Shah'.

As for spelling, I imagine the h was placed (wrongly) after the w
early on by Anglo-Norman scribes to reflect their invention of ch and
th to identify sounds foreign to French. In all three cases the h
indicates a modification of the consonant. To see how the precursor
of our word 'what' (now usually translated as 'hark, listen' etc.)
was originally spelled and presumably pronounced see the opening word
of the oldest-known English epic at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Beowulf. The letter that looks like a P is actually the Runic W, wyn.

If you use the Shaw alphabet for taking notes you might consider
using the Gothic letter for hw, which looks like a lower-case h with
an upward-turning tail. Quick and simple, and fits right in with the
Shaw alphabet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ƕair

(h)wishing you success,
dshep

/ʍ/ is not the same as a sequence of /h/ and /w/, nor is it identical to /hʷ/. Indeed many realizations of it are as close to /ɸ/ as to anything else.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:
>
> /ʍ/ is not the same as a sequence of /h/ and /w/, nor is it identical to /hʷ/. Indeed many realizations of it are as close to /ɸ/ as to anything else.
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>

Can't read this, perhaps it is the the Gothic letter hvair that isn't coming through—but it matters little if perfect identity is lacking; close enough is good enough.

dshep

Can't read the characters.

I presume the capital E with the circumflex reads as w given the right font. The first character shows as a circumflexed capital E with some sort of graphic character next to it.

Could you tell me what font to download so my browser can read it?
And where can I get that font?



--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:
>
> /ʍ/ is not the same as a sequence of /h/ and /w/, nor is it identical to /hʷ/. Indeed many realizations of it are as close to /ɸ/ as to anything else.
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>

The encoding is UTF-8. Many many fonts have the characters in question, but certainly Everson Mono http://evertype.com/emono/ does. Your browser is parsing the message as Latin-1 most likely (though of course you did not say what operating system or browser you are using. Many browsers have an option (View > Text Encoding in Safari, Message > Text Encoding in Mail, View > Character Encoding in Firefox) that you can use when you see a garbled message like that.

There was nothing wrong with the message itself, just with what you were using to parse and display it.

On 5 Sep 2011, at 09:16, cossyrosario wrote:

> Can't read the characters.
>
> I presume the capital E with the circumflex reads as w given the right font. The first character shows as a circumflexed capital E with some sort of graphic character next to it.
>
> Could you tell me what font to download so my browser can read it?
> And where can I get that font?
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:
> >
> > /ʍ/ is not the same as a sequence of /h/ and /w/, nor is it identical to /hʷ/. Indeed many realizations of it are as close to /ɸ/ as to anything else.
> >
> > Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
> >
>
>

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/

Thanks, David! You have no idea how helpful you've been!

You understood my dilemma perfectly: wanting to be a purist in the
spirit of the Shaw alphabet, and yet wanting to distinguish the wh, or
rather hw, in a single character in the inquiry words.

Your solution is perfect. It took a bit of searching on Wikipedia to
find the shape you mentioned. I found it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwair <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwair>

Your description is perfect: a lower case h with an upward-turning tail.
And, as you said, it's quick and simple, and fits right in with the
Shaw alphabet. And it has the right sound in its own alphabet!


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, David Sheppard <david@...> wrote:
>
> cossyrosario wrote recently:
>
> "Unless I've missed something, there doesn't seem to be a single
> character for WH, like there is in QS."
>
> No there isn't, and there should be. Contrary to what you might be
> told there are still a lot of us around who use this sound,
> especially in the inquiry words: what, when, where, which, and why.
> For what (hwat) it's worthâ€"and surely it is worth some
> considerationâ€"Shaw thought so too.
>
> The problem I suspect is that people who have never used this sound
> do not readily hear it in the speech of others and tend to doubt its
> occurrenceâ€"even its existence. Something similar may happen,
that
> is, not hearing the sound in question, with the sound of the short-o
> as in 'odd, stop, lock' etc., or the open-o of 'ought, ball,' or
> even Shaw's name itselfâ€"frequently pronounced nowadays as
'Shah'.
>
> As for spelling, I imagine the h was placed (wrongly) after the w
> early on by Anglo-Norman scribes to reflect their invention of ch and
> th to identify sounds foreign to French. In all three cases the h
> indicates a modification of the consonant. To see how the precursor
> of our word 'what' (now usually translated as 'hark, listen' etc.)
> was originally spelled and presumably pronounced see the opening word
> of the oldest-known English epic at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Beowulf. The letter that looks like a P is actually the Runic W, wyn.
>
> If you use the Shaw alphabet for taking notes you might consider
> using the Gothic letter for hw, which looks like a lower-case h with
> an upward-turning tail. Quick and simple, and fits right in with the
> Shaw alphabet.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ƕair
>
> (h)wishing you success,
> dshep
>

Thanks, Michael. I saw the HW character by setting the browser's character encoding to UTF-8. Looks like an inverted W. Now to read all the posts that I couldn't read earlier because of the wrong character encoding!

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Michael Everson <everson@...> wrote:
>
> On 2 Sep 2011, at 07:57, Hugh Birkenhead wrote:
>
> > It's true that Shavian is missing a character for 'wh', but a user of Shavian would argue that, because the sound is only present in certain regional dialects (mainly American) and not in more mainstream varieties, it is it necessary.
>
> Are you speaking for all users of Shavian?
>
> Unifon writes HW for [ʍ] even though the phoneme is not much present in the US. (Unifon defaults to US pronunciation, pretty much.)
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>

In the time since I replied to you about five hours ago, I have taken
notes in Shaw Alphabet with a sense of relief that I can outline my
notes with wh-words formed with the "lower-case h with the upward-turned
tail". It was a WHOPPER of a discovery. An epiphany. WHAT'S MORE, I
realized that this character, that fits so well into the shapes and
spirit of the Shaw Alphabet, opened the way to a procession of words,
like whale, whence, whereas, and of course wheat (the name of the
Quikscript character for wh).

I was overWHELMED at the WHEEL of possibilities conjured up by the
simple expedient of importing ONE Gothic character into Shaw Alphabet!


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "cossyrosario" <cossyrosario@...>
wrote:
>
> Thanks, David! You have no idea how helpful you've been!
>
> You understood my dilemma perfectly: wanting to be a purist in the
> spirit of the Shaw alphabet, and yet wanting to distinguish the wh, or
> rather hw, in a single character in the inquiry words.
>
> Your solution is perfect. It took a bit of searching on Wikipedia to
> find the shape you mentioned. I found it here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwair
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwair>
>
> Your description is perfect: a lower case h with an upward-turning
tail.
> And, as you said, it's quick and simple, and fits right in with the
> Shaw alphabet. And it has the right sound in its own alphabet!
>
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, David Sheppard david@ wrote:
> >
> > cossyrosario wrote recently:
> >
> > "Unless I've missed something, there doesn't seem to be a single
> > character for WH, like there is in QS."
> >
> > No there isn't, and there should be. Contrary to what you might be
> > told there are still a lot of us around who use this sound,
> > especially in the inquiry words: what, when, where, which, and why.
> > For what (hwat) it's worthâ€"and surely it is worth some
> > considerationâ€"Shaw thought so too.
> >
> > The problem I suspect is that people who have never used this sound
> > do not readily hear it in the speech of others and tend to doubt its
> > occurrenceâ€"even its existence. Something similar may happen,
> that
> > is, not hearing the sound in question, with the sound of the short-o
> > as in 'odd, stop, lock' etc., or the open-o of 'ought, ball,' or
> > even Shaw's name itselfâ€"frequently pronounced nowadays as
> 'Shah'.
> >
> > As for spelling, I imagine the h was placed (wrongly) after the w
> > early on by Anglo-Norman scribes to reflect their invention of ch
and
> > th to identify sounds foreign to French. In all three cases the h
> > indicates a modification of the consonant. To see how the precursor
> > of our word 'what' (now usually translated as 'hark, listen' etc.)
> > was originally spelled and presumably pronounced see the opening
word
> > of the oldest-known English epic at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> > Beowulf. The letter that looks like a P is actually the Runic W,
wyn.
> >
> > If you use the Shaw alphabet for taking notes you might consider
> > using the Gothic letter for hw, which looks like a lower-case h with
> > an upward-turning tail. Quick and simple, and fits right in with the
> > Shaw alphabet.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ƕair
> >
> > (h)wishing you success,
> > dshep
> >
>

David, you wrote:
No there isn't, and there should be. Contrary to what you might be told
there are still a lot of us around who use this sound, especially in
the inquiry words: what, when, where, which, and why. For what (hwat)
it's worth, and surely it is worth some consideration, Shaw thought so
too.
I was very encouraged to know that Shaw thought so too!

But I forgot to ask you WHERE did Shaw say this? Don't want to put a
burden on you to find the quote if you were quoting from memory. But I'd
be delighted and grateful if you do find it and send it to me.

Meanwhile, I'm having a WHALE, and a WHIRL of a time, exploring the
WHIRLIGIG of WH words!
For WHICH I thank you very much indeed, again!




--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, David Sheppard <david@...> wrote:
>
> cossyrosario wrote recently:
>
> "Unless I've missed something, there doesn't seem to be a single
> character for WH, like there is in QS."
>
> No there isn't, and there should be. Contrary to what you might be
> told there are still a lot of us around who use this sound,
> especially in the inquiry words: what, when, where, which, and why.
> For what (hwat) it's worthâ€"and surely it is worth some
> considerationâ€"Shaw thought so too.
>
> The problem I suspect is that people who have never used this sound
> do not readily hear it in the speech of others and tend to doubt its
> occurrenceâ€"even its existence. Something similar may happen,
that
> is, not hearing the sound in question, with the sound of the short-o
> as in 'odd, stop, lock' etc., or the open-o of 'ought, ball,' or
> even Shaw's name itselfâ€"frequently pronounced nowadays as
'Shah'.
>
> As for spelling, I imagine the h was placed (wrongly) after the w
> early on by Anglo-Norman scribes to reflect their invention of ch and
> th to identify sounds foreign to French. In all three cases the h
> indicates a modification of the consonant. To see how the precursor
> of our word 'what' (now usually translated as 'hark, listen' etc.)
> was originally spelled and presumably pronounced see the opening word
> of the oldest-known English epic at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Beowulf. The letter that looks like a P is actually the Runic W, wyn.
>
> If you use the Shaw alphabet for taking notes you might consider
> using the Gothic letter for hw, which looks like a lower-case h with
> an upward-turning tail. Quick and simple, and fits right in with the
> Shaw alphabet.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ƕair
>
> (h)wishing you success,
> dshep
>

"cossyrosario" asked on Wed Sep 7, 2011:

"But I forgot to ask you WHERE did Shaw say this? Don't want to put a
burden on you to find the quote if you were quoting from memory. But I'd
be delighted and grateful if you do find it and send it to me."

Shaw became a famous man in his lifetime and as can happen someone in
that position was deluged with a large amount of correspondence. To
deal with this he had printed up a postcard upon which he would jot
down whatever reply he chose to make. One side of this postcard
included a brief plea outlining the need as he saw it for a new
alphabet.

I thought that I had submitted a copy of this postcard to the group
files but apparently not. I shall try to find a scanner and do so
next week. In the meantime however, the card begins with this statement:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------From Bernard Shaw
A Forty Letter British Alphabet

The number of letters in our Johnsonese alfabet, minus x, c, and q
(unnecessary) is 23
The following consonants are missing: sh, zh, wh, ch, th, dh, and
ng . . 7
Also missing are the vowels and dipthongs ah, aw, at, et, it, ot, ut,
oot, yoot, and
the neutral second vowel in colour, labour, honor, &c. . . . . . 10
---- 40
(more...)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------

(Italics in the original, spellings as printed)

Printed in a collection of Shaw's letters to the press, entitled
George Bernard Shaw on Language, edited by Abraham Tauber;
Published by Peter Owen, London, 1965

i think this is interesting in several respects. First of all, you
can see that he includes wh. The dh, if you are unfamiliar with that
combination, is for the voiced th of then, to contrast with the
unvoiced th of thin. Johnsonese refers to Samuel Johnson's dictionary
of 1755.

The rendering, or transliteration, of Androcles and the Lion into
Kingsley Read's new alphabet was done by Peter MacCarthy, a Professor
of Linguistics at Leeds University, who, as a probable speaker of RP,
perhaps saw no need for wh or any version of hw. Either that or it
was James Pitman, more than anyone else responsible for the fact that
the dual-alphabet version of Androcles was printed at all, who chose
to overlook or didn't notice Shaw's intention (Pitman was a very busy
man)--though earlier he had insisted that Shaw's directive (that each
new letter be distinct even in isolation) be followed, and thus is
responsible for the rotated pairing of voiced-unvoiced consonants:
Read had simply used a difference of height in his initial
submission, something he reverted to in part later. Or perhaps
because Read had not included a wh letter (but was apparently obliged
to in Quikscript) and therefore one was not there to be used. It is
an intriguing mystery.

Missing however from Shaw's list are the diphthongs (note the
misspelling above) of the common words out and oil. Perhaps he
thought that these two sounds could be represented, as some
dictionaries do, by some combination such as ow, ou, or au, (all
unfortunately ambiguous), and oi or oy. On the other hand, at other
times, he rejected such two-letter combinations so it is unclear if
this omission is intentional or just an oversight; the spelling of
honor without a u was however intentional and defended elsewhere.
Moreover, at other times he recommended a new alphabet of 42 letters
(which could then encompass the missing diphthongs). But, on even
other occasions he suggested a 44 letter alphabet (note Shaw's
spelling above). Finally, his will stated that a new alphabet should
contain "at least 40 letters".

Shaw was an enthusiast about life and its possibilities, enjoyed
stirring things up if that would encourage thought, and taught us to
laugh at human foolishness. He
could be somewhat cavalier about details--something that he meant
could always be cleared up afterwards, while trusting us, perhaps
vainly, perhaps hopefully, with the capacity to work things out. Or
so it seems to me.

Keep at it,
dshep