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Hi!

Thanks for your message, which I enjoyed very much.

It is very frustrating to now know the Esperanto-Shavian alphabet and not
to have anyone to use it with. Do you know of anyone who would like to do
a bit of light correspondence? It wouldn't have to beural or urban scenes
personal--for example, I enjoy describing pictures of various kinds--people
interacting, natural or urban scenes, etc.

Best wishes,
Erik


On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 3:06 PM, <phil@...> wrote:

> Just for the record, John Wesley Starling legally changed his name
>
> to Ĝan Ŭesli Starling. He's a tireless promoter of Esperanto. He drove a
>
> full-sized van with a message about Esperanto permanently painted on the
>
> side.
>
>
>
> His Shavian orthography for Esperanto has taken a lot of criticism
>
> for reassigning some characters to completely different sounds,
>
> in particular the sounds <m> and <n>. But it does make the system
>
> much more symmetrical for Esperanto use.
>
>
>
> I am the "amiko mia" mentioned in Ĝan's page about the alphabet here:
>
>
>
> http://esperanto.us/sxava_alfabeto/
>
>
>
> In addition to the samples provided there, Ĝan also self-published a
>
> booklet with a science fiction story called "Trigamba Joĉjo" in which
>
> he introduced a few Shavian letters at a time. Somewhere I still have
>
> a bunch of copies of this booklet.
>
>
>
> --Ph. D.
>
>
>
>
>
> dshepx <david@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Erik Felker wrote:
>
> *> I have become very interested in the Shavian alphabet in the form used
> to
> > write Esperanto.*
>
> Do you mean in the form devised by John Starling, called La Shava Alfabeto?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_orthography
>
> The Shavian alphabet was created specifically for English, one type of it
> anyway, but Starling's proposal looks workable to me, and in view of
> Shaw's
> desire (or so I interpret it) that a new alphabet was needed as much for
> social reasons as for spelling reform then a new alphabet for a new
> (relatively speaking) language, both of artificial construction (not a
> slur),
> both idealistic in ambition (or so it seems to me) -- then why not?
>
> I've always thought a good use for the Shavian alphabet, perhaps the best
> use at least in the beginning, was to offer to non-native speakers a means
> of quickly acquiring a working knowledge of the *de facto*
> world's language,
> perhaps with a simplified grammar (something which Shaw I believe also
> advocated). Why not then use it as well for a language that some parts of
> the world, hesitant about Anglo-American culture, might prefer? Eventually
> the two usages could possibly merge, who knows?
>
>
>

Dear Mr. Sharfi,

I think I will just try to use the U.S. postal system, which doesn't seem
difficult to me. What I do appreciate is the ability to have attractive
and inexpensive color photocopies to send as encouragements to language
use--descriptions and comments are easy to confect when there is an
interesting photo to get things started.

Erik Felker


On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Nathan Sharfi <bonusfrogs@...> wrote:

> On Jun 6, 2013, at 6:54 AM, "dshepx" <david@...> wrote:
>
> > --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Erik Felker wrote:
> > > Do you know if .... there is an exchange for any kind of
> correspondence in
> > > Shavian?....
> >
> > I only know of this forum and that of the Quikscript community.
> >
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Read_Alphabet/
>
> Speaking as a Quikscript user…
>
> This is a problem on our side, as well — judging from the activity or lack
> thereof on the Read Alphabet list, you'd figure that the workflow of
> sending handwritten notes hasn't improved one iota since the 60s. While
> it's gotten tremendously easier to put short blobs of text on the Internet
> through (micro)blogging, sharing handwritten text is much more of a hassle.
>
> A couple of different ideas present themselves:
>
> - Share a folder in Dropbox (<http://db.tt/x0DM6XiG>). Scan/take pictures
> of handwritten text and place them in the folder as JPEG images. I haven't
> thought through the security implications of this, though, and I'm leery of
> sharing Dropbox folders with people I don't know all that well.
>
> - Get JPEGs of text as above, but put them on that Pinterest site (<
> http://pinterest.com>) I've heard about. People share images there.
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

— for the Shawalphabet group, Ph. D. recently wrote:

His Shavian orthography for Esperanto has taken a lot of criticism
for reassigning some characters to completely different sounds,
in particular the sounds <m> and <n>. But it does make the system
much more symmetrical for Esperanto use.

Any attempt at modification to just about anything almost inevitably
attracts consternation, surprise, and not infrequently, criticism; such
I fear is human nature. It seems to me however that Starling has done
a good job of fitting out the Shavian alphabet for a language that has
a somewhat different inventory of sounds. His slight alteration of sign-
sound correspondence for the vowels I think particularly successful, a
task admittedly made easier by the simple fact that Esperanto has fewer
vowels (approximating Italian apparently) and, though not recommended,
permits without conflict allophones for speakers who have some other
vowel inventory (if I have understood correctly). You couldn't do this in
English.

𐑨 𐑧 𐑦 𐑪 𐑩 for æ/a/ah, e/ei, i/ie, o/oh/awe, u/uh/oo;

Put in another way: the vowel-sounds, respectively, of
pal/pasta/palm, bet/bait, bit/beat, box/boat/bought, but/book/boot, .

The vowel trapezoid for Esperanto would look something like this:

.........................
\ 𐑦 𐑩 |
\ 𐑧 𐑪 |
\ 𐑨 |
\...............|

As for consonants, I suspect that the reason he chose V and its
upside-down counterpart for /m/ and /n/ is that they can remind one
of upper-case M and N and therefore should be easier to remember.
Recall too that in Quikscript Kingsley Read modified his own Shavian
alphabet by substituting the letters m and n for the not easily (or so I
think) written ah and awe sounds, giving them a more Shavian vowel-
like appearance. I don't think the new letters for m and n in Quikscript,
or for that matter, l, and perhaps a few others, were entirely succesful—
but see the opening sentence above.

Read shuffled quite a few letters around in Quikscript, sacrificing
clarity of form (or so I think) in order to be able to join letters easily
together in cursive form. Whether or not this is important or even
desirable depends upon one's point of view. That there are in
Yahoo groups about four times as many members of the Quikscript
community than in the Shavian one would perhaps indicate that
more people do think so.

or so I think,
dshep

Oops! Earlier I wrote:

𐑨 𐑧 𐑦 𐑪 𐑩 for æ/a/ah, e/ei, i/ie, o/oh/awe, u/uh/oo;

Put in another way: the vowel-sounds, respectively, of
pal/pasta/palm, bet/bait, bit/beat, box/boat/bought, but/book/boot, .

The vowel trapezoid for Esperanto would look something like this:

.........................
\ 𐑦 𐑩 |
\ 𐑧 𐑪 |
\ 𐑨 |
\...............|

But….

One should not be hasty. It appears that Starling exchanged
the signs for o and u, so that the above should instead be:

𐑨 𐑧 𐑦 𐑩 𐑪 for æ/a/ah, e/ei, i/ie, o/oh/awe, u/uh/oo;

Put in another way: the vowel-sounds, respectively, of
pal/pasta/palm, bet/bait, bit/beat, box/boat/bought, but/book/boot, .

The vowel trapezoid for Esperanto would look something like this:

.........................
\ 𐑦 𐑪 |
\ 𐑧 𐑩 |
\ 𐑨 |
\...............|


I suppose there was some reason for this, there usually is--
dshep

Eventually I'll get it right. Starling re-assigned the Shavian
letter for the schwa, (𐑩) to the Shava vowel o, and for Shava
u used (𐑪), the Shavian letter for o. Thus the Shavian letter
for u/oo, as in goose, (𐑵) could then be used for the Shava
letter n. So there!

The vowel trapezoid, actually in the case of Esperanto more
a triangle, would still however look like:

........................
\ 𐑦 𐑪 |
\ 𐑧 𐑩 |
\ 𐑨 |
\...............|

He could have left the o alone, and re-assigned the 𐑩, which
after all is an uh-sound, to u/oo, but didn't.

I do not recommend doing one thing whilst thinking about
what one is going to do next, though I know people who do
this quite well.

but some people don't,
dshep

On 14 June 2013 20:36, dsh <david@...> wrote:

>
> Eventually I'll get it right. Starling re-assigned the Shavian
> letter for the schwa, (𐑩) to the Shava vowel o
>

I imagine so that he could make a better ligature for the frequent
combination -oj (as a plural ending of nouns) -- for that, he needed
something that ended at the middle of the line, since he used 𐑢 for /j/.
Similarly with -aj.

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

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, --- Philip Newton supplied a clue:

> I imagine so that he could make a better ligature for the frequent
> combination -oj (as a plural ending of nouns) -- for that, he needed
> something that ended at the middle of the line, since he used
ð`¢ for /j/.
> Similarly with -aj.


Sounds like a reason, one that makes sense. I thought there

ought to be one.




dshep

Philip Newton wrote:
> On 14 June 2013 20:36, dsh <david@...
> <mailto:david@...>> wrote:
>
>
> Eventually I'll get it right. Starling re-assigned the Shavian
> letter for the schwa, (𐑩) to the Shava vowel o
>
>
> I imagine so that he could make a better ligature for the frequent
> combination -oj (as a plural ending of nouns) -- for that, he needed
> something that ended at the middle of the line, since he used 𐑢 for
> /j/. Similarly with -aj.
>
> Cheers,
> Philip
>
Yes, that's exactly correct.

The Esperanto letters a, e, i, o, u are represented by𐑨 𐑧 𐑦 𐑩 𐑪 which
makes a nice symmetry and allows the ligatures for aj and oj.


dsh wrote:
> As for consonants, I suspect that the reason he chose V and its
> upside-down counterpart for /m/ and /n/ is that they can remind one
> of upper-case M and N and therefore should be easier to remember.

After reassigning the vowel letters, the letters WOOL and OOZE were
completed unused. The resulting alphabet had too many "curvy"
letters (IMO). In particular, M and N were prone to misreading when
written hastily. I suggested to Ĝan that it would be better to substitute
the more distinctive WOOL and OOZE for M and N, and he agreed.

If you read Esperanto, Ĝan has posted a rebuttal to a criticism of his
letter reassignments at

http://esperanto.us/Pejno.html

--Ph. D.

— For the Shaw Alphabet Group, Ph. D. pointed out:

After reassigning the vowel letters, the letters WOOL and OOZE were
completed unused. The resulting alphabet had too many "curvy"
letters (IMO). In particular, M and N were prone to misreading when
written hastily. I suggested to Ĝan that it would be better to substitute
the more distinctive WOOL and OOZE for M and N, and he agreed.

An advantage gained therein (or so I think) was that the two
re-assigned letters for m and n in Shava, ʌ and v, distinctive
in shape, represent a distinctive type of sound, i. e., nasals. I
think it also interesting the way alternate forms of letters
are used in Starling's alphabet for what appear to be
common suffixes. Are these to be considered ligatures or
distinct letters in themselves, or does it matter?

Has this alphabet been noticed by Esperanto speakers,
is it used at all? it seems to me that considering the
idealistic origin of and expectations for Esperanto as
a world language, it would be a natural complement.

idealistically,
dshep

And now, another test. Andagii and ESL Gothic apparently
overrule other Shavian unicode fonts. So I've disabled them,
and for good measure Damase as well, to see if I can get
Everson Mono to appear at the Shavian Alphabet Yahoo
Group webpage. It will not appear in the e-mail summaries
unless the recipient has installed this particular font.

𐑢𐑳𐑯𐑕 𐑩𐑜𐑧𐑯, 𐑦𐑑𐑕 𐑑𐑲𐑥
𐑓𐑷𐑮 𐑤𐑲𐑤𐑩𐑒𐑕 𐑦𐑯 𐑚𐑤𐑵𐑥, 𐑛𐑦𐑝𐑲𐑯.
𐑢𐑪𐑟 𐑞𐑨𐑮 𐑩 𐑢𐑦𐑯𐑑𐑩𐑮?