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Hi Steve

I'd have to agree with your assessment. English pronunciation seems
to be in a state of flux as far as the pronunciation of many English
words with simple unstressed vowels.
There seems to be a trend to reduce these vowels in the unstressed
syllable position to a Schwa or Schwi sound. Consequently, two or
more word pronunciations may be regarded as acceptable in these
cases.

One could go with your suggested convention in these situations
where there are 2 acceptable equally valid pronunciations. Where the
Schwa would be one of the valid pronunciations, the unstressed vowel
would always be represented as
> schwa.

> There may have to be a few exceptions when the difference is
phonemic - that
> is changes the meaning of a word but usually one can rely on
context for this. But unless there was a pressing reason to make an
exception, the unstressed vowel would always be represented as
a simple schwa.
>
> This simplifies spelling and the resulting written dialect would
be understood
> by all.

Sounds good to me. I already tend to go with Schwa, in my personal
spelling practices. As there is no letter for Schwi in Shavian, I
guess it makes sense to consolidate both sounds into Ado, but let me
reserve judgement on that for the moment.

Regards, Paul V.

_____________________attached___________________

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Hugh and Paul,
>
> I think you have found the problem shared by almost all attempts to
> represent spoken English. It is not really a dialect problem.
>
> No one does a very good job of representing unstressed syllables.
> Is it voy-ej, voy-aj, or voy-ij? voij
> vq eJ vq aJ vqiJ vYiJ?
>
> One can have a convention here. All unstressed vowels are
represented as
> schwa.
> There may have to be a few exceptions when the difference is
phonemic - that
> is changes the meaning of a word but usually one can rely on
context for this.
>
> This simplifies spelling and the resulting written dialect can be
understood
> by all.

Schwi

The lack of a schwi in Shavian just means that you cannot indicate stress
when there is an unstressed I. IPA considers the schwi to be an allophone.
IPA also has a length marker which can distinguish /i:/ from /i/.
ri'si:v seems rather obvious in IPA.

I believe you received my cipher.
F bIlIv V rIsIvd mF sFfD

Shavian would not have an equivalent but rI'sIv with a stress marker would be
satsifactory.

English has always had a variety of dialects so the flux is nothing new.

Schwa

The test of a sound spelling would be whether or not someone who knows
the code could pronounce the word in such a way that it would be understood
by a native speaker. The schwa meets this test and certainly makes otherwise
ambiguously spelled words easy to spell.

PV: I'd have to agree with your assessment. English pronunciation seems
to be in a state of flux as far as the pronunciation of many English
words with simple unstressed vowels.

PV: There seems to be a trend to reduce these vowels in the unstressed
syllable position to a Schwa or Schwi sound. Consequently, two or
more word pronunciations may be regarded as acceptable in these
cases.

PV: One could go with your suggested convention in these situations
where there are 2 acceptable equally valid pronunciations. Where the
Schwa would be one of the valid pronunciations, the unstressed vowel
would always be represented as schwa.

> SB: There may have to be a few exceptions when the difference is
phonemic - that is changes the meaning of a word but usually one can
rely on context for this. But unless there was a pressing reason to make an
exception, the unstressed vowel would always be represented as a simple schwa.

> SB: This simplifies spelling and the resulting written dialect would be
understood by all.

PV: Sounds good to me. I already tend to go with Schwa, in my personal
spelling practices. As there is no letter for Schwi in Shavian, I
guess it makes sense to consolidate both sounds into Ado, but let me
reserve judgement on that for the moment.

On 1/23/05 10:56 PM, "stbetta@..." <stbetta@...> wrote:

> Schwi
>
> The lack of a schwi in Shavian just means that you cannot indicate stress
> when there is an unstressed I. IPA considers the schwi to be an allophone.
> IPA also has a length marker which can distinguish /i:/ from /i/.
> ri'si:v seems rather obvious in IPA.
>
Most systems I¹ve seen consider it an allophone of the If sound, and I
believe this is how it was spelled in Androcles when it was necessary to
differentiate it from the schwa.
>
> I believe you received my cipher.
> F bIlIv V rIsIvd mF sFfD
>
With the system I mentioned, I would spell this like such:
F bilIv V risIvd mF sFfD
>
> Shavian would not have an equivalent but rI'sIv with a stress marker would be
> satsifactory.
>
I would prefer to indicate stress with a diacritic over the stressed vowel.
I think this is what Read did in the Quikscript manual. Correct me if I¹m
wrong.
>
> English has always had a variety of dialects so the flux is nothing new.
>
That¹s very true. There is some debate over whether the great vowel shift
that changed Middle English into Modern English is still going on.
>
> The test of a sound spelling would be whether or not someone who knows
> the code could pronounce the word in such a way that it would be understood
> by a native speaker. The schwa meets this test and certainly makes otherwise
> ambiguously spelled words easy to spell.

Indeed, it¹s been shown that English is intelligible (at least by native
speakers) even with all the vowels reduced to a schwa. It certainly won¹t
hurt to reduce the schwi.

Regards,
Joe
/JO

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:50:11 -0500, Joe <wurdbendur@...> wrote:
>
> Indeed, it's been shown that English is intelligible (at least by native
> speakers) even with all the vowels reduced to a schwa. It certainly won't
> hurt to reduce the schwi.

Though I imagine you'd need to resort quite a bit more extensively to
context -- since "The kite sat on the mate" and "the Kate sought on
the moat" and "the cat sat on the mat" would sound identical.

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

Hi Phil

I just wanted to make the point that there is trend in English
pronunciation to reduce the vowel sound in un-accented syllables
to a Schwa or Scher sound in colloquial speech. Also, English
normally alternates stressed and unstressed syllables in polysyllabic
words, so at most you would reduce 50% of the vowel sounds.

Still, if we used Schwa (Ado) and Scher (Array) more often it would
simplify and maybe even help standardize the English spelling.

Regards, Paul V.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Philip Newton
<philip.newton@g...> wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:50:11 -0500, Joe <wurdbendur@g...> wrote:
> >
> > Indeed, it's been shown that English is intelligible (at least
by native
> > speakers) even with all the vowels reduced to a schwa. It
certainly won't
> > hurt to reduce the schwi.
>
> Though I imagine you'd need to resort quite a bit more extensively
to
> context -- since "The kite sat on the mate" and "the Kate sought on
> the moat" and "the cat sat on the mat" would sound identical.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@g...>

On 1/24/05 2:11 PM, "Philip Newton" <philip.newton@...> wrote:

>
> On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:50:11 -0500, Joe <wurdbendur@...> wrote:
>>
>> Indeed, it's been shown that English is intelligible (at least by native
>> speakers) even with all the vowels reduced to a schwa. It certainly won't
>> hurt to reduce the schwi.
>
> Though I imagine you'd need to resort quite a bit more extensively to
> context -- since "The kite sat on the mate" and "the Kate sought on
> the moat" and "the cat sat on the mat" would sound identical.
>
> Cheers,


Yes, I suppose so. On that note, I don't remember ever seeing a kite sit.
I also wouldn't put an article before a name. That leaves only one, unless
you're allowing nonsense statements about kites sitting, and I suppose we
have to include them all since we're trying to distinguish them.
But we should still be able to distinguish words after merging only the
schwa and the schwi. I wouldn¹t suggest reducing all the other vowels. Hat
wad ba hDd t anDstan. :r


Regards,
Joe
/JO

Wurdbender,

While it may have been represented with the <if> sound in Androcles, it is
more commonly considered an allophone of the <IL> <eel> sound. The schwi is
very short, < 50 ms, but the vowel quality is more like <eel>.

How the schwi is represented is a convention and it appears that the
convention is a short-i.

--Steve
The lack of a schwi in Shavian just means that you cannot indicate stress
when there is an unstressed I. IPA considers the schwi to be an allophone.
IPA also has a length marker which can distinguish /i:/ from /i/.
ri'si:v seems rather obvious in IPA.


Most systems I’ve seen consider it an allophone of the If sound, and I
believe this is how it was spelled in Androcles when it was necessary to
differentiate it from the schwa.


I believe you received my cipher.
F bIlIv V rIsIvd mF sFfD


With the system I mentioned, I would spell this like such:
F bilIv V risIvd mF sFfD
www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett

English is intelligible without any vowels but it is slow reading and subject
to misinterpretation.

Perhaps Phillip meant to reduce all unstressed vowels to schwa?

--Steve
> Wurdbender: Indeed, it's been shown that English is intelligible (at least
by
> native speakers) even with all the vowels reduced to a schwa. It certainly
won't
> hurt to reduce the schwi.

PN: Though I imagine you'd need to resort quite a bit more extensively to
context -- since "The kite sat on the mate" and "the Kate sought on
the moat" and "the cat sat on the mat" would sound identical.
H kt st n H mt
H kAt sAt n H mAt

Are we really timing this? Why not just learn to hear stress. The Schwi
as we are calling it, in some cases can be represented by the schwa
that we know and for which we already have a symbol. Maybe I'm just a
party pooper, but I am not exactly sure what the schwi sound is, and
why we can't use the if (eel?) sound where appropriate?

--Star

--- stbetta@... wrote:

> Wurdbender,
>
> While it may have been represented with the <if> sound in Androcles,
> it is
> more commonly considered an allophone of the <IL> <eel> sound. The
> schwi is
> very short, < 50 ms, but the vowel quality is more like <eel>.
>
> How the schwi is represented is a convention and it appears that the
> convention is a short-i.
>
> --Steve
> The lack of a schwi in Shavian just means that you cannot indicate
> stress
> when there is an unstressed I. IPA considers the schwi to be an
> allophone.
> IPA also has a length marker which can distinguish /i:/ from /i/.
> ri'si:v seems rather obvious in IPA.
>
>
> Most systems I’ve seen consider it an allophone of the If sound,
> and I
> believe this is how it was spelled in Androcles when it was necessary
> to
> differentiate it from the schwa.
>
>
> I believe you received my cipher.
> F bIlIv V rIsIvd mF sFfD
>
>
> With the system I mentioned, I would spell this like such:
> F bilIv V risIvd mF sFfD
> www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett
>


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www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/spelcon.htm
International Conference on English Spelling
spelcon 05
Manheim University, Germany 29, 30, 31 July 2005

Is there anyone in the Shavian or Readspel groups that would be interested in
explaining Shavian to those attending SPELCON 05 in Germany in July?

I think we could argue that like any highly phonemic notation, Shavian can
be learned in 3 weeks and mastered in 3 months even by those who are
illiterate.

The only problem that I see with Shavian is that it is not the ideal
transitional
alfabet. It is rather a parallel phonemic writing system for English.

--Steve

SB: I do not have a specific view to promote but I do have examples of
different possible approaches to representing English speech.

1. New Spelling (shifted vowels) ae/ai/ay ee ie oe ue
2. Latin - sound symbol correspondences known by most ESL students
3. Unigraphic - ASCII keyboard map - can be used for IPA or any
near 100% phonemic writing system.
4. Webster Latin 1 - an email friendly way of representing Webster
diacritics. á é í/ý ó ú
5. New non-Roman augmented Alphabets for English

The easy PC access to Latin 1 represents a new window of opportunity. Ten
years ago we could not easily type accented characters: Now we can. The use of
accents allows many word spellings to retain their traditional shape. It is
less disruptive than letter substitutions.

It does make the magic-e redundant. mák or máke?
It dûz mák ð& majik-e rédund&nt. However, it could be retained for eýe
rímers.

ISSUES FOR THE CONFERENCE:

1. Is it possible to come up with a parallel writing system for English that
can be derived from a dictionary key, be readable by those literate in
English, and be as phonemic as Spanish (over 85% phonemic).

2. By what process can this parallel writing system be promoted?

How do we get people to use this transparent spelling when they do not know
how to spell the traditional sight-word?

Invented spelling is considered "uneducated" Here we are talking about a
sound-spelling that would not be reinvented by every semi-literate but which
would be standardized and learned. I think we can make a case that this spelling
is just as educated as Johnson-spel.

I noticed that there was no mention of Johnson in the SpelCon releases to
date.

3. How likely is it that our preferred spellings can become permanent changes
in the prestige orthography? Do they first become accepted variant spellings?

3. By what process can the spelling changes approved by the majority become
the preferred spelling? How can proposals become a permanent part of the
traditional orthography?

4. How can the majority preference be documented to make the proposals more
persuasive? Dictionaries want to endorse the spelling that is used not the
spelling people say they prefer.