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> From: garosalibian [mailto:garosalibian@...]


> This equally applies to ABC, NBC (where the C is a K - Korporation).
> So ABK (for ABC), NBK (for NBC). In CBS's case, it should be KBS.

Yep. I'd just add the namer dots before the letters as Joe suggested, as
they refer to names.

> There should be a system for abbreviations. This is very much needed
> for pragamatic reasons. Abbreviations are used on a daily basis.
> Take ok (ol korrect)
> ko - knock out
> How to represent these?

The problem is, some abbreviations have entered the language as words in
their own right. 'OK' is clearly not recognised for what its 'full meaning'
is (and nobody can be sure what it really stands for), but for the
pronunciation of the letters themselves, i.e. [OkE]. The word OK is probably
the most commonly used in the English language, and in many other languages
worldwide and there's no way whatsoever we could hope to 'repronounce' it in
Shavian!

KO isn't quite the same, because everybody knows what it stands for, and it
isn't really a word in its own right like 'OK'. I think this could probably
be written [/n/Q], or just write 'KO' in roman as normal.

> In banks: Debit - DR
> Credit - CR
> How could we represent those in Shavian?

[dr] and [kr]?

> USA actually starts with a Y and the final "a" is not an a but s schwa
> "e". So USA would be y.s.e. (Yunayted steyts av emerika)
> How about UK, USSR (same problem)

USA, in Shavian, starts with [V] (yew). There is no such thing as a 'schwa
e' so you use [a] (ado). Hence, [/V/s/a].

UK = [/V/k/]
USSR = [/V/s/s/r/]

> DC - District of Columbia -- DK?

Yep.

> Names of countries:
> NZ - New Zealand
> PRC - Peoples' Republic of China
> FYROM - Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

All abbreviations such as these (i.e. ones that are rarely spoken as their
letters, always as the words they denote) can just be 'translated' into
their Shavian initial letter equivalents. Thus:
[/n/z]
[/p/r/c]
[/f/V/r/o/m]

> A "stand-alone alphabet" needs to address such issues and be more
> involved in such practical matters that WILL pop up on every corner.

But Shavian is unique as it would take over from an already well-entrenched
system with its own rules and techniques developed over centuries. It can't
be perfect after only half a century of existence (and I'm sure only half a
dozen years' worth of actual USE by anyone). At least Shavian uses the same
system of punctuation.

The rule for abbreviating proper nouns is simple really - if it's a name you
refer to, precede the initial letter with a namer dot, just as you would the
full word. I'm not 100% sure what to do with abbreviations NOT referring to
proper nouns; Joe is right that full stops in the middle of sentences should
be avoided (because without capital letters Shavian relies a lot more on
them to separate sentences), so maybe the namer dot should be used for them
too?

Hugh B

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 08:42:35 -0000, garosalibian <garosalibian@...> wrote:
>
> Shavian, a stand alone alphabet. That's lovely.
>
> But is it readily adaptable to French, German, Italian, Spanish,
> Portuguese and their needs.

Not really; it's really tailored to the needs of the English language.

> Has any attempt been made to address the
> needs of these languages for a uniform alphabet.

If you want a uniform phonemic alphabet for multiple languages, then
TTBOMK your best bet is currently something based on the IPA. Though
you'll have to deal with two-sound sequences such as affricates and
diphthongs which are phonemic in various languages and should
therefore, probably, receive a single letter of their own.

> Will we need to add some more letters to the alphabet.

Definitely.

For example, German needs symbols for /2/ and /9/ and /y/ and /Y/ and
[X] and [C] (CONLANG X-SAMPA notation). On the other hand, it doesn't
need a symbol for /T/ or /D/ or /&/ or the Shavian rhotic symbols.

It's just not a good match, because the sound inventory of the two
languages is fairly different.

> More ambitiously, would it be sufficient enough for use in languages
> that use Cyrillic (Greek, Russian, Bulgarian... )

Greek doesn't use Cyrillic; it uses the Greek alphabet.

> or Arabic script (meaning also Farsi, Urdu etc.)

But to answer your question: no, it wouldn't work well for those
languages, since they, again, have a different sound (phoneme)
inventory from English.

It would be possible to draw up something similar along the lines of
the Shaw alphabet's design principles, but I don't think it's worth
adapting the Shaw alphabet to any of those languages. It was intended
to represent the English language as well as possible; by doing so,
it's less abstract than the Roman alphabet is, so less usable for
languages that aren't English.

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

On 1/30/05 7:13 AM, "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@...> wrote:

> The problem is, some abbreviations have entered the language as words in
> their own right. 'OK' is clearly not recognised for what its 'full meaning'
> is (and nobody can be sure what it really stands for), but for the
> pronunciation of the letters themselves, i.e. [OkE]. The word OK is probably
> the most commonly used in the English language, and in many other languages
> worldwide and there's no way whatsoever we could hope to 'repronounce' it in
> Shavian!

In fact, OK is the most common word in the world. When American soldiers
went to Japan in WWI, they found that it had already been assimilated into
Japanese. It spread to other languages just as quickly, and most of them
pronounce it the same way. I sometimes write "okay" because this is more
like a word to me than an abbreviation. I believe this is actually the
preferred spelling, which eliminates the abbreviation issue. Thus, I would
write OkE.

On a side note, Japanese uses NG for "not good" as the opposite of OK.

> KO isn't quite the same, because everybody knows what it stands for, and it
> isn't really a word in its own right like 'OK'. I think this could probably
> be written [/n/Q], or just write 'KO' in roman as normal.

Well, it is a word if you normally read the abbreviation as it is rather
than as what it stands for. If you expect a reader to pronounce the words
"knock out," then you should write it out in full. You could abbreviate it,
but it's not necessary in that case. If you want it to be read as the
abbreviation, then we resort to one of the three options I mentioned in my
earlier post. I always prefer writing the Roman letters over spelling out
their names.

>> In banks: Debit - DR
>> Credit - CR
>> How could we represent those in Shavian?
>
> [dr] and [kr]?

What's the R in DR? It appears to me that it's there just to match CR, but
I'm not very familiar with these abbreviations. But if that's the case, we
should use only abbreviations that make sense. Perhaps /d/b and /k/r.

>> USA actually starts with a Y and the final "a" is not an a but s schwa
>> "e". So USA would be y.s.e. (Yunayted steyts av emerika)
>> How about UK, USSR (same problem)
>
> USA, in Shavian, starts with [V] (yew). There is no such thing as a 'schwa
> e' so you use [a] (ado). Hence, [/V/s/a].
>
> UK = [/V/k/]
> USSR = [/V/s/s/r/]
>
>> DC - District of Columbia -- DK?
>
> Yep.

I agree with all of these. The only problem I have is that we don't know
how to name the letters, the ones who do don't all agree, and they can
sometimes sound funny. Using the sample words given in Androcles, for
example, /d/k would be read Did-Kik, which is a viable phrase itself. The
new names given in the ShawScript newsletter are a bit better: it becomes
Day-Key, which are just as much words but don't make sense this way. And
yet when I look at it, I still want to say Dee-Kay. I try to use the new
names, though.

>> Names of countries:
>> NZ - New Zealand
>> PRC - Peoples' Republic of China
>> FYROM - Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
>
> All abbreviations such as these (i.e. ones that are rarely spoken as their
> letters, always as the words they denote) can just be 'translated' into
> their Shavian initial letter equivalents. Thus:
> [/n/z]
> [/p/r/c]
> [/f/V/r/o/m]

Place names are often abbreviated haphazardly because the abbreviations have
just been created as they're needed and don't necessarily follow a common
system. Within the US, abbreviations have been reduced down to two letters
for each State. Two or three letters is common for country names. Four
isn't unheard-of, but one is. I say we just use initializations so that
we'll have one letter for each part of the name, perhaps including the
second letter so we won't have any one-letter abbreviations. Then the
second letter in such abbreviations just wouldn't get it's own namer dot,
perhaps.

>> A "stand-alone alphabet" needs to address such issues and be more
>> involved in such practical matters that WILL pop up on every corner.
>
> But Shavian is unique as it would take over from an already well-entrenched
> system with its own rules and techniques developed over centuries. It can't
> be perfect after only half a century of existence (and I'm sure only half a
> dozen years' worth of actual USE by anyone). At least Shavian uses the same
> system of punctuation.
>
> The rule for abbreviating proper nouns is simple really - if it's a name you
> refer to, precede the initial letter with a namer dot, just as you would the
> full word. I'm not 100% sure what to do with abbreviations NOT referring to
> proper nouns; Joe is right that full stops in the middle of sentences should
> be avoided (because without capital letters Shavian relies a lot more on
> them to separate sentences), so maybe the namer dot should be used for them
> too?
>
> Hugh B

Again, it depends on whether you intend for the reader to read the word or
the abbreviation. Most English-readers will simply read the word except for
borrowed abbreviations like the Latin ones. In these cases, it would be
best to write the word out. But if it's intended to be read as an
abbreviation (letter-for-letter), then it doesn't matter if it's a proper
name or not. Read wrote that letters are named with the namer dot, so
that's what I'd do.

And for those who are unfamiliar with what these Latin abbreviations mean,
here is a brief list.

i.e. id est (it is)
e.g. exempli gratia (for example)
etc. et cetera (and so forth)

This was originally (and sometimes still is) written &c. Because the
ampersand was just a ligature used to represent "et" in Latin. Or course,
the modern form bears little resemblance to these letters. I believe it's
exclusive use as the word "et" comes from Tironion shorthand.

And much less common:
q.v. quod vide (which see -- by way of cross-reference)

In every case, I would just write the word or phrase as it¹s intended to be
read, whether Latin or English. If you¹re using Latin, then I suppose you
could keep using the same abbreviations, but I prefer not to mix languages
too much when readers don¹t know what they¹re reading.

Regards,
Joe
/JO

Hi Ross Alibi

As French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are all Romance Languages,
and they were all derived from Vulgar Latin. A Latin or Roman
Alphabet is a pretty good fit for all these Romance Languages.

There is not the same lousy situation that occurs when you try and
use a Roman Alphabet with insufficient symbols to write a Germanic or
Scandinavian language like English.
So there just not the same demand for an alternate rationalized
Alphabet.

Dutch, German and Icelandic all revised their spelling system to
compensate for the limitations of the Roman Alphabet. Icelandic even
added about 5 more letters. England is the only important country
that hasn't followed through and fixed up its spelling. Maybe, they
were just too enamoured with Greek, Latin and French until the last
century.
Better late than never.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. The longer you put off these essential reforms, the greater the
corrections that will be needed to keep spelling grounded in
Phonetics.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Philip Newton
<philip.newton@g...> wrote:
> > > Shavian, a stand alone alphabet. That's lovely.
> >
> > But is it readily adaptable to French, German, Italian, Spanish,
> > Portuguese and their needs.
>
> Not really; it's really tailored to the needs of the English
language.
>
> > Has any attempt been made to address the
> > needs of these languages for a uniform alphabet.
>
> If you want a uniform phonemic alphabet for multiple languages, then
> TTBOMK your best bet is currently something based on the IPA. Though
> you'll have to deal with two-sound sequences such as affricates and
> diphthongs which are phonemic in various languages and should
> therefore, probably, receive a single letter of their own.
>
> > Will we need to add some more letters to the alphabet.
>
> Definitely.
>
> For example, German needs symbols for /2/ and /9/ and /y/ and /Y/
and
> [X] and [C] (CONLANG X-SAMPA notation). On the other hand, it
doesn't
> need a symbol for /T/ or /D/ or /&/ or the Shavian rhotic symbols.
>
> It's just not a good match, because the sound inventory of the two
> languages is fairly different.
>
> > More ambitiously, would it be sufficient enough for use in
languages
> > that use Cyrillic (Greek, Russian, Bulgarian... )
>
> Greek doesn't use Cyrillic; it uses the Greek alphabet.
>
> > or Arabic script (meaning also Farsi, Urdu etc.)
>
> But to answer your question: no, it wouldn't work well for those
> languages, since they, again, have a different sound (phoneme)
> inventory from English.
>
> It would be possible to draw up something similar along the lines of
> the Shaw alphabet's design principles, but I don't think it's worth
> adapting the Shaw alphabet to any of those languages. It was
intended
> to represent the English language as well as possible; by doing so,
> it's less abstract than the Roman alphabet is, so less usable for
> languages that aren't English.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@g...>

About the accountancy abbreviations dr and cr, they stand for debtor
and creditor. The double-entry book-keeping system was originally used
to keep tabs on whom we owed and who owed us. Later the rules were
amplified to the three rules and every transaction was entered twice,
under one accounting head on the dr side and under another accounting
head on the cr side:

1. Debit the receiver (who thus becomes the debtor in respect of that
transaction), credit the giver (who thus becomes the creditor in that
transaction).
2. Debit what comes in (money or goods), credit what goes out (money
or goods).
3. Debit the expense-head (for instance, rent), credit the income-head
(for instance, interest).

In the TO of accounting, the dr and cr remained as relics of the
original meaning.

Cossy

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@f...>
wrote:
> > From: garosalibian [mailto:garosalibian@y...]
> > ...
> > In banks: Debit - DR
> > Credit - CR
> > How could we represent those in Shavian?
>
> [dr] and [kr]?
>

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Joe <wurdbendur@g...> wrote:
> On 1/30/05 7:13 AM, "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@f...> wrote:
>...
> >> In banks: Debit - DR
> >> Credit - CR
> >> How could we represent those in Shavian?
> >
> > [dr] and [kr]?
>
> What's the R in DR? It appears to me that it's there just to match
> CR, but I'm not very familiar with these abbreviations. But if
> that's the case, we should use only abbreviations that make sense.
> Perhaps /d/b and /k/r.

I¹ve often wished for a broader source of current, more relevant text in
Shavian. It seems to me that a news might be the best way to do this. I
thought I may suggest adding Shavian to Wikinews
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition). You can see
my comment on the discussion page there. I haven¹t actually posted my
suggestion, though.

This seems like a good option because Wikinews is an open-source site where
users can post and edit articles openly. That would make it easy for any of
us to contribute. More to the point, I was wondering who else might be
interested in writing news in Shavian. If not at Wikinews, then we can find
another place for it.


Regards,
Joe
/JO

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@f...>
wrote:
> Ahem... this is the SHAW ALPHABET group. It would be nice to keep the
> airwaves free of ENgliS, Unifon, Spanglish and other such orthographies.
>
>
>
> Also DShep's examples have h and N the wrong way round.
>
>
>
> Hugh B
>

No they don't

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Joe <wurdbendur@g...> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 1/26/05 12:13 PM, "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@f...> wrote:
>
> > Ahem... this is the SHAW ALPHABET group. It would be nice to keep the
airwaves
> > free of ENgliS, Unifon, Spanglish and other such orthographies.
> >
> Yes, I agree.
> >
> > Also DShep1s examples have h and N the wrong way round.
> >
> > Hugh B
> >
> He1s done that intentionally. This goes back to the old argument about the
> reversal...
>
> Regards,
> Joe
> /JO

Yes I have, and do.


>Lets not drag that back up.


It will come up again, count on it. Sorry, but t'will.


dshep

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@f...>
wrote:
> I'm fully aware it goes back to the reversal... I was just being cheeky.
> Sorry.
>
>
>
> Hugh B
>
>
>
> _____
>
> From: Joe [mailto:wurdbendur@g...]
> Sent: 26 January 2005 18:50
> To: Shaw Alphabet
> Subject: Re: [shawalphabet] Alternate Transcriptions
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 1/26/05 12:13 PM, "Hugh Birkenhead" <mixsynth@f...> wrote:
>
> Ahem... this is the SHAW ALPHABET group. It would be nice to keep the
> airwaves free of ENgliS, Unifon, Spanglish and other such orthographies.
>
> Yes, I agree.
>
>
> Also DShep's examples have h and N the wrong way round.
>
> Hugh B
>
>
> He's done that intentionally. This goes back to the old argument about the
> reversal... Lets not drag that back up.
>
> Regards,
> Joe
> /JO
>



Cheeky is fine; keeps one alert.

dshep

Hi Joe
I don't mind adding Shavian to Wikinews. I would not mind writing out
a summary of each weeks discussion, with whatever consensus we happen
to arrive at. It would be a good index into the discussion of
different topics.
(Guys, change the Subject field, when you change the Subject!)

It occurs to me that also the Shavian Ikonboard could be used for the
same purpose. You can edit posts and append information there too.
It is centrally located at www.shavian.org.

Take a look. I will go along with the majority opinion.

Regards, Paul V.
________________attached____________________________________



--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Joe <wurdbendur@g...> wrote:
> I¹ve often wished for a broader source of current, more relevant
text in
> Shavian. It seems to me that a news might be the best way to do
this. I
> thought I may suggest adding Shavian to Wikinews
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition). You
can see
> my comment on the discussion page there. I haven¹t actually posted
my
> suggestion, though.
>
> This seems like a good option because Wikinews is an open-source
site where
> users can post and edit articles openly. That would make it easy
for any of
> us to contribute. More to the point, I was wondering who else
might be
> interested in writing news in Shavian. If not at Wikinews, then we
can find
> another place for it.
>
>
> Regards,
> Joe
> /JO