Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

Problems in Phonemic Representation
Handling Acronyms and Abbreviations

Hi Paul V.,

There are no pure writing systems in general use.
Most are mixes of sound-signs and word-signs or semagrams (meaning signs).

I have never seen an IPA transcription of someone using an abbreviation but I
suppose that "8 FBI agents" would be transcribed as "eIt ef-bi-aI eIdZ&nts"
in IPA.
Unifon: "At ef bE I Ajcnts" Shavian: "Et ef bI F Ejants"

I think this is your suggested solution.
NATO would be "nEtO" in Shavian.

My suggested solution would be something like: "<8> <FBI> eIjants" and
"<NATO>
where letter sequences inside the brackets would be logograms.
This would require a font change.

It would be a little easier in Unifon: 8 'fbI' Ajents.
The abbreviation mark would be required to prevent fbI from being sounded out
as fuh-bee.

--Steve
No one has answered my question:
What shoujld be the default Shavian font used in email.
What font should everyone have installed?


Converters - Enter plain text get back regularized text
Manchester - Converter for IPA, Soundspel, Cut Spelling, ...
http://www.ccl.umist.ac.uk/staff/toby/Reformed_Spelling_in_CALL/plaintext.html

Unifon Converter
http://www.unifon.org
Truespel Converter
http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm
Paul V. wrote:
Hi Phil & Steve

There are at least 3 types of Acronyms and Abbreviations used in T.O.

There is only far we can go in using these Shorthand forms of
writing unless we wish to retain the vestiges of the Roman Alphabet
embedded inside words written in the Shavian Alphabet.

Decoding this "Shorthand" is based on an intimate knowledge of the
Roman Alphabet. Let's look at each of these 3 types.

1. Acronyms and Abbreviations that have been absorbed completely
into regular English and are pronounced as spelt.
(i.e. Ad, Auto, scuba, radar, snafu, NATO, Okay)
No problem. They can be written phonetically. <nEtO>

2. Acronyms that are pronounced as a string of Roman Alphabet letter
names. (i.e. USA, FBI, CIA, SOS, OK, TV, IBM, Washington D.C., U.K.,
U.S.S.R.) More of a problem, but still might be written
phonetically.

3. Ad-hoc Abbreviations using string of Roman Alphabet letter names.
created to avoid repeating a common phrase in an article.
This is a big problem. It is not possible to transliterate without
that special new marker sign, you are talking about.

There is no one solution to this issue.

Regards, Paul V.

TOPIC: Shaw Alphabet
and the popularity of phonemic codes
http://www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/shavian-short.html

Paul and Jerry,

Most people do not learn a code unless they receive some kind of return on
their investment
of time.

Kids will learn a code if it enables them to express themselves and write
notes to their friends. This tends to be a group activity because a code is
no better
than the number of people who can interpret it.

Some preschool kids in the Unifon classes [Univ. Chicago Lab School, 1950]
picked up the Unifon code in an hour and helped their friends compose messages
in it. The class played with Unifon for 3 months By the 2nd month, everyone in
the class could read and write in this code.

Over-learning one simple code, Unifon, developed a high level of phonemic
awareness.
According to Downings transfer of training hypothesis, an overlearned skill
can be transferred to a more complex skill. Kids went from reading the all
upper case Unifon code to reading comic books in the traditional code. Comic
book captions have no lower case.

Once they were comfortable reading the polyvalent code in all caps, they
transitioned to upper and lower case 3rd grade books. In one year, the entire
class was reading at a 3rd grade level or above.

.WUNS ÐÀ W3R KUMFORT3B3L RÉDIÑ Ð3 POLÉVÁL3NT KÓD IN ^L KAPS,...

In other words, the kids had no more difficulty in reading standard written
English than you have reading one-symbol per sound UNIFON (simulated above).

Most adults do not bother learning how to read the pronunciation guide in a
dictionary. I think this is a useful skill that could be easily taught. My
proposal is to pick a dictionary key and use it as an initial writing system.

Here is a lower case dictionary key [pronunciaiton guide] notation not unlike
www.m-w.com:

.W&ns ðá w&r k'&mfort&bl rédiñ ð pälévál&nt kód in ol kaps,....

Unlike Shavian, this writing system introduces only 3 new characters plus
diacritics that determine which of three sounds is to be associated with each
vowel letter. e.g.,
The long vowels are áéíóú. The acute accent is used because the Macron is
not available in LATIN 1 [ANSI].

--Steve stbetta@...
PV wrote: We are just having a bit of heated discussion as
to why the Shavian Alphabet didn't take off in the late sixties. It
was a time of inter-generation change. A lot of the old ways were
being examined critically and re-evaluated. I would have thought that
a better way to read English, would create a lot more interest.

I was thinking that the British Accent would make things more
difficult for a Mid-Western American English Speaker to learn to
write Shavian. Especially on their own. British English, especially
Non-Rhotic British English such as RP makes a lot more vowel
distinctions, than we do over here in America.
I am originally from Calgary in Alberta Canada, myself.

Perhaps, you can us your impression of the difficulty level of
learning the Shavian Alphabet from your point of view.

Paul Vandenbrink recalls Lionel Ghoti. - Volunteers in such projects have a
way of vanishing suddenly. Sometimes it's important to caution people not to
attempt too much too fast, lest they burn out. - This has been a major problem
in another quixotic pursuit of mine, graduates of American high schools
overseas. People will hustle for a few weeks or months, then disappear without an
e-mail address.

>>P.P.S. Excuse me for asking but do you make a vowel distinction between the
words "Doc" and "Dawg". Dawg as in Deputy Dawg or "Dogma". Also can you
distinguish the sound of the "ah" letter from the "on" letter. The "Ah" sound is
still retained in a few, older American words, "Amen", Psalms, Alms, Palm,
Dogma, Espionage, Drama, Trauma.<< - "Doc" and "Dawg" are phonetically distinct in
my speach. The other words I pronounce ahMEN, ayMEN, or ohMEHN depending on
context; sahmz, almz, pahm, dawgma, es-pee-uh-NAHZH, drahma, trawma.

There are a few very dubious minimal pairs for short and long ah sounds in
North American English. I can almost hear the difference between "Is there no
balm in Gilead?" and "Is there a bomb in Gilead?". They're as elusive as the
slightly more common minimal pairs of the type "He rowed across the river" / "He
rode across the river."

>>P.P.P.S. I expect that you also were exposed to British Accented English in
Germany when you were growing up there. I believe it is the norm in Europe.
When people learn English, they tend to take on the accent of the nearest
English population. Obviously, the greater the distance apart the less likely this
would hold true.<< In Germany 1953-55 I lived in Vogelweh, an American communit
y of about 12,000 people near Kaiserslautern (the largest overseas American
community in history). German nationals often had learned with a British
accent, but were trying to go American. I first encountered British Received
Pronunciation at Harvard College in the mid Fifties, where it was the usual stage
pronunciation. I found the lingua brittana in boca massachusettense well nigh
incomprehensible.

Bob Richmond

Jerry Baker notes: >>
(In [19th century German philosopher Schopenhauer's] day, even German
handwriting was done in a "Gothic" script. I can read Gothic-lettered printed German,
but not Gothic-lettered handwriting, which I occasionally find in old
correspondence.)<<

The funny alphabet that used to be used to print German is called "Fraktur"
both in English and in German. It was still in fairly common use in Germany
when I lived there in the Fifties, when the Luther Bible, some regional
newspapers, pulp fiction, and occasional art books were printed in it. I think it's
entirely vanished today. I suppose only a few old folks write Frakturschrift now.
- Fraktur and English Black Letter are different from each other, though
they're often confused with each other.

The term "Gothic" is best avoided because it has so many different meanings,
starting with Bishop Wulfila in the 4th century CE. (I audited a course in
Gothic when I was in college, but the only thing I remember is "swaswe qitha
izwis" - verily I say unto you.)

Danish, Latvian, and Wendish were sometimes printed in Fraktur, and I suppose
there were others - those are the ones I've seen. Fraktur was inflicted on
learners of German in the USA long after the Germans had abandoned. It greatly
added to the burden of learning German. It took me a couple of years as a
German major in college to learn to read Fraktur easily.

Bob Richmond

Hi Jerry
We have a simple way to write the Shavian Letters. You don't have to
use any special Accent marks, umlauts, tildes, cedillas or even
diagraphs (letter pairs).
You just type the regular Alphabet keys in the Shaw Font, and like
magic up come the Shaw Letters instead of the Roman Letter.
Obviously, the 26 Roman letters are not enough to represent all 48 of
the Shaw Letters, but it represents the most commonly used letters.
Isn't that easy. You just have set your Default Font to the Shaw Font.
I will explain that later.
The whole point of Shavian is to make writing and typing too easier
than with the Roman Letters.
Now as the remaining 22 Shaw letters we simply use the upper case of
the Roman letters to shift into an alternate Keyboard for the other
22 letters. You use the Shift all the time for Capital letters in the
Roman Alphabet so again it isn't a stretch. The Shaw Alphabet uses a
Namer dot instead of a Capital letter anyway, so the Shaw Alphabet
didn't need the upper case, per se.

We try and make it as logical as possible, So in some cases an
arbritary Roman Capital Letter like "R" represents the Shaw
letter "Are", but sometimes it isn't so Obvious. For example, we
use "D" for "array" and "F" for "ice".
"n" represents "Noon" and "N" represents "Hung"
Until you know how the Shaw Keyboard maps on top of the regular Roman
Keyboard, it might be helpful to see everything in its equivalent
Roman letters, anyway. Take a look the SHaw Chat Forum and see if you
can make some sense of it all.
I'll provide a full description of which Shaw letter each key on the
QWERTY Keyboard represents on my next post.
Let me know if you any other questions on the way the Keyboard works.

Regards, Paul V.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, gerald baker <glbaker50613@y...>
wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> I haven't figured out how to type Shaw-Script on a qwerty keyboard,
or how Andrew Callaway's phonetic translator might work. The
computers I use don't have umlauts, tildes, cedillas, hacheks, nnn.
>
> I think the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used to write
personal memos in English to confuse possible burglars. (In his day,
even German handwriting was done in
> a "Gothic" script. I can read Gothic-lettered printed German, but
not Gothic-lettered handwriting, which I occasionally find in old
correspondence.)
>
> When I write Shavian, I distinguish between my pronunciations
of "ours" and "hours," just as you do with yours.
>
> I see that your group seems to pronounce the first syllable
of "Shavian" as "shave." I've always thought it rhyme with "Slav,"
rather than with either "slave" or "slawv." Shaw, himself, used the
word in at least one of his prefaces (to a play), and I supposed that
Shaw might have pronounced it that way.
>
> However, I once knew a man named "Olvin Amundson," who occasionally
pronounced his Norwegian surname "Amos-son," because he'd heard so
many people do that.
>
> Jerry
>
>
> paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
>
> Hi Jerry
> Thanks for the information. It tends to confirm my supposition that
> most Americans who were successful in making good use of the Shaw
> Alphabet (i.e. writing) had some Phonetics background or were
> intimately familar with British English Pronunciation.
>
> I, myself just happened to pick up a 2d hand copy of the Bi-
> Alphabetic copy of "Androcles and the Lion" in an old book-store
> in Calgary back in 1971. It was an Orange Penguin Paperback. I was
a
> fan of the Plays of GBS, so I attempted to read it. Certain sound
> distinction that it made, I did not immediately pick up on. But
over
> the years, I gradually learned to distinguish all the different
> Phonemes, except for Ah and On. Those two sounds really don't sound
> different to me, so I generally just use the letter "ah". But it
took
> me 2 years to reach that level of competence. Luckily, I took a
basic
> Linguistics at the University of Calgary, in 1972 and that
clarified
> most of English Phonetic sounds. Most the course was on English
> Phonetics. I ended up using a subset of the Shaw Alphabet as my
> personal Shorthand, for many years. Some things only became crystal
> clear when I finally talked to the people here at the forum.
>
> Pronunciation is little more old fashioned in Western Canada. We
have
> a lot of expatriate Americans, so I heard a bit of everything,
> growing up.
> I think it was around 10-15% Americans when I was growing up.
> I probably say something close to a drawn out "arz" for "ours", but
> it becomes 2 syllables when I say, "hours" (ow-erz). It rhymes with
> flowers.
>
> We have nice Ikonboard Forum here, that Hugh Birkenhead of the
group
> set up, where we can post messages back and forth in the Shaw
> Alphabet.
> The Keyboard Mapping is pretty consistent, we just use the Upper
case
> Roman Key Letters to represent the extra letters in the Shaw
> Alphabet, as the Shaw Alphabet uses a Namer dot instead of Capitals
> anyway.
> To get to the Ikonboard go to www.shavian.org and click on NEW Hugh
> Birkenhead Forum. Then go to the Shaw Chat section.
> For you to see the Shaw letters instead of their Roman letter
> equivalents, you have to download the Shaw 2 Font, but there is an
> option to do that right on www.shavian.org screen next to the Hugh
> Birkenhead Forum. I would think it would work on the Library
> Computer, but you will have to try it out to be sure.
> Give it a try.
> Anyway, you can see what's already posted on the Ikon bulletin
board.
> Until you know the Shaw Keyboard Mapping, it might be helpful to
see
> it in the equivalent Roman letters. Take a look and see if you can
> make sense of it all.
> Let me know if you any other questions on how to use it.
> I try and post something there every 2 or 3 days to keep my hand
in,
> so I am sure we can get a coversation going.
>
> Thanks again, Paul V.
> ________________________attached___________________________
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, gerald baker
<glbaker50613@y...>
> wrote:
> > Hi Paul,
> >
> > I found it very easy to learn Shavian phonetics. I'd known the
IPA
> for many years, and also had studied Latin, German and some
Russian,
> so I was acquainted with unusual pronunciations.
> >
> > Usually, my correspondents, even Henry Kirchner, of Dallas,
Texas,
> wrote Shaw-Script in accordance with a British pronunciation, and I
> followed suit, even though I didn't pronounce words that way. In my
> dialect, the word "ours" rhymes with "stars," just as it does in
the
> old song "Home On The Range" where those two words end rhyming
lines.
> >
> > Also, in my dialect the words "merry," "marry" and "Mary" are
> homophones. Although I've forgotten many of the colloquial
> pronunciations that I'd heard my mother use, over 60 years ago, the
> part of my native dialect that survives doesn't seem to strike
people
> as unusual anywhere I travel in the US or the parts of Canada I've
> visited, especially lower Ontario.
> >
> > However it's been interesting to observe how English is
pronounced
> in some other parts of the world.
> >
> > I used Shaw-Script to make pronunciation notes in a French class
I
> took around 30 years ago, because it was much easier to write than
> the IPA.
> >
> > I hope I can access Shaw-Script on the Library computers that I
> use. They happen to be "fixed" to "lock out" accessing of the
Dvorak
> Simplified keyboard, something that I'd rather use than qwerty.
> >
> > Jerry
> >
>
>
>
>
>
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Hi Jerry
We do have a simple way to write the Shavian Letters. You just type
with the regular Alphabet keys, and like magic up come the Shaw
Letters instead of the Roman Letters.
Provided of course you have set the Default Font to the Shaw Letters.
Now obviously, the 26 Roman letters are not enough to represent all
48 of the Shaw Letters, but it represents the most commonly used
letters.
See how we match up the Roman letters to the Shaw Alphabet.
Here is a table with each Roman letter above its Matching Shaw
Letter. I put the letters into Shavian Order.

p t k T f s S c j N
peep tot kick thigh fee so sure church yea hung

b d g H v z Z J w h
bib dead gag they vow zoo measure judge woe ha-ha

l r m n
loll roar mime nun

i I e E A F
if eat egg age ash ice

a u o O U M Q q y Y
ado up on oak wool ooze out oil ah awe

R P X x D C W V
are or air err array ear Ian yew

Regards, Paul V.

Paul and Jerry,

It is not easier to type Shavian than Roman since you have to keyhboard it in
ASCII.
Shavian has monoline letterforms, so it is generally faster to handwrite.

Shavian is not the easiest phonemic writing system to type since it includes
combinations that are accessed with arbitrary and not always intuitive
keyboard keys.

Keyboard Shavian uses the Latin front vowels E & I rather than the shifted A
E.
No problem if you are familiar with IPA but otherwise a little difficult.

Rather than sticking with IPA and using aI for "eye", The Shavian font
assigns this diphthong to F. F might make sense as a keyboard assignment in PMF
because ah=c which is stacked on top of an I. This makes the diphthong character
look something like an F. Some of the keyboard assignments are based on such
shape analogies.

This is probably my main critique of the keyboard assignments. When you have
one symbol per sound, there is no need in to add arbitrary symbols for
combinations.

Unifon does the same thing with /oi/ and /aU/. Both systems assign the
redundant q to these sounds but they reverse them. cowboy = kqbQ in Unifon and
kQbq in Shavian.

In ENgliS it is kowboy, In AF and Webster, kauboi. Either solution would be
easier to remember for tradspel adepts than kqbQ. The only phonemes that need
to be represented in an orthography are the 36 uncombined ones. This has the
added benefit of reducing the memory load and arbitrary assigments.


The merry/marry problem is not solved by a phonemic notation.
In General American, the population is evenly split between those who
recognize the difference and those who merge the two sounds.




Hi Jerry
We have a simple way to write the Shavian Letters. You don't have to
use any special Accent marks, umlauts, tildes, cedillas or even
diagraphs (letter pairs).

You just type the regular Alphabet keys in the Shaw Font, and like
magic up come the Shaw Letters instead of the Roman Letter.
Obviously, the 26 Roman letters are not enough to represent all 48 of
the Shaw Letters, but it represents the most commonly used letters.
Isn't that easy. You just have set your Default Font to the Shaw Font.
I will explain that later.
The whole point of Shavian is to make writing and typing too easier
than with the Roman Letters.
Now as the remaining 22 Shaw letters we simply use the upper case of
the Roman letters to shift into an alternate Keyboard for the other
22 letters. You use the Shift all the time for Capital letters in the
Roman Alphabet so again it isn't a stretch. The Shaw Alphabet uses a
Namer dot instead of a Capital letter anyway, so the Shaw Alphabet
didn't need the upper case, per se.

We try and make it as logical as possible, So in some cases an
arbritary Roman Capital Letter like "R" represents the Shaw
letter "Are", but sometimes it isn't so Obvious. For example, we
use "D" for "array" and "F" for "ice".
"n" represents "Noon" and "N" represents "Hung"
Until you know how the Shaw Keyboard maps on top of the regular Roman
Keyboard, it might be helpful to see everything in its equivalent
Roman letters, anyway. Take a look the SHaw Chat Forum and see if you
can make some sense of it all.
I'll provide a full description of which Shaw letter each key on the
QWERTY Keyboard represents on my next post.
Let me know if you any other questions on the way the Keyboard works.

Regards, Paul V.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, gerald baker <glbaker50613@y...>
wrote:
> Hi Paul,
>
> I haven't figured out how to type Shaw-Script on a qwerty keyboard,
or how Andrew Callaway's phonetic translator might work. The
computers I use don't have umlauts, tildes, cedillas, hacheks, nnn.
>
> I think the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used to write
personal memos in English to confuse possible burglars. (In his day,
even German handwriting was done in
> a "Gothic" script. I can read Gothic-lettered printed German, but
not Gothic-lettered handwriting, which I occasionally find in old
correspondence.)
>
> When I write Shavian, I distinguish between my pronunciations
of "ours" and "hours," just as you do with yours.
>
> I see that your group seems to pronounce the first syllable
of "Shavian" as "shave." I've always thought it rhyme with "Slav,"
rather than with either "slave" or "slawv." Shaw, himself, used the
word in at least one of his prefaces (to a play), and I supposed that
Shaw might have pronounced it that way.
>
> However, I once knew a man named "Olvin Amundson," who occasionally
pronounced his Norwegian surname "Amos-son," because he'd heard so
many people do that.
>
> Jerry
>
>
> paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
>
> Hi Jerry
> Thanks for the information. It tends to confirm my supposition that
> most Americans who were successful in making good use of the Shaw
> Alphabet (i.e. writing) had some Phonetics background or were
> intimately familar with British English Pronunciation.
>
> I, myself just happened to pick up a 2d hand copy of the Bi-
> Alphabetic copy of "Androcles and the Lion" in an old book-store
> in Calgary back in 1971. It was an Orange Penguin Paperback. I was
a
> fan of the Plays of GBS, so I attempted to read it. Certain sound
> distinction that it made, I did not immediately pick up on. But
over
> the years, I gradually learned to distinguish all the different
> Phonemes, except for Ah and On. Those two sounds really don't sound
> different to me, so I generally just use the letter "ah". But it
took me 2 years to reach that level of competence. Luckily, I took a
basic Linguistics at the University of Calgary, in 1972 and that clarified
> most of English Phonetic sounds. Most the course was on English
> Phonetics. I ended up using a subset of the Shaw Alphabet as my
> personal Shorthand, for many years. Some things only became crystal
> clear when I finally talked to the people here at the forum.
>
> Pronunciation is little more old fashioned in Western Canada. We
have a lot of expatriate Americans, so I heard a bit of everything,
> growing up. I think it was around 10-15% Americans when I was growing up.
> I probably say something close to a drawn out "arz" for "ours", but
> it becomes 2 syllables when I say, "hours" (ow-erz). It rhymes with
> flowers.
>
> We have nice Ikonboard Forum here, that Hugh Birkenhead of the
group set up, where we can post messages back and forth in the Shaw
> Alphabet. The Keyboard Mapping is pretty consistent, we just use the Upper
case Roman Key Letters to represent the extra letters in the Shaw
> Alphabet, as the Shaw Alphabet uses a Namer dot instead of Capitals anyway.
> To get to the Ikonboard go to www.shavian.org and click on NEW Hugh
> Birkenhead Forum. Then go to the Shaw Chat section.
> For you to see the Shaw letters instead of their Roman letter
> equivalents, you have to download the Shaw 2 Font, but there is an
> option to do that right on www.shavian.org screen next to the Hugh
> Birkenhead Forum. I would think it would work on the Library
> Computer, but you will have to try it out to be sure.
> Give it a try.

Have I mentioned yet this week that I hate Romanji? (aka the original
layout for shavian?") I have always considered that when typing a
different language, that it should have the same ease of typing, but
should not be connected with the original. Otherwise, it can cross wire
the brain into mixing up the symbols. Besides, you don't want that
layout to stick but one that makes more sense.

Maybe it's just me and my weekly grouse.
--Star

--- stbetta@... wrote:

> Paul and Jerry,
>
> It is not easier to type Shavian than Roman since you have to
> keyhboard it in
> ASCII.
> Shavian has monoline letterforms, so it is generally faster to
> handwrite.
>
> Shavian is not the easiest phonemic writing system to type since it
> includes
> combinations that are accessed with arbitrary and not always
> intuitive
> keyboard keys.
>
> Keyboard Shavian uses the Latin front vowels E & I rather than the
> shifted A
> E.
> No problem if you are familiar with IPA but otherwise a little
> difficult.
>
> Rather than sticking with IPA and using aI for "eye", The Shavian
> font
> assigns this diphthong to F. F might make sense as a keyboard
> assignment in PMF
> because ah=c which is stacked on top of an I. This makes the
> diphthong character
> look something like an F. Some of the keyboard assignments are based
> on such
> shape analogies.
>
> This is probably my main critique of the keyboard assignments. When
> you have
> one symbol per sound, there is no need in to add arbitrary symbols
> for
> combinations.
>
> Unifon does the same thing with /oi/ and /aU/. Both systems assign
> the
> redundant q to these sounds but they reverse them. cowboy = kqbQ in
> Unifon and
> kQbq in Shavian.
>
> In ENgliS it is kowboy, In AF and Webster, kauboi. Either solution
> would be
> easier to remember for tradspel adepts than kqbQ. The only phonemes
> that need
> to be represented in an orthography are the 36 uncombined ones. This
> has the
> added benefit of reducing the memory load and arbitrary assigments.
>
>
> The merry/marry problem is not solved by a phonemic notation.
> In General American, the population is evenly split between those who
> recognize the difference and those who merge the two sounds.
>
>
>
>
> Hi Jerry
> We have a simple way to write the Shavian Letters. You don't have to
> use any special Accent marks, umlauts, tildes, cedillas or even
> diagraphs (letter pairs).
>
> You just type the regular Alphabet keys in the Shaw Font, and like
> magic up come the Shaw Letters instead of the Roman Letter.
> Obviously, the 26 Roman letters are not enough to represent all 48 of
>
> the Shaw Letters, but it represents the most commonly used letters.
> Isn't that easy. You just have set your Default Font to the Shaw
> Font.
> I will explain that later.
> The whole point of Shavian is to make writing and typing too easier
> than with the Roman Letters.
> Now as the remaining 22 Shaw letters we simply use the upper case of
> the Roman letters to shift into an alternate Keyboard for the other
> 22 letters. You use the Shift all the time for Capital letters in the
>
> Roman Alphabet so again it isn't a stretch. The Shaw Alphabet uses a
> Namer dot instead of a Capital letter anyway, so the Shaw Alphabet
> didn't need the upper case, per se.
>
> We try and make it as logical as possible, So in some cases an
> arbritary Roman Capital Letter like "R" represents the Shaw
> letter "Are", but sometimes it isn't so Obvious. For example, we
> use "D" for "array" and "F" for "ice".
> "n" represents "Noon" and "N" represents "Hung"
> Until you know how the Shaw Keyboard maps on top of the regular Roman
>
> Keyboard, it might be helpful to see everything in its equivalent
> Roman letters, anyway. Take a look the SHaw Chat Forum and see if you
>
> can make some sense of it all.
> I'll provide a full description of which Shaw letter each key on the
>
> QWERTY Keyboard represents on my next post.
> Let me know if you any other questions on the way the Keyboard works.
>
> Regards, Paul V.
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, gerald baker <glbaker50613@y...>
>
> wrote:
> > Hi Paul,
> >
> > I haven't figured out how to type Shaw-Script on a qwerty keyboard,
>
> or how Andrew Callaway's phonetic translator might work. The
> computers I use don't have umlauts, tildes, cedillas, hacheks, nnn.
> >
> > I think the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used to write
> personal memos in English to confuse possible burglars. (In his day,
> even German handwriting was done in
> > a "Gothic" script. I can read Gothic-lettered printed German, but
> not Gothic-lettered handwriting, which I occasionally find in old
> correspondence.)
> >
> > When I write Shavian, I distinguish between my pronunciations
> of "ours" and "hours," just as you do with yours.
> >
> > I see that your group seems to pronounce the first syllable
> of "Shavian" as "shave." I've always thought it rhyme with "Slav,"
> rather than with either "slave" or "slawv." Shaw, himself, used the
> word in at least one of his prefaces (to a play), and I supposed that
>
> Shaw might have pronounced it that way.
> >
> > However, I once knew a man named "Olvin Amundson," who occasionally
>
> pronounced his Norwegian surname "Amos-son," because he'd heard so
> many people do that.
> >
> > Jerry
> >
> >
> > paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Jerry
> > Thanks for the information. It tends to confirm my supposition that
>
> > most Americans who were successful in making good use of the Shaw
> > Alphabet (i.e. writing) had some Phonetics background or were
> > intimately familar with British English Pronunciation.
> >
> > I, myself just happened to pick up a 2d hand copy of the Bi-
> > Alphabetic copy of "Androcles and the Lion" in an old book-store
> > in Calgary back in 1971. It was an Orange Penguin Paperback. I was
> a
> > fan of the Plays of GBS, so I attempted to read it. Certain sound
> > distinction that it made, I did not immediately pick up on. But
> over
> > the years, I gradually learned to distinguish all the different
> > Phonemes, except for Ah and On. Those two sounds really don't sound
>
> > different to me, so I generally just use the letter "ah". But it
> took me 2 years to reach that level of competence. Luckily, I took a
> basic Linguistics at the University of Calgary, in 1972 and that
> clarified
> > most of English Phonetic sounds. Most the course was on English
> > Phonetics. I ended up using a subset of the Shaw Alphabet as my
> > personal Shorthand, for many years. Some things only became crystal
>
> > clear when I finally talked to the people here at the forum.
> >
> > Pronunciation is little more old fashioned in Western Canada. We
> have a lot of expatriate Americans, so I heard a bit of everything,
> > growing up. I think it was around 10-15% Americans when I was
> growing up.
> > I probably say something close to a drawn out "arz" for "ours", but
>
> > it becomes 2 syllables when I say, "hours" (ow-erz). It rhymes with
>
> > flowers.
> >
> > We have nice Ikonboard Forum here, that Hugh Birkenhead of the
> group set up, where we can post messages back and forth in the Shaw
> > Alphabet. The Keyboard Mapping is pretty consistent, we just use
> the Upper
> case Roman Key Letters to represent the extra letters in the Shaw
> > Alphabet, as the Shaw Alphabet uses a Namer dot instead of Capitals
> anyway.
> > To get to the Ikonboard go to www.shavian.org and click on NEW Hugh
>
> > Birkenhead Forum. Then go to the Shaw Chat section.
> > For you to see the Shaw letters instead of their Roman letter
> > equivalents, you have to download the Shaw 2 Font, but there is an
> > option to do that right on www.shavian.org screen next to the Hugh
> > Birkenhead Forum. I would think it would work on the Library
> > Computer, but you will have to try it out to be sure.
> > Give it a try.
>


====http://www.livejournal.com/users/wodentoad

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I learned fraktur through the (not so) simple expedient of reading Hermann Hesse's novel "Knulp" which was printed in it. By the time I got to the end of the book, I was proficient in deciphering the peculiarly similar uppercase letters.

Paige
----- Original Message -----
From: RSRICHMOND@aol.com
To: shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 4:49 PM
Subject: Re: [shawalphabet] Re: I'm just now joining this group.


Jerry Baker notes: >>
(In [19th century German philosopher Schopenhauer's] day, even German handwriting was done in a "Gothic" script. I can read Gothic-lettered printed German, but not Gothic-lettered handwriting, which I occasionally find in old correspondence.)<<

The funny alphabet that used to be used to print German is called "Fraktur" both in English and in German. It was still in fairly common use in Germany when I lived there in the Fifties, when the Luther Bible, some regional newspapers, pulp fiction, and occasional art books were printed in it. I think it's entirely vanished today. I suppose only a few old folks write Frakturschrift now. - Fraktur and English Black Letter are different from each other, though they're often confused with each other.

The term "Gothic" is best avoided because it has so many different meanings, starting with Bishop Wulfila in the 4th century CE. (I audited a course in Gothic when I was in college, but the only thing I remember is "swaswe qitha izwis" - verily I say unto you.)

Danish, Latvian, and Wendish were sometimes printed in Fraktur, and I suppose there were others - those are the ones I've seen. Fraktur was inflicted on learners of German in the USA long after the Germans had abandoned. It greatly added to the burden of learning German. It took me a couple of years as a German major in college to learn to read Fraktur easily.

Bob Richmond
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Hi Steve
I have to respectfully disagree to a couple of your points.
I hope you will be able to see my point of view on this issue.

First, I agree that a Shaw Keyboard with 48 keys would be ideal.
Having to fool around with the QWERTY Keyboard based on 26 letters,
with all the extraneous keys around the edge is not helping. Why do
we have 2 sets of number keys? And even though it is the first key
you see, I have never used the tilde key for anything. What the heck
is under the Tilde. Whatever it is, it has its own key.
However, there is a strong benefit to having one key for every
commonly understood phoneme, and although we lose sight of it some
times, "I" is a phoneme. Phonetically, it might be equivalent
to "ado" + "eat" or sometimes "ah" + "eat" or even on rare
occasions "ash" + "eat", but English speakers hear it as one sound.
it is written with one letter in the Roman Alphabet.
Same with "age" and "yew" and "array".

When some says "cute", "beautiful", "fuel" or "Few", do you think
a "y" sound or a funny Dipthong. Surprise, some people do pronounce
it a Dipthong. If it's an English Phoneme, it doesn't always break
down into nice neat basic sounds. Ask Stephanie on the Bob Newhart
Show,
if what she is saying is "you" when she is making the funny "euch"
sound (Interjection).

Regards, Paul V.


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Paul and Jerry,
>
> It is not easier to type Shavian than Roman since you have to
keyhboard it in
> ASCII.
> Shavian has monoline letterforms, so it is generally faster to
handwrite.
>
> Shavian is not the easiest phonemic writing system to type since it
includes
> combinations that are accessed with arbitrary and not always
intuitive
> keyboard keys.
>
> Keyboard Shavian uses the Latin front vowels E & I rather than the
shifted A
> E.
> No problem if you are familiar with IPA but otherwise a little
difficult.
>
> Rather than sticking with IPA and using aI for "eye", The Shavian
font
> assigns this diphthong to F. F might make sense as a keyboard
assignment in PMF
> because ah=c which is stacked on top of an I. This makes the
diphthong character
> look something like an F. Some of the keyboard assignments are
based on such
> shape analogies.
>
> This is probably my main critique of the keyboard assignments.
When you have
> one symbol per sound, there is no need in to add arbitrary symbols
for
> combinations.
>
> Unifon does the same thing with /oi/ and /aU/. Both systems assign
the
> redundant q to these sounds but they reverse them. cowboy = kqbQ
in Unifon and
> kQbq in Shavian.
>
> In ENgliS it is kowboy, In AF and Webster, kauboi. Either solution
would be
> easier to remember for tradspel adepts than kqbQ. The only
phonemes that need
> to be represented in an orthography are the 36 uncombined ones.
This has the
> added benefit of reducing the memory load and arbitrary assigments.
>
>
> The merry/marry problem is not solved by a phonemic notation.
> In General American, the population is evenly split between those
who
> recognize the difference and those who merge the two sounds.
>
>
>
>
> Hi Jerry
> We have a simple way to write the Shavian Letters. You don't have
to
> use any special Accent marks, umlauts, tildes, cedillas or even
> diagraphs (letter pairs).
>
> You just type the regular Alphabet keys in the Shaw Font, and like
> magic up come the Shaw Letters instead of the Roman Letter.
> Obviously, the 26 Roman letters are not enough to represent all 48
of
> the Shaw Letters, but it represents the most commonly used letters.
> Isn't that easy. You just have set your Default Font to the Shaw
Font.
> I will explain that later.
> The whole point of Shavian is to make writing and typing too easier
> than with the Roman Letters.
> Now as the remaining 22 Shaw letters we simply use the upper case
of
> the Roman letters to shift into an alternate Keyboard for the other
> 22 letters. You use the Shift all the time for Capital letters in
the
> Roman Alphabet so again it isn't a stretch. The Shaw Alphabet uses
a
> Namer dot instead of a Capital letter anyway, so the Shaw Alphabet
> didn't need the upper case, per se.
>
> We try and make it as logical as possible, So in some cases an
> arbritary Roman Capital Letter like "R" represents the Shaw
> letter "Are", but sometimes it isn't so Obvious. For example, we
> use "D" for "array" and "F" for "ice".
> "n" represents "Noon" and "N" represents "Hung"
> Until you know how the Shaw Keyboard maps on top of the regular
Roman
> Keyboard, it might be helpful to see everything in its equivalent
> Roman letters, anyway. Take a look the SHaw Chat Forum and see if
you
> can make some sense of it all.
> I'll provide a full description of which Shaw letter each key on
the
> QWERTY Keyboard represents on my next post.
> Let me know if you any other questions on the way the Keyboard
works.
>
> Regards, Paul V.
>
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, gerald baker
<glbaker50613@y...>
> wrote:
> > Hi Paul,
> >
> > I haven't figured out how to type Shaw-Script on a qwerty
keyboard,
> or how Andrew Callaway's phonetic translator might work. The
> computers I use don't have umlauts, tildes, cedillas, hacheks, nnn.
> >
> > I think the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used to write
> personal memos in English to confuse possible burglars. (In his
day,
> even German handwriting was done in
> > a "Gothic" script. I can read Gothic-lettered printed German, but
> not Gothic-lettered handwriting, which I occasionally find in old
> correspondence.)
> >
> > When I write Shavian, I distinguish between my pronunciations
> of "ours" and "hours," just as you do with yours.
> >
> > I see that your group seems to pronounce the first syllable
> of "Shavian" as "shave." I've always thought it rhyme with "Slav,"
> rather than with either "slave" or "slawv." Shaw, himself, used the
> word in at least one of his prefaces (to a play), and I supposed
that
> Shaw might have pronounced it that way.
> >
> > However, I once knew a man named "Olvin Amundson," who
occasionally
> pronounced his Norwegian surname "Amos-son," because he'd heard so
> many people do that.
> >
> > Jerry
> >
> >
> > paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Jerry
> > Thanks for the information. It tends to confirm my supposition
that
> > most Americans who were successful in making good use of the Shaw
> > Alphabet (i.e. writing) had some Phonetics background or were
> > intimately familar with British English Pronunciation.
> >
> > I, myself just happened to pick up a 2d hand copy of the Bi-
> > Alphabetic copy of "Androcles and the Lion" in an old book-store
> > in Calgary back in 1971. It was an Orange Penguin Paperback. I
was
> a
> > fan of the Plays of GBS, so I attempted to read it. Certain sound
> > distinction that it made, I did not immediately pick up on. But
> over
> > the years, I gradually learned to distinguish all the different
> > Phonemes, except for Ah and On. Those two sounds really don't
sound
> > different to me, so I generally just use the letter "ah". But it
> took me 2 years to reach that level of competence. Luckily, I took
a
> basic Linguistics at the University of Calgary, in 1972 and that
clarified
> > most of English Phonetic sounds. Most the course was on English
> > Phonetics. I ended up using a subset of the Shaw Alphabet as my
> > personal Shorthand, for many years. Some things only became
crystal
> > clear when I finally talked to the people here at the forum.
> >
> > Pronunciation is little more old fashioned in Western Canada. We
> have a lot of expatriate Americans, so I heard a bit of everything,
> > growing up. I think it was around 10-15% Americans when I was
growing up.
> > I probably say something close to a drawn out "arz" for "ours",
but
> > it becomes 2 syllables when I say, "hours" (ow-erz). It rhymes
with
> > flowers.
> >
> > We have nice Ikonboard Forum here, that Hugh Birkenhead of the
> group set up, where we can post messages back and forth in the Shaw
> > Alphabet. The Keyboard Mapping is pretty consistent, we just use
the Upper
> case Roman Key Letters to represent the extra letters in the Shaw
> > Alphabet, as the Shaw Alphabet uses a Namer dot instead of
Capitals anyway.
> > To get to the Ikonboard go to www.shavian.org and click on NEW
Hugh
> > Birkenhead Forum. Then go to the Shaw Chat section.
> > For you to see the Shaw letters instead of their Roman letter
> > equivalents, you have to download the Shaw 2 Font, but there is
an
> > option to do that right on www.shavian.org screen next to the
Hugh
> > Birkenhead Forum. I would think it would work on the Library
> > Computer, but you will have to try it out to be sure.
> > Give it a try.