Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

Perhaps it would be a good idea to add also .pdf versions.
Many more people would benefit from such a presentation without the
hassle of having to upload fonts.

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Scott Harrison <nik@m...> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I finally got around to changing my Unicode documents so they have the
> proper Unicode code points in them. If you are interested, please look
> at http://www.mithrandir.com/Shavian/Shavian.html and let me know if
> there are any problems with them. Thanks.
>
> --
> ·ð`•ð`'ð`ªð`` ·ð`£ð`ºð`¦ð`•ð`©ð`¯ Scott Harrison PGP
Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86

Garo,

Is it worth consulting a lawyer as to determine the safest way to establish a
non-profit organization so that bequests can be received without being
contested?

There is no problem in the U.S.
Non-profit educational organizations are rather easy to set up. There might
be a slight problem if a lot of the money collected went to political action
and lobbying. The problem is in the U.K.

There is an i/t/a foundation with over $500,000 in assets.

There is the American Literacy Council which used to be called the Phonemic
Spelling Council. They have about $100,000 in assets.

Most of the money comes from bequests rather than monthly dues. I would set
the dues at $5 per year and provide $15 a year in benefits. The shortfall
would be made up from large donors.

Before we set up a Shaw Alphabet Foundation of whatever you want to call it.
What about some discussion on where the money would be spent?

e.g., a quarterly on-line journal. A printed journal - once a year. A
convention once every four years. ..... (what else?)

The i/t/a foundation has one employee who meets with the board at least once
a year to decide which of the grant applications received by March will be
funded. My guess is that they pay the employee about $40,000 a year and
distrubute about the same amount in funding various projects.

That is one model.

--Steve


garosalibian@... wrote:
I am not a legal expert, but it is worth consulting a lawyer as to
what is the safest way to establish a non-profit organization, even an
academy to study and promote spelling reform or Shavian alphabet. I am
sure there are certain provisions in the law about this.

I know there is the Shaw Society. But I would not be interested in
giving money to a society just to study George Bernard Shaw.

But I would probably be very much inclined to give money readily if it
were to promote precisely Shavian as an alphabet for example.

In any case, spelling reform is such a vital cause that any society
promoting spelling reform should be able to attract tens of thousands
of active members involved paying annual membership fees, if not even
hundreds of thousands of members helping the propagation of reformed
literature.

Spelling reform is that much relevant to somebody like me.

---
> Garo,
>
> I think you raise an interesting question: "What kind of legal
advice did Shaw receive?"

> I don't know. I wish I did.

> I do know that he did not want to give the money to the spelling
society because he disagreed with their approach to the alphabet problem.
Pitman and Daniel Jones were the principles of the Spelling Society at the
time. Jones was one of the inspirations for Professor Higgins.

> I think that Pitman made a mistake by not placing enough value on
future royalties in his compromise with the British Museam

We can spell it in a phonemic writing system, but can we spell it in the
traditional one?
hFpOkyndIAk iz H wurd

Word of the day: Spell hýpókändríak "hI-pO-'kän-drE-"ak
The chekd spelling does not agree with the Webster stress pattern.
hýpòkändrÿak
How is it spelled in your notation? How is it spelled traditionally?
Shavian: hFpOkyndIAk
Word of the day: Spell SOfD

I think we could do a study that would demonstrate that people can spell
better in Shavian
than they can in the traditional spelling system. 2nd year students of German
can spell better in German than they can in English.

www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/redundant-e.htm Ear rhymes do not match eye
rhymes.
Our Strange Lingo
Its the writing system that is strange
When the English tongue we speak.
Why is break not rhymed with freak?
Will you tell me why it's true
We say sew but likewise few?
And the maker of the verse,
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse? Beard is not the same as heard
Cord is different from word.
Cow is cow but low is low
Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose, dose, and lose
& think of goose & yet with choose
Think of comb,tomb and bomb,
Doll and roll or home and some.Since pay is rhymed with say
Why not paid with said I pray?
Think of blood, food and good.
Mould is not pronounced like could.
Wherefore done, but gone and lone-
Is there any reason known?
To sum up all, it seems to me
Sound and letters don't agree.




Misspelling spoter
Timely note: CNN mispelled carnaval as carnival and the newsreader
mispronounced it as spelled. kärn-ee-val

Hi Scott
I thought you were in Europe some where.
When are you coming back to the States?
You can lose your native accent over time,
or even worse become a relic of Language past.
Regards, Paul V.


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, Scott Harrison <nik@m...> wrote:
>
> On Feb 8, 2005, at 07:27, paul vandenbrink wrote:
>
> >
> > Now with the Internet, many more international English speakers,
> > especially Americans are learing the Shavian Alphabet.
> >
> > Regards, Paul V.
> >
> > P.S. As a Canadian English Speaker, I pronounce my English with an
> > almost American accent, yet I am fairly familar with the British
RP
> > accent through a lot of exposure to BBC television.
> > I was a Thunderbirds, and Avengers addict as a child.
> >
> My work is done using an American accent that is very
neutral (or
> midwest or whatever you want to call it). Most of the English-
language
> channels I get here are from the U.K. -- BBC, ITV3, Sky News, etc.
So
> I get the good dose of British English as well. :-) However, all
my
> Shavian is using my accent.
>
> --
> ·?`•?`'?`ª?`` ·?`£?`º?`¦?`•?`©?`¯ Scott Harrison
PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86

On 2/7/05 10:41 AM, "paul vandenbrink" <pvandenbrink@...> wrote:

> Hi Joe
> Let me respond to 2 of your points.
> First, Most American speakers do not distinguish "on" and "ah" at all.

I am one of those.

> Americans generally pronounce the "ah" sound for both letters.
> For many British speakers in the South of England, the "ah" sound is
> pronounced in most cases where an American would pronounce "Ash".

In this case, I would suggest maintaining the distinction by writing Ash.
Writing Ah would confuse many Americans, while writing Ash confuses no-one
as long as they know to pronounce it like Ah in accordance with their
accent. The same can be done for Ah and On. While many Americans may not
know where to use these letters, they¹ll make sense if they¹re both read the
same way. A reader will soon become accustomed to these spellings, which
while not always perfectly phonemic, are certainly better than what we¹ve
got.

> Because of these obvious differences, any transliterator will have an
> obvious accent. If you wish to keep all these distinctions then it
> would be best to use British Pronunciation as a base. And as you said
> a Rhotic pronunciation, you can't use RP English.
> So what would that be? I am not familar with Brish Accents.

I ascribe to the principle followed in Androcles: Words should be spelled
with the maximum distinction so that most variant pronunciations can be
derived from one spelling. Of course, this doesn't mean we all have to
write this way all the time, but a converter should be able to handle this.

> Second, I agree that erroneous transliterations should not be flagged
> in the output Shaw text from the converter/tranlitorator/fileter.
> That's what the Spell-Checker is for.
> Errors found through use of the Spell-Checker, should be added back
> into the exception table for the convertor.
> That way you have continuous refinement and improvement of the
> Transliteration process.

A converter probably doesn't need an "exception table" as such. It would
use a one-to-one replacement table with alternatives. I suggest using a
portable library of word correspondences (probably as tabbed text),
including different pronunciations for homographs (the words spelled the
same in T.O. But different in Shavian and with different meanings). These
wouldn't include accents. This default dictionary would include accepted
general spellings that follow the above principle as closely as is
reasonable, and alternatives could be flagged and chosen by the user, much
as Lionel's program seems to work. Then perhaps a user dictionary could be
used for converting a specific accent if necessary.
If I had a little more programming experience, I'd start working on one for
the Mac.

> Regards, Paul V.
>
> P.S. Now we have a Fileter, I need to check it out before suggesting
> improvements. Anybody tried it out yet under Window 98 Second Edition?

I can test it under emulation or on somebody else's computer, but I long for
such a program that will work on my Mac. In any case, I'll be glad to give
my two cents when I have a chance to try it

Regards,
Joe
/JO

I am not confining my discussion to Shavian but I am arguing for a
global spelling reform organization of immense world influence.

Steve,
The amount of figures that you discuss, 50,000 dollars here, 100,000
dollars there may be good for a limited grouping of at most a dozen or
so experts meeting once or twice a year and a few hundred enthusiasts
or sympathizers financing an 8-16 page quarterly publication at most
that will be read by say a couple of hundred people. The amounts you
cite would be the equivalent pay of just one full-time university
professor in any one average American or British university.

A 50,000-100,000 dollars a year budget is a good for
self-congratulatory effort of having done something for our own sake.
Then each of us goes home content with having done our share.

But success does not come with such individual effort and with such
meagre budgets by a bunch of enthusiasts pursues rival reform schemes
in their spare time as an intellectual exercise and continuously
bicker with each other about my reform vs your reform and how about
this dialect versus that phoneme versus those diphtongs. These are all
good discussions but eventually lead nowhere and we end up with a
bitter taste in our mouths and huge disappointment in our hearts. I
understand when virtually everybody thinks we are a sort of secrter
society with our own peculiar initiations rites.... :)

The world is way beyond us. Bill Gates started with a simple operating
system for computers. He called it Windows. Now he has so much money
that he has set aside (from his spare change actually) a donation of
10 billion dollars for education in the world for the next decade from
his own pocket! Yes 10 billion dollars!

Probably nobody told him that the best way for world education is the
propogation of an effectively spelt and reformed English universal
language. So he set aside zilch, yes, exactly 0 dollars for OUR cause
of spelling reform.

My dream exceeds anything you are contemplating. What I am talking
about is a foundation of say 100 million dollars budget, supported by
hundreds of charitable foundations and businesses that make tax exempt
donations and hundreds of national and world organizations pitching in
with one-time endowment funds or annual contributions and tens of
publishing and media giants.

It should have as a minimum level a vibrant university / academy up to
a Ph.D degree with branches in prominent cities like London, New York,
Toronto, Sydney and other capitals where English is widely used with a
full line of tens of professors and hundreds if not thousands of
researchers and research assistants and librarians and archivists
(also a network of tens of thousands of voluntary workers who devote
part of their time and talent to the cause), a foundation that is
fully consecrated and devoted to spelling reform in a rigorous way and
that can effectively promote this agenda on a worldwide scale with
huge international perpetual visibility and worldwide active public
support.

This is the only way we will be able to stand against hundreds of
English Departments in universities who are dead set against any
reform and perpetuate this idiotic utterly inadequate system we have
today.

I want a foundation that has world class publications at the level of
"Time" Magazine or "Reader's Digest" or "National Geographic", or the
"Sunday Times" or the "Daily Telegroah" and tackles not only language
subjects but contemporary world affairs with effective coverage.

I want a foundation that can publish a wide range of dictionaries of
all sorts, educational tools, language learning books, that has
effective airtime on radio, TV, in childrens programs, in tens of
thousands of schools and even its own specialized satellite channel.

I want a foundation that has chairs in tens of established and widely
respected universities (including Oxford, Canbridge, Harvard, MIT),
that has promotional and publc relations outlets that can match IBM
and Microsft and Google and Yahoo and can influence progressive
sectors like music, cinema, publishing, internet, business companies,
industries and multinational corporations.

I want a foundation that has think thanks in virtually all conceivable
sectors and how each of these sectors can join our spelling reform
movement. We must be able to extend contacts and necessary influence
and political weight over relevant government departments, political
parties of all directions, world leaders, writers, poets, journalists,
religious establishments, we should have startegic alliances with
trend setters, futurists, avant-guarde opinion makers, advertising and
marketing agencies.

Or else we can go on doing what we are doing prsently, just talk to
each other for ages and we will achieve nothing really.

I am not saying let us adopt Shavian. It may have its limitations, who
knows.

But what I am saying is: let us discuss all such matters in a
successful setting with an international organization of universal
acceptance and credibility that is dead set on achieving its goal of
universal spelling reform that has its own weight and reaches the
minds of the masses and abundant financing to achieve these goals.

Every dolalar spent for this will return to us tens of dollars of
savings in world literacy and development.

Once we do that, the intransigent ivory towers will fall one after
each other and we will be a much better world for future generations.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one (John Lennon)


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Garo,
>
> Is it worth consulting a lawyer as to determine the safest way to
establish a
> non-profit organization so that bequests can be received without being
> contested?
>
> There is no problem in the U.S.
> Non-profit educational organizations are rather easy to set up.
There might
> be a slight problem if a lot of the money collected went to
political action
> and lobbying. The problem is in the U.K.
>
> There is an i/t/a foundation with over $500,000 in assets.
>
> There is the American Literacy Council which used to be called the
Phonemic
> Spelling Council. They have about $100,000 in assets.
>
> Most of the money comes from bequests rather than monthly dues. I
would set
> the dues at $5 per year and provide $15 a year in benefits. The
shortfall
> would be made up from large donors.
>
> Before we set up a Shaw Alphabet Foundation of whatever you want to
call it.
> What about some discussion on where the money would be spent?
>
> e.g., a quarterly on-line journal. A printed journal - once a year. A
> convention once every four years. ..... (what else?)
>
> The i/t/a foundation has one employee who meets with the board at
least once
> a year to decide which of the grant applications received by March
will be
> funded. My guess is that they pay the employee about $40,000 a year
and
> distrubute about the same amount in funding various projects.
>
> That is one model.
>
> --Steve
>
>
> garosalibian@y... wrote:
> I am not a legal expert, but it is worth consulting a lawyer as to
> what is the safest way to establish a non-profit organization, even an
> academy to study and promote spelling reform or Shavian alphabet. I am
> sure there are certain provisions in the law about this.
>
> I know there is the Shaw Society. But I would not be interested in
> giving money to a society just to study George Bernard Shaw.
>
> But I would probably be very much inclined to give money readily if it
> were to promote precisely Shavian as an alphabet for example.
>
> In any case, spelling reform is such a vital cause that any society
> promoting spelling reform should be able to attract tens of thousands
> of active members involved paying annual membership fees, if not even
> hundreds of thousands of members helping the propagation of reformed
> literature.
>
> Spelling reform is that much relevant to somebody like me.
>
> ---
> > Garo,
> >
> > I think you raise an interesting question: "What kind of legal
> advice did Shaw receive?"
>
> > I don't know. I wish I did.
>
> > I do know that he did not want to give the money to the spelling
> society because he disagreed with their approach to the alphabet
problem.
> Pitman and Daniel Jones were the principles of the Spelling Society
at the
> time. Jones was one of the inspirations for Professor Higgins.
>
> > I think that Pitman made a mistake by not placing enough value on
> future royalties in his compromise with the British Museam

> -----Original Message-----
> From: garosalibian [mailto:garosalibian@...]
> Sent: 07 February 2005 23:45
> To: shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [shawalphabet] About an "American" Shavian
>
>
>
> As far as I have followed Shavian development, I notice a certain
> British "orientation" to the whole process. Is my impression
> correct? Or there have been serious attempts to introduce this
> scheme in United States or worldwide?

Well, Shaw did describe his intention to see created a "proposed new BRITISH
alphabet" - perhaps he was only really thinking of Britain's interests.
After all, he was alive during the times of the British Empire, when it was
'the' unrivalled superpower in the world.

> Perhaps that would contradict Shaw's will as he wanted to see the
> proposed letter schemes to represent King George's English --
> probably English as predominantly spoken in Britain.

He only wished King George's English to be used for the transliteration of
Androcles and the Lion. He did not specify that it was to become the 'de
facto' Shavian dialect.

Hugh B


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.6 - Release Date: 07/02/2005

http://www.unifon.org/Culkin,%20Aug.%2082%20article.htm

SB: Culkin's article in Science Digest mentions Shavian.
It provides a rationale for using Unifon but the same rationale applies to
Shavian.

JCulkin: George Bernard Shaw a passionate proponent of alphabet reform wrote,
"The waste of war is negligible in comparison to the daily waste of trying to
communicate with one another In English through an alphabet with 14 letters
missing. That must be remedied come what may.
Three thousand years ago, the Greeks presented us with a perfectly logical
and consistent
alphabet. The play of history and the mixing of languages-since then have led
to the creation of our enormously rich but needlessly complicated (written)
language. Fans of (phonemic spelling) feel it's time to deal with the problems
or our language instead or letting them pile up for another 30 centuries.
P R O P O S A L
WHEREAS standard spoken English has 30 to 50 discrete sounds, currently
spelled more than 200 different ways, giving our language an efficiency rating
of 20 percent: and

WHEREAS 25 million adults in our nation are functionally illiterate; and

WHEREAS we want to encourage and facilitate the use of English as an
international language; and

WHEREAS we need an alphabet easily translatable into binary code in order
to communicate in English with computers:

BE IT RESOLVED that one year from today, the United States of America
shall adopt the 40-50-character official phonemic alphabet and a near 100
percent efficient writing system as its official script and that its use shall be
mandated for all forms of government, commercial, educational and social
communication.

SB: Not likely to happen but it is an interesting proposal

JC: According to one study, the average child entering first grade has a
recognition vocabulary of 8,000 words (up 7,000 from the turn of the century).
But in their introduction to reading and writing, first- graders learn to read
only 400 of these words, and not the most exciting 400, either. When
fast-moving kids with short attention spans spend a whole year learning 5 percent of
their spoken vocabulary, you have disaffected students and shrinking reading
scores. The beauty of Unifon is that once children know the 40 sounds and
letters, they can write anything they can say, first-graders can easily write words
as complicated as television and helicopter. teliviZan helikoptD

SB: Controlled vocabulary readers introduce words at a slow pace and repeat
them often so they are acquired as sight-words. According to Marzurkiewics,
this is the situation in primary school. If phonemic spelling was introduced
first, Children would be able to read at least 2000 transcribed words by the end
of 3 months. They could sound out any transcribed word. Just how many they
could quickly associate with their ear-vocabulary is not known.

I am guessing it would be over 2000. I don't think that kids fully
understand 8000 words by the first grade. They have some understanding of about this
many wor

Grade ReadWriteHearRead TORead i/t/aPossible
K
1
2
3
4
558
280
440
750
860
9300
0
280
440
750
860
8000
8000+
-
-
-
-58
140
240
estimated
Half the
ita words
are dif. 0
560
880

progress in i/t/a
2xfaster0
2000
4000
writing to
read approach.
Total331823308000+

Garo,

Is that global reform of English or do you plan to write every langauge in
one alphabet?
The IPA used to produce a journal which transcribed French and English in IPA.
Unifon was developed under the auspices of the Bendix Corp. in the late
1940's to write all languages in one alphabet for use in the airline industry.

When you consider the kind or resistance there is to any spelling reform, the
budgets that you project are called for. Polls generally show that people
favor reform in the abstract. However, this support evaporates quickly when we
get to specifics.

I don't think we have the window of opportunity for raising the funds. There
might have been a chance in 1906 when there was quite a bit of buy-in from
scholars and intellectuals. Spelling reform was discussed in major magazines
and things seemed to be on a roll.

A few well placed editorials by those who wanted to conserve the traditional
writing system and attack T.R. Roosevelt pretty much ended the optimism.
Spelling reform became a risky controversial topic and most intellectuals bailed.
It was no longer something that would advance their careers.

--Steve
I am not confining my discussion to Shavian but I am arguing for a
global spelling reform organization of immense world influence.

Steve,
The amount of figures that you discuss, 50,000 dollars here, 100,000
dollars there may be good for a limited grouping of at most a dozen or
so experts meeting once or twice a year and a few hundred enthusiasts
or sympathizers financing an 8-16 page quarterly publication at most
that will be read by say a couple of hundred people. The amounts you
cite would be the equivalent pay of just one full-time university
professor in any one average American or British university.

A 50,000-100,000 dollars a year budget is a good for
self-congratulatory effort of having done something for our own sake.
Then each of us goes home content with having done our share.

But success does not come with such individual effort and with such
meagre budgets by a bunch of enthusiasts pursues rival reform schemes
in their spare time as an intellectual exercise and continuously
bicker with each other about my reform vs your reform and how about
this dialect versus that phoneme versus those diphtongs. These are all
good discussions but eventually lead nowhere and we end up with a
bitter taste in our mouths and huge disappointment in our hearts. I
understand when virtually everybody thinks we are a sort of secrter (secrete?)
society with our own peculiar initiations rites.... :)

The world is way beyond us. Bill Gates started with a simple operating
system for computers. He called it Windows. Now he has so much money
that he has set aside (from his spare change actually) a donation of
10 billion dollars for education in the world for the next decade from
his own pocket! Yes 10 billion dollars!

Probably nobody told him that the best way for world education is the
propogation of an effectively spelt and reformed English universal
language. So he set aside zilch, yes, exactly 0 dollars for OUR cause
of spelling reform.

My dream exceeds anything you are contemplating. What I am talking
about is a foundation of say 100 million dollars budget, supported by
hundreds of charitable foundations and businesses that make tax exempt
donations and hundreds of national and world organizations pitching in
with one-time endowment funds or annual contributions and tens of
publishing and media giants.
SB: No harm in thinking big.
It should have as a minimum level a vibrant university / academy up to
a Ph.D degree with branches in prominent cities like London, New York,
Toronto, Sydney and other capitals where English is widely used with a
full line of tens of professors and hundreds if not thousands of
researchers and research assistants and librarians and archivists
(also a network of tens of thousands of voluntary workers who devote
part of their time and talent to the cause), a foundation that is
fully consecrated and devoted to spelling reform in a rigorous way and
that can effectively promote this agenda on a worldwide scale with
huge international perpetual visibility and worldwide active public
support.

This is the only way we will be able to stand against hundreds of
English Departments in universities who are dead set against any
reform and perpetuate this idiotic utterly inadequate system we have
today.

I want a foundation that has world class publications at the level of
"Time" Magazine or "Reader's Digest" or "National Geographic", or the
"Sunday Times" or the "Daily Telegroah" and tackles not only language
subjects but contemporary world affairs with effective coverage.

I want a foundation that can publish a wide range of dictionaries of
all sorts, educational tools, language learning books, that has
effective airtime on radio, TV, in childrens programs, in tens of
thousands of schools and even its own specialized satellite channel.

I want a foundation that has chairs in tens of established and widely
respected universities (including Oxford, Canbridge, Harvard, MIT),
that has promotional and publc relations outlets that can match IBM
and Microsft and Google and Yahoo and can influence progressive
sectors like music, cinema, publishing, internet, business companies,
industries and multinational corporations.

I want a foundation that has think thanks in virtually all conceivable
sectors and how each of these sectors can join our spelling reform
movement. We must be able to extend contacts and necessary influence
and political weight over relevant government departments, political
parties of all directions, world leaders, writers, poets, journalists,
religious establishments, we should have startegic alliances with
trend setters, futurists, avant-guarde opinion makers, advertising and
marketing agencies.

Or else we can go on doing what we are doing prsently, just talk to
each other for ages and we will achieve nothing really.

I am not saying let us adopt Shavian. It may have its limitations, who
knows.

But what I am saying is: let us discuss all such matters in a
successful setting with an international organization of universal
acceptance and credibility that is dead set on achieving its goal of
universal spelling reform that has its own weight and reaches the
minds of the masses and abundant financing to achieve these goals.

Every dollar spent for this will return to us tens of dollars of
savings in world literacy and development.

Once we do that, the intransigent ivory towers will fall one after
each other and we will be a much better world for future generations.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one (John Lennon)


--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> Garo,
>
> Is it worth consulting a lawyer as to determine the safest way to
establish a
> non-profit organization so that bequests can be received without being
> contested?
>
> There is no problem in the U.S.
> Non-profit educational organizations are rather easy to set up.
There might
> be a slight problem if a lot of the money collected went to
political action
> and lobbying. The problem is in the U.K.
>
> There is an i/t/a foundation with over $500,000 in assets.
>
> There is the American Literacy Council which used to be called the
Phonemic
> Spelling Council. They have about $100,000 in assets.
>
> Most of the money comes from bequests rather than monthly dues. I
would set
> the dues at $5 per year and provide $15 a year in benefits. The
shortfall
> would be made up from large donors.
>
> Before we set up a Shaw Alphabet Foundation of whatever you want to
call it.
> What about some discussion on where the money would be spent?
>
> e.g., a quarterly on-line journal. A printed journal - once a year. A
> convention once every four years. ..... (what else?)
>
> The i/t/a foundation has one employee who meets with the board at

least once
> a year to decide which of the grant applications received by March
will be
> funded. My guess is that they pay the employee about $40,000 a year
and
> distrubute about the same amount in funding various projects.
>
> That is one model.
>
> --Steve
>
>
> garosalibian@y... wrote:
> I am not a legal expert, but it is worth consulting a lawyer as to
> what is the safest way to establish a non-profit organization, even an
> academy to study and promote spelling reform or Shavian alphabet. I am
> sure there are certain provisions in the law about this.
>
> I know there is the Shaw Society. But I would not be interested in
> giving money to a society just to study George Bernard Shaw.
>
> But I would probably be very much inclined to give money readily if it
> were to promote precisely Shavian as an alphabet for example.
>
> In any case, spelling reform is such a vital cause that any society
> promoting spelling reform should be able to attract tens of thousands
> of active members involved paying annual membership fees, if not even
> hundreds of thousands of members helping the propagation of reformed
> literature.
>
> Spelling reform is that much relevant to somebody like me.
>
> ---
> > Garo,
> >
> > I think you raise an interesting question: "What kind of legal
> advice did Shaw receive?"
>
> > I don't know. I wish I did.
>
> > I do know that he did not want to give the money to the spelling
> society because he disagreed with their approach to the alphabet
problem.
> Pitman and Daniel Jones were the principles of the Spelling Society
at the
> time. Jones was one of the inspirations for Professor Higgins.
>
> > I think that Pitman made a mistake by not placing enough value on
> future royalties in his compromise with the British Museam

Hello, all.

One of the reasons I came back to the group recently is that I hate
the idea that the mass of discussion contained within the old Shavian
group might soon be lost due to the fact that I have lost ownership of
it. Because of the transition between the original eGroups and the
subsequent Yahoo! Groups, and because of my absence by default as
moderator of those Shavian groups, I have somehow lost control of the
ownership of those groups.

I had hoped that I might be able to switch my ownership of the Shavian
group over to someone else, but the following text seems to suggest
otherwise. You know what? Their response really annoyed the arse off
me. What is up with their punctuation?

~~Yahoo response begins~~

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Your Id is not longer in our database we cannot verify any
information
on the account the group cannot be deleted also we cannot change
ownership of the group. Groups cannot be merged together.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Jeri

Yahoo! Customer Care
15734446

New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - better than ever!

[INSERT FROM LIONEL GHOTI: Better than ever, perhaps,
in the bumgut of Satan.]

~~Yahoo response ends~~

Original Message Follows:
-------------------------


Mail-Id: 1107607395-9425
Group Name: shavian

Are you a... Owner/Moderator

Subject: Other

Type your feedback here:
I created the Shavian group (originally
an eGroup) in 1999 and was its only
moderator. The group is concerned with
the Shavian alphabet (or Shaw alphabet),
an alternative alphabet used for the
writing of English. I lost interest in
the subject and stopped contributing to
and moderating the group in the year
2000. However, I was still listed as its
only owner/moderator. This didn't cause
any real problems for the members of the
group, as spamming was minimal. However,
towards the end of 2004, I believe,
spamming did become an issue, and one of
the members of the group, Hugh
"Birkenhead (user name: mixsynth), set up"
a new group ("shawalphabet") so that it
could be actively moderated.

The old group, "shavian", contains a
wealth of informative discussion about
the alphabet. My concern is that once it
becomes inactive, its contents will be
deleted and all of the information will
be lost. What I would like is for
ownership of the "shavian" group to be
handed over to Hugh Birkenhead
(mixsynth), so that it can be used as
the main group; or, if possible, for the
contents of the old "shavian" group to
be merged with that of the new "shaw
alphabet" group.

The email address with which I set up
the "shavian" group
(ghoti@...) no longer
exists, so I can't prove my identity
that way. However, I can tell you my
user name and password:

"user name: shavian"
"password: piglantern"

These no longer give me access to the
group. Indeed, if I click on the
Moderators tab of the Members page, the
Yahoo! profile listed is "( Not
Available )".

Could you please do something to help? I
and the members of the two groups would
be very grateful if you could do
something to prevent the loss of
enormous amount of knowledge in the
archive of the old "shavian" group.

Kind regards,

[Data removed]
aka Lionel Ghoti

While Viewing:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/members/members-01.html

Yahoo ID: lghoti :
.login=lghoti&.token=QhWwFnCuGm5F5lXhLwEH&.tm07607395
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0
REMOTE_ADDR: 195.137.83.253
REMOTE_HOST: unknown
Date Originated: Saturday February 5, 2005 - 04:43:15
-------

So see? You have my user name and password. Please, anyone, do what
you can to prevent the contents of the old forum from being deleted.