Shawalphabet YahooGroup Archive Browser

Dear Mr. Ghoti
Excuse my presumption, but
given the difficulties in Moderating the original Shavian group,
perhaps we can start porting across some of the more relevent earlier
messages.
Before we begin that process, I suggest we agree on an index
organised by Topic and Time. It could be set up as a post on Hugh's
Ikonboard. Also all messages ported across to the new group, should
have the word "From archive - " in the Subject Line, to ensure old
message are not confused with new.
Regards, Paul V.
P.S. I bring this suggestion forward, from your approval, as you are
the official owner of this rather considerable intellectual property.
______________________attached__________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "Lionel Ghoti" <ghoti@n...>
> 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?
>

Got this query - I don't have the answer handy, but I'm sure one of you does.
- Adrian Brancato, I've sent this query to our (tightly controlled!) Shaw
alphabet listserv.

Bob Richmond
Gastonia NC and Knoxville TN
*********************
Mr. Richmond,
Thanks for your most informative website (
http://members.aol.com/RSRICHMOND/shavian.html).
I am searching for the text of a short, comical essay written by Shaw on the
topic of English spelling.  It's been about 45 years since I've read it and my
memory is quite hazy on the topic.
I'm having trouble remembering the title of the essay, much less locating the
text.
Would you please point me in the right direction? 
Adrian Brancato
Raleigh, NC  USA
919-876-8194
abrancato@...

Adrian,

Shaw wrote several lectures on the topic of English spelling. Three are
available in digital form. There are also many writings on the Web that are
attributed to Twain which he did not write. One article on this can be found at
www.spellingsociety.org.

You can Google on "Mark Twain spelling" and access many threads.
www.google.com

I used to have three pages on Twain at www.unifon.org but they are no longer
available there. I will put them up again on www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett

I included the one on orthographic reform falsely attributed to Twain. This
is the one where redundant letters in the alphabet are reassigned until a
comical regularized spelling is achieved after about ten stages of development.

The piece is not that far from Twain's own views. He was initially attracted
to the Carnegie sponsored simplified spelling movement but later concluded
that the only solution was a new alphabet. Search on Twain at
www.spellingsociety.org for a short article on this.

--Steve
Thanks for your most informative website
(http://members.aol.com/RSRICHMOND/shavian.html).
I am searching for the text of a short, comical essay written by Shaw on the
topic of English spelling. It's been about 45 years since I've read it and my
memory is quite hazy on the topic.
I'm having trouble remembering the title of the essay, much less locating the
text.
Would you please point me in the right direction?
Adrian Brancato
Raleigh, NC USA
919-876-8194
abrancato@...

Scott Harrison 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.
>
> --
> ·𐑕𐑒𐑪𐑑 ·𐑣𐑺𐑦𐑕𐑩𐑯 Scott Harrison PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86

Everything I looked at was working properly with my setup. No problems
that I could find.

--
·𐑰𐑔𐑩𐑯 - Ethan

Adrian wrote: I am searching for the text of a short, comical essay written
by Shaw on the topic of English spelling. It's been about 45 years since I've
read it and my memory is quite hazy on the topic.

Steve, Thanks for pursuing this and offering so many helpful leads. I'm
anxious to try them all. -- Adrian

SB: Here is one of the many pages on "Twain spelling"

http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
one of several versions attriuted to
Mark Twain¹ (aka Samuel L. Clemens)
Also see Europe's Plan For The Improvement Of English Spelling.
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be
replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the
alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch"
formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that
"which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well
abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and
for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear
5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing
vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it
wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai
now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and
"th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a
lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Note 1: The authorship of this piece is in question. Although frequently
posted on the internet as authored by Mark Twain, there are some claims that it is
authored by M. J. Shields in a letter by him to the Economist. See
http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/spelling.html.

Added Note: A more detailed investigation of authorship is found in an
article that appeared in the Journal of the Spelling Society.
http://www.spellingsociety.org [search on Twain]
Note 5: Mark Twain is a pseudonym for Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in
Florida, Mo. on November 30, 1835. He died on April 21, 1910.
-----
Adrian wrote: I am searching for the text of a short, comical essay written
by Shaw on the topic of English spelling. It's been about 45 years since I've
read it and my memory is quite hazy on the topic.
I'm having trouble remembering the title of the essay, much less locating the
text.

Adrian Brancato
Raleigh, NC

That's quite a goal. I wholeheartedly support it, but of course we must
start smaller. Perhaps we could start with pamphlets or Shavian manuals?
These could be easily distributed to inform people of the benefit of Shavian
and help them learn. I¹ve been working on a manual, which you can download
here: http://dzendor.tripod.com/shavian/int_shav.pdf

The format of lessons is based on a book called Reading Japanese, which I
found very helpful in the way that it introduced letters a few at a time and
build on them by using examples with only those letters. This is similar to
the lessons in the Deseret First Book, though that doesn¹t introduce the
letters at the beginning of the lessons. I plan to change the layout of the
tables used to introduce letters. A simple grey bar or box behind the
letter will serve to show it¹s relation to the baseline, and then the
Category column will contain other information.

I appreciate any feedback. I¹d like to make this into a collaborative
effort, and eventually make this manual available online in various formats,
as well as in print if possible.

Regards,
Joe
/JO


On 2/8/05 1:27 PM, "garosalibian" <garosalibian@...> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Kate wrote:

The "Shaw/Twain" essay (usually titled in print "A Plan for the
Improvement of English Spelling" (copied below) did not originate with
either Shaw or Twain!

The unknown person who falsely attributed this to Shaw or Twain
actually closely plagiarized a 1940s science-fiction satirical story on
spelling reform, "Meihem in ce Klasrum" (meaning "Mayhem in the
Classroom") by Dolton Edwards.

SB: It was the 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. (partly reproduced
below)

Searching "Dolton Edwards" on Google will quickly lead you to the
original full text with full citation on-line. (one copied below)

http://www.ecphorizer.com/Articles1/meiheminceklasru.html

Obviously, as Mr. Shaw points out, English spelling is in much need of a
general overhauling and streamlining. However, our own resistance to any changes
requiring a large expenditure of mental effort in the near future would cause
us to view with some apprehension the possibility of some day receiving a
morning paper printed in - to us - Greek. . . . (or Shavian;-)

Qr On plan wud acIv H sEm end Az H lejislESan prapOzd bF mr. /SY, . . .
[Meihem In Ce Klasrum was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction
in 1946, after the terms of George Bernard Shaw's will had come to light.]

Our own plan would achieve the same end as the legislation proposed by Mr.
Shaw, but in a much less shocking manner, as it consists of merely an
acceleration of the normal process by which the language is continually modernized.
As a catalytic agent, we would propose that a National Easy Language Week be
proclaimed, which the President would inaugurate, outlining some short cut to
concentrate during the week, and to be adopted during the ensuing year. All
school children would be given a holiday, the lost time being the equivalent of
that gained by the spelling short cut.
In 1946, for example, we would urge the elimination of the soft "c", for
which we would substitute "s". Sertainly, such an improvement would be selebrated
in all sivic-minded sircles as being suffisiently worth the trouble, and
students in all sities in the land would be reseptive toward any change eliminating
the nesessity of learning the differense between the two letters.
In 1947, sinse only the hard "c" would be left, it would be possible to
substitute "k" for it, both letters being pronounsed identikally. Imagine how
greatly only two years of this prosess would klarify the konfusion in the minds of
students. Already we would have eliminated an entire letter from the alphabet.
Typewriters and linotypes kould all be built with one less letter, and all
the manpower and materials previously devoted to making "c's" kould be turned
toward raising the national standard of living.
(more) http://www.ecphorizer.com/Articles1/meiheminceklasru.html

(last paragraph) Kontinuing cis proses, eeir after eeir we would eventuali
hav a reali sensibl writen langug. By 1975, wi ventyur tu sei, cer wud bi no mor
uv ces teribli trublsum difikultis, wic no tu leters usd to indikeit ce seim
nois, and laikwais no tu noises riten wic ce seim leter. Even Mr. Yaw, wi
beliv, wud be hapi in ce noleg cat his drims fainali keim tru. note: c=Th, y=Sh

The following is not an exact copy of the above but it follows the same
sequence of changes. The proof is in the retention of the odd assignment of y for
Sh.
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
one of several versions attributed to
Mark Twain¹ (aka Samuel L. Clemens)
Also see Europe's Plan For The Improvement Of English Spelling.
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be
replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the
alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch"
formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that
"which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well
abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and
for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear
5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing
vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it
wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai
now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and
"th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a
lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Note 1: The authorship of this piece is in question. Although frequently
posted on the internet as authored by Mark Twain, there are some claims that it is
authored by M. J. Shields in a letter by him to the Economist. See
http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/spelling.html.

Added Note: A more detailed investigation of authorship is found in an
article that appeared in the Journal of the Spelling Society.
http://www.spellingsociety.org/ [search on Twain]
Note 5: Mark Twain is a pseudonym for Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in
Florida, Mo. on November 30, 1835. He died on April 21, 1910.
SB: Not all of the rip-offs kept the y for sh. Here is another ending to the
story:
After zis fifz year, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor
trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze
drem vil finali kum tru. (2003)
-----
Adrian wrote: I am searching for the text of a short, comical essay written
by Shaw on the topic of English spelling. It's been about 45 years since I've
read it and my memory is quite hazy on the topic.
I'm having trouble remembering the title of the essay, much less locating the
text.

Adrian Brancato
Raleigh, NC
Adrian wrote: I am searching for the text of a short, comical essay written
by Shaw on the topic of English spelling. It's been about 45 years since I've
read it and my memory is quite hazy on the topic.

Steve, Thanks for pursuing this and offering so many helpful leads. I'm
anxious to try them all. -- Adrian

SB: Here is one of the many pages on "Twain spelling"

http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html

> Dear Mr. Ghoti
> Excuse my presumption, but
> given the difficulties in Moderating the original Shavian group,
> perhaps we can start porting across some of the more relevent earlier
> messages.
> Before we begin that process, I suggest we agree on an index
> organised by Topic and Time. It could be set up as a post on Hugh's
> Ikonboard. Also all messages ported across to the new group, should
> have the word "From archive - " in the Subject Line, to ensure old
> message are not confused with new.
> Regards, Paul V.
> P.S. I bring this suggestion forward, from your approval, as you are
> the official owner of this rather considerable intellectual property.

I still don't want to give up yet, Paul.

There are hundreds of HUMAN BEINGS working at Yahoo. There has to be a way
of getting through to just ONE of them.

I love a challenge.

Hugh B


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> 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?

[snip grammatically challenged Yahoo reply]

Yahoo have phone numbers. They can't get away.

Hugh B

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Hi Paul,

Another way around the problem might be to "rip" the contents of the
original shavian Yahoo! group using a "web ripper" program such as Black
Widow (which, given an URL, can save the contents of a web site to one's
hard drive so as to make it browseable locally), then copy the ripped
files to a web folder. Tonight I tried to do that using three different
programs. It was problematical, but with the third program I think I was
getting somewhere. Then suddenly the process was halted because Yahoo!
started returning "Unable to process request at this time -- error 999"
errors, which some Googling tells me is a common result of a sudden rush
of page requests from the same IP address: I think my IP address has
been banned by Yahoo! for 24 hours because of the abnormal action of the
web ripper. It might be possible to change the settings of the web
ripper so as to request pages at a slower rate and therefore behave more
like a human being.

Has anyone else on the group tried the same sort of approach with any
success?

LG


paul vandenbrink wrote:

>
> Dear Mr. Ghoti
> Excuse my presumption, but
> given the difficulties in Moderating the original Shavian group,
> perhaps we can start porting across some of the more relevent earlier
> messages.
> Before we begin that process, I suggest we agree on an index
> organised by Topic and Time. It could be set up as a post on Hugh's
> Ikonboard. Also all messages ported across to the new group, should
> have the word "From archive - " in the Subject Line, to ensure old
> message are not confused with new.
> Regards, Paul V.
> P.S. I bring this suggestion forward, from your approval, as you are
> the official owner of this rather considerable intellectual property.




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