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Joe Spicer,

Certainly a manual is a good place to start. You should be commended for
your efforts.

I think that the best way to learn a phonemic notation is to start writing
with the aid of a crib sheet. Pitman gave away his crib sheet but more was
generally required to master the system. The model should probably be an
instructional manual for shorthand. Most people are unfamiliar with the concept of a
sound sign and you have to get the concept across before taking the next step.

Shavian is simple enough that it will fit on a book mark. That might be a
place to start. How do we effectively distribute the key?

A dicitonary with the sound spellings in Shavian would be another idea.

--Steve
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. I’ve 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 doesn’t 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 it’s relation to the baseline, and then the Category column will
contain other information.

I appreciate any feedback. I’d 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.
>

I still need to write an actual introduction to my manual that will explain
phonemic writing. I¹m working on adding those guides to show the x-height.
The later lessons will be added/expanded and reading and writing practice
will be added once enough letters are introduced.

And if this book gets printed, a reading key like the one with Androcles
should be included. A table of the letters would also be given in the
manual. Also, if we¹re going to do professional-quality printing in
Shavian, one thing we really need is a good font family that approximates
the styles used in Androcles, but not rough like the current font by that
name. The Androcles font is nice, but it doesn¹t make the best body font.
I¹ve just ordered my own copy of the book, so I¹ll eventually (when I
finally get it) be able to get some high-quality scans that can be the basis
of a new digital font.

Regards,
Joe
/JO



On 2/9/05 7:05 PM, "stbetta@..." <stbetta@...> wrote:

> Joe Spicer,
>
> Certainly a manual is a good place to start. You should be commended for your
> efforts.
> I think that the best way to learn a phonemic notation is to start writing
> with the aid of a crib sheet. Pitman gave away his crib sheet but more was
> generally required to master the system. The model should probably be an
> instructional manual for shorthand. Most people are unfamiliar with the
> concept of a sound sign and you have to get the concept across before taking
> the next step.
>
> Shavian is simple enough that it will fit on a book mark. That might be a
> place to start. How do we effectively distribute the key?
>
> A dicitonary with the sound spellings in Shavian would be another idea.
>
> --Steve
>> 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.
>>> >
>
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I use an old Mac for e-mails. The current daily digest contained several
threads and weighed in at 55 K. Hence the subject title. (Probably all
been written several times before in the missing archive, too.)

>Pitman and Daniel Jones were the principles of the Spelling Society at the
>time. Jones was
>one of the inspirations for Professor Higgins.
See also long entry under Higgins in The Originals by William Amos. Henry
Sweet was another. He was of an earlier generation, one of those late
Victorians who taught themselves typewriting and stenography for the
insights that gave them into the nature of language.
James Pitman also propagated the ITA (Initial Teaching Alphabet) which ran
to rather more printed books than Shavian. Jones in a footnote also
distinguishes between the English Pronouncing Dictionary (for finding the
pronunciation of words you have seen written but never heard) and the
English Phonetic Dictionary (for finding the spelling of words you have
heard but not seen written). What is Shavian for?
-------
Taking an example from the quoted text, principle for principal could give
rise to problems with Shavian (principAl, prin-ci-PAL, princi p a l -- hard
to render) as the two cannot be distinguished. Nor is Shavian good at
stress, capitalization, or formatting as I am finding to my cost. I
downloaded a scanned Androcles over the internet and started translating
with my Shaw Alphabet edition open for reference. e-translating, because I
am using translation software and working with a 2-column table, source and
target, open in front of me, just like any other translation job.
------
How about those unfortunates who have to translate with Serbian and
Croatian as language pairs? What happens when they suddenly get a book in
Bosnian? For S. C. & B. substitute varieties of English, including those
with a controlled vocabulary like Basic English and Newspeak. I doubt
whether Shavian can be extended or modified to cope with other than
anonymous English. Well, I suppose you could print it from right to left.
------
>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
I will do. I want to assign or determine an alphabetical order for Shavian.
-------
>Three thousand years ago, the Greeks presented us with a perfectly logical
>and consistent alphabet.
For Greek, yes.
There were several experiments, including Linear B, which has been
Unicoded. Early texts were in capitals with no word division. Writing was
boustrophedon, adopted by Epson for their DMPs when the patent expired.
And it's still no good for English--I spent an hour revising my Greek
alphabet with the help of subtitles to an old newsreel shown on the Greek
Parliamentary Channel. It was one of a 60-Years-Ago series from England,
full of Bevins, Bevans, Atlees and Churchills that did not transcribe at
all well.
-------
>To sum up all, it seems to me
>Sound and letters don't agree.
Chopin, Schubert and Shostakovich share initial sounds; Strauss and
Stravinsky do not.
-------
>Most of the English-language channels I get here are from the U.K.
Have a look at S4C- Digidol. Some programs have sub-titles, transcription
AND translation, that seem to appear remarkably quickly. High point was a
studio re-projection of an interview: sound was Cantonese, subtitles Welsh,
a sign language interpreter was doing her stuff in the studio and in the
foreground was the English summary. Information overload. Shavian for
subtitles?
---------
>Why Shavian Never Caught On
I have a New Testament in Scots, published about 20 years ago, the one
where the Devil reputedly speaks English, but that is an
oversimplification. It is written in Scottish, several dialects, but not
obtrusively so, anonymous Scottish. That never caught on either, but it's
worthwhile and I flourish it at eager young men who sometimes appear at my
door and ask me, usually in American, whether I read the Bible.
jb

>I am searching for the text of a short, comical essay written by Shaw on the
>topic of English spelling.

Of the Prefaces (1-vol. Hamlyn, 1965), only those to The Admirable
Bashville and of course Pygmalion are short, comical and primarily
concerned with aspects of English.
jb

Philip, Paul, and Star,

At the current time on two phonemic respellers or text converters, the flag
is boldface and it is activated when the word being respelled is not in the
dictionary.

One could also get a flag when the respelled word is one of two ore more
possibilities. e.g., ybjekt and abjekt

The choice of the word produced could be based on frequency

converters: http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm
hypodermic needle -- hiepuddermik needool
(just misspell a word to get a boldface flag)

--Steve

Album: Kayaking through Austin on the Colorado River and its tributaries.
http://pak06.pictures.aol.com/NASApp/ygp/Login?event=SelectPicturesToShare&loc
ale=en_US
STAR: I think that's a wonderful idea. It would save us
all a bunch of trouble, and would help us all become more fluent
readers of shavian if we have more to read.



> PD: This thread started out by suggesting that large amounts
> of literature could be transcribed by using a computer
> program and a look-up table. I believe Star's question
> was how to handle these homonyms in a look-up table.
> ("one" vs. "won" is not a problem; only those which
> can have a different stress.)
>
> As someone else pointed out, natural language processing
> in English is not trivial. I would suggest that the look-up
> table simply have a flag on those words with more than one
> Shavian transcription. The program which does the trans-
> scription could flag those words in the output. Then a
> human could select the correct spelling. Thus 95% (or more)
> of the text would be automatic, with a minimal amount of
> human intervention .
>
> --Ph. D.
www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett
moderator of Saundspel -the phonology forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saundspel

This is great steve! Thanks! Now it's up to those more competent in
ordering the computer fae around to make it be go.

--Star

--- stbetta@... wrote:

> Philip, Paul, and Star,
>
> At the current time on two phonemic respellers or text converters,
> the flag
> is boldface and it is activated when the word being respelled is not
> in the
> dictionary.
>
> One could also get a flag when the respelled word is one of two ore
> more
> possibilities. e.g., ybjekt and abjekt
>
> The choice of the word produced could be based on frequency
>
> converters:
> http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm
> hypodermic needle -- hiepuddermik needool
> (just misspell a word to get a boldface flag)
>
> --Steve
>


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Numfar! Do the Dance of Joy!



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That is... more competent than me... oops!
--Star

--- Star Raven <celestraof12worlds@...> wrote:

> This is great steve! Thanks! Now it's up to those more competent in
> ordering the computer fae around to make it be go.
>
> --Star
>


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

Numfar! Do the Dance of Joy!




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--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink"
<pvandenbrink@s...> wrote:
>
> Hi Dshep
>
> Our goal is the same. Without a doubt.
> The primary purpose of this site is to explain
> and encourage the use of the original Shavian
> Alphabet.

I don't recall any such restriction being a condition
of membership. However, if use of the "original"
Shavian is to be mandatory (and "Androcles" of
necessity the official descriptive guide), then I
expect you shall have to abandon your quest to
reduce the number of vowels and learn to love and
accept the short \o\ (as well as unstressed vowels).
That's not a lot, what, to ask?


> A secondary purpose, although it sometimes
> seems to get out of hand and overwhelms the Primary purpose,
> is to develop and standardize all the ancillary functions
> that we would like the Alphabet & Spelling system to perform.

> Regards, Paul V.

Did you mean "auxiliary"?

dshep

...........................................................


The use of "on" as the key-word for
short-o words can present difficulties
for those whose speech diverges
from that represented in "Androcles".
In the speech of many Americans the
pronunciation of short-o words has
unrounded — I believe that is the
technical term — and in some cases
has become a front, or fronted, vowel
as well. Words that fall into this
category are traditional o-words such
as not and stop, but also a-words that
follow initial \w\: i.e., was and what,
for example.

This is a problem only because there
is an alternative as Shavian provides
a letter for "ah" words, and this
becomes the preferred choice for
anyone whose natural pronunciation
is unrounded, a problem avoided
in other instances of perhaps equal
difference between British and American
speech, long-o and perhaps open-o
words as well (i.e, go and law), as there
is only the one letter available in each
case to select. Thus, there is spelling
divergence in the one instance if one
does not adhere to the example
set by "Androcles", but necessary
acceptance of allophones in the other:
in Shavian, \O\ and \Y\ as now mapped,
for all shades of pronunciation. Pity
that the useful concept of allophone
spread could not be considered to apply
automatically to the entire range of
relatively lax short-o words, and
reserve the \ah\ for the somewhat
greater stress of long-a words.

The situation could have been even
more complicated, as there is a third,
wide-spread pronunciation of "on",
namely the common one in use in the
southern part of the United States, an
"on" that rhymes with "own" when
stressed or semi-stressed, as can be
heard in the phrase "on me", or
pronounced somewhat as ah-ohn
when relaxed. Sometimes, perhaps in
compensation, the word "own" instead
is turned into a slight diphthong,
something like oh-oo-n. American
dictionaries ignore this pronunciation,
probably on the grounds that it is only
a regional variant, though it may well be
used by a quarter to a third of the
national population, and by four of the
last eight presidents. Regional variant
may be a correct assessment, but the
interesting thing about this particular
pronunciation is that it has been, at
least for the last half-century if not
longer, the de rigueur pronunciation
within the popular music industry, an
industry of world-wide diffusion and
influence.

To begin with there is Country Music,
native to the American South, in which
no other pronunciation would ever
even be considered. But of greater
consequence is its universal use in
Rock Music. On both sides of the Atlantic,
rock bands from Los Angeles to Newcastle
use this pronunciation. They may revert
to their normal pronunciation when
speaking, but when singing it is always
a straightforward "ohn" or the diphthong
ah-ohn. Perhaps I should qualify this by
saying instead, "have used in the past",
as I no longer attempt to follow current
trends, but I doubt that much has changed,
a precedence having once been established.
Certainly in the days of heroic or classic
rock, if that is not an oxymoron, of the
Stones and Led Zep in their heyday, \ohn\
was the norm.

And now there is Rap Music, again, where
no other pronunciation occurs. Please do
not take my word for it, go listen to their
records, uh, tapes — I mean, that is,
re-mastered discs. This acoustic feature,
will be noticed if, at some future date, the
collected works of Mick Jagger are put into
Shavian.


musically yours,
dshep

--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com,
--- "garosalibian" wrote:
>
> I am not confining my discussion to
> Shavian but I am arguing for a global
> spelling reform organization of immense
> world influence.
>
> Garo,


You ask for a lot.

If there is to be total spelling reform
within the English-speaking community
(let alone anything of global dimensions)
then there will have to be some general
agreement upon which pronunciation
such spelling is to be based.

Cultural tradition in the Anglo-Saxon
world generally encourages individualism
over the common good (and individual
states above any supernational grouping),
thus I fear any attempt to specify any
particular variety of speech as model is
likely to meet the following reponse,

either:

1) It's our bloody language, mate.
We invented it!

or

2) There are more of us, we're richer,
and our military rules!


How would you suggest overcoming this
impasse?


merely wondering,
dshep