Hi Paul and John,
As for the role of Shavian it should I believe that Shavian, like Paul suggested could be used for everyday words. In essence that would mean Shavian, would be the "Text Alphabet" in the same way lower-case letters in T.O. make-up the majority of the text. I've been really thinking about the big picture of Shavian, to the English-speaking World. Especially, Science and Mathematics. I noticed that they use Greek letters as special symbols for different concepts and ideas. I believe one could use Roman letters like Greek letters are used in Science and Mathematics. So like in a Shavian Science or Math Textbook. Shavian would express the everyday English and help explain how Scientific Words are pronounced. But the Scientific Symbols would remain the same and not Shavianized. Thus the Periodic Table would use the same Roman letter symbols.
Hope this helps,
Best of Regards,
Carl
paul vandenbrink <pvandenbrink@...> wrote:
Hi John
I am little familar with Japenese myself, and while it is difficult
to learn to write it has a number of benefits when reading.
1. it is quite concise. It uses simplified Chinese characters (Kanji)
for most common words. Syllabic characters are concise too. Grreat
for writing Manga Comic books.
2. It is easy to browse or scan through.
And then it has 2 Phonetic Syllabic Alphabets (Katakana & Hiragana )
which have a very distinctive look, to write names, Japanese
gramatical endings and Foreign Load words. They obviously don't need
a Name Dot.
And for the purposes of Browsing the Kanji words, practically jump
right out to you from the text to give the gist the passage.
3. It has the option of dealing with new Japenese words phonetically,
Katakana or Hiragana or by resorting to an almost inexhaustble
Chinese wordstock.
The equivalent benefit might be realized in English by having a
standard set of Abbreviations in Capitals for Basic English, using
Roman Letters for Proper nouns and foreign loanwords and Shavian for
everything else.
Gives a new meaning to blow your mind. But it would be fast.
Regards, Paul V.
P.S. Final question: does anybody on this list know how to
> enter Japanese from the keyboard? I think one method involves
inputting a
> phonetic transcription which is then converted by the software.
I believe they normally just write in Katakana and Hiragana for
normal word processing.
This is not a big problem. Elementary School starts them off doing
everything Hiragana. They only learn Kanji later on.
This is something that is evolving as we speak.
Chinese/Korean/Japenese Computer interphases should shortly reach the
level of transparency for the Oriental Computer User.
_______________attached_________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, John Burrows <burrows@t...>
wrote:
>
> >> 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.
>
> Sounds like a book originally produced to help military personnel
stationed
> in Japan. I started German on something similar: Bill und Jock in
> Deutschland. The military brought about a revolution in practical
language
> teaching -- they had to get results.
>
> Any other comparisons between Shavian and Japanese are certainly not
> comparing like with like.
> Japanese does not have letters, it has characters. These
correspond to
> words, making Japanese in some ways more economical than Shavian
(you can
> paste in words from Unicode, for example). These characters are
originally
> Chinese, making written Japanese a dialect of Chinese, although the
spoken
> languages are not related. Note that we speak a lot of Greek, but
the
> graphic links to the etymology were coded into the spelling we are
to
> reform via Shavian. Japanese does have syllabaries, but these are
marginal
> to the language. They have about 40 symbols and they are phonetic,
being
> used for proper nouns, foreign words, and modifications to
characters --
> the things that are difficult to do with Shavian. About 40 of the
1350
> essential characters are to be learned in the first school grade
and by the
> end of elementary school the count is 881. The vocabulary count
increases
> with study but falls by about 40 ? per month on trips abroad.
Japanese
> students I have spoken to usually know the size of their personal
> vocabulary. Proposal: that Shavian be increased to encompass the
number of
> words in Basic English (about 800, IIRC). One other point about
Japanese
> characters is that they are recognisable even when reflected or
rotated,
> certainly better for teaching literacy. Another method I did
read about (Scientific American 1984 ?)
> was based on the stroke order for writing characters and used
anticipatory
> software to come up with suggestions. Shavian could perform that
task
> well. Enter mis in Shavian and it would offer mist, mistery and
misis.
> (Cf. mist, missed, misses, but not mystery or Mrs.)
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