On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 21:10:52 -0000, garosalibian <garosalibian@...> wrote:
>
> All I am saying for the Shavian community while discussing naming of
> their letters is not to repeat the historical mistakes of other
> alphabets. Latin names of letters IMO don't work. Words as
> representations of the sounds IMO won't fly. The Unicode names I see,
> IMO are hopeless.
Look, there've been a fair number of people using Shavian for a while
in this group, and then suddenly you come barging in with a number of
new ideas. I submit that this is not the right time for this; if
everyone comes in with new ideas and says that letter names should be
changed or three letters added and two others thrown out or whatever,
then the result will be instability, fractioning, and even less
possibility of success for Shavian. Using "non-traditional"
shape-sound assignments or letter names or spelling conventions will
make it difficult to be understood.
Shavian exists, and there's not a lot to be changed. You're not the
only one I feel tempted to tell: if you don't like Shavian the way it
is, perceived warts and all, then don't use it -- but please don't try
to change our Shavian from under our feet. Go ahead and make a new
alphabet, which is applicable to more languages, with better letter
names, or better shapes, or whatever! But don't call it Shavian,
because that writing system has already been made. Tinkering with it
continually will not help those who have put in effort to learn it in
its present shape.
And coming into a group and telling people they've done many things
wrong and should change doesn't seem very polite. It's like a Baptist
going into a Catholic church and telling them they've been all wrong
about infant sprinkling and they have to baptise by immersion. Maybe,
maybe not; but they've been doing that for quite a while and if he
disagrees, he should form his own religion.
> You know? They signed the death warrant of Shavian right there and
> then by calling it Hung and Dead...
Thank goodness! Then Shavian is dead. Why'd you want to use a system
that you've already declared dead? Use something else, then.
> Other useless Unicode names:
> Loll, Gag, Ooze, Thigh, Ian, Yew, Ha Ha.
Unicode didn't pick the names; they're the names from the reference
card in _Androcles_. I don't know who picked those, though I'd guess
that Read did.
> And what does Yew mean?
It's a tree.
> And what's a Tot?
A little child.
> You realize the idiocy of these words?
No, I don't.
> > Irrelevant, since Shavian is only intended or suited for the English
> > language.
>
> Universality of Shavian
> Philip,
> But I beg to differ high time. IMO, it is very relevant indeed. You
> say Shavian is only intended or suited for the English language.
Yes.
Shaw set up in his will provisions for a new 'Proposed British
Alphabet', and that is what was designed and developed.
Different languages have different phonemic inventories and different
needs, so phonemic alphabets generally only serve one language well.
Witness the number of digraphs (sequences of two letters such as "ch")
and diacritics (e.g. é, ñ, ç) that had to be invented to serve
languages that had different sounds from Latin.
> If this is so, chances for Shavian to succeed IMO are next to
> nil anyway.
There are millions of speakers of English. If the alphabet only serves
them, it will still serve a purpose.
Also, English is one of the languages with a worse sound-to-symbol
correspondence; many other languages have an alphabet that's
sufficiently phonemic that they do not need another one.
For example, I've heard that Finnish is nearly perfectly phonemic, in
that it is always obvious from the pronunciation how to write a word,
and always obvious from the spelling how something is pronounced.
Spanish, I'm told, will also give you the pronunciation from the
spelling very confidently, though not so perfectly the other way
around (since some letters are pronounced the same, so either letter
could be a candidate for writing a given sound).
> Shavian is still "innocently" and very invitingly available for all to
> use. To become language-specific (anglo-specific) is a great
> disservice to itself.
It doesn't *become* language-specific; it was *designed* that way!
> Telling them to continue writing their own names in traditional
> letters even in an all-Shavian setting is a no starter. It immediately
> starts red lights and alienates the masses if they are told the
> 26-letter Latin will continue to be used to write their names.
I'm not sure where you picked that up from. I don't think it was
seriously proposed that names of English speakers would be written in
something other than Shavian. Probably all proper names, even those of
non-English-speakers, should be rendered in Shavian just as the Latin
alphabet is currently used in English to render the names of Russians,
Greeks, Armenians, Chinese, etc.
> As for confining Shavian to only English, another consistent argument
> I keep on hearing here, this is a grave mistake on part of English
> Shavianists. Either Shavian is a "universal alphabet" or its not.
Ah! It is simple then: It is not a universal alphabet.
> English is very similar to all European languages.
Not in its pronunciation, though.
> The alphabet is a good link to tie in all these languages.
Uh, yes. That was why we're trying to replace it.
The alphabet has retained traditional spelling while pronunciation has
continued to change -- with the result that while the written form may
help tie words to Spanish, Latin, German, etc. words, it is not that
useful in representing present-day English speech.
> As if, suddenly English seems to want to segregate itself from the
> rest! And when the rest become genuinely interested in joining in the
> Shavian camp, to consider applying them to their languages, we
> alienate them by saying, don't bother... this is just an English
> system for us English.
I'm not telling a German or a Frenchman "go away, Shavian is only for
us"; I'm telling them "go ahead and try if you like, but Shavian is a
very bad fit for your language, since it contains letters you don't
need and doesn't contain letters you do". Much like how I think that
while the Arabic abjad may be good for writing Arabic, it is not very
good for non-Semitic languages, since they have a different language
structure. (For example, the fact that vowels are not marked leads to
difficulties in languages where different vowels mark not only
grammatical differences but make completely separate words -- and even
if you do mark vowels, there are only three vowel phonemes in Arabic,
but many more in some other languages.)
> You, we tell them, you continue your letters or
> create other alternative "shavians" for your own if you like.
Yes. This makes sense to me.
> Just don't bother with ours....
Yes. Just as I wouldn't bother introducing the Cyrillic or Arabic
writing systems to use for writing English. They fit badly. They have
(to us) useless letters. They lack important (to us) other letters.
> and just don't call them your Shavians.
Because those hypothetical alternative writing systems would not have
been designed by Shaw or due to his will, calling them Shavian would
indeed be inappropriate.
> And as a result, now we find ourselves under the obligation of
> learning tens of Shavian-like alphabets and every language has its own
> "version" and has its own names rather than a universal form and a
> universal name for each letter.
The alternative would be a language with over a hundred letters.
Take a look at the IPA chart (International Phonetic Alphabet):
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html
It contains symbols for many, many sounds -- not for all possible
sounds that a human mouth can make (since between any two sounds,
there are many possible intermediate sounds), but in general, symbols
for sounds that have a phonemic status in at least one language.
I count about 100 basic symbols. You'd need to supplement that with
more if you wanted to capture things such as diphthongs and
affricates.
Would you really want to teach someone an alphabet of, say, 160
letters, 120 of which are useless for their own language -- just
because that alphabet is also used to write a language where some of
those useless sounds are needed?
The alternative is to use an alphabet with fewer letters -- which will
then not fit some languages, who will find that two of their sounds,
which to them sound distinct, have to be notated with the same letter.
And this violates the spirit of a phonemic alphabet.
> Such schemes don't fly.... I believe p/b, t/d, k/g, th/dh, f/v, s/z,
> s/zh, ch/dj, y/w, ng/h, l/r, m/n are nothing unique. These sounds are
> equally applicable to all languages.
th/dh is pretty rare, as languages go. In Europe, I think only
Icelandic, English, and Greek use those sounds.
You're right, though, that the consonant phonemes of English are not
that specific, in general.
It's more the vowels -- English has a pretty large vowel inventory,
especially if you include the rhotic ones. Most languages don't need
such a large system.
> True, we may need to add a couple
> of sounds here and there,
A couple? You have no idea.
> but basically all languages have the same
> sounds give and take a couple.
Not really. They may have roughly the same number of sounds, but which
sounds they have depends on the language.
If you're willing to be broad, you need fewer sounds -- for example,
"a" works for English and for German, even though the pronunciation of
"hat" is different in the two languages, or that of "bart". They both
have a-ish sounds, but they're not quite the same. Or the final "l" of
English "toll" and German "toll": also not the same.
If we want to keep those distinctions present in the alphabet, we'll
need different symbols.
> A great system like Shavian can
> contemplate all and be inclusive of all.
But only by having a number of letters that makes it utterly
impractical to teach and to learn, IMO.
If you want to propose a universal writing system, go ahead -- but I
don't think that Shavian can be bent into such service, and I don't
think that this group is the appropriate place for such a venture.
> Just don't make the resistance to change even more profound by
> insisting it is just for the English.
What should a German do with a letter for an "awe" sound? Or a
Frenchman with a letter for an "ash" sound? Or a Spaniard with a
letter for an "if" sound?
The alphabet is useful for the sounds found in English. That's not
propaganda or exclusionism, it's how it was designed.
> This is something to study. I am not familiar with the logical system
> of Japanese kana. All I know is that all writigng systems coming from
> Chinese -- Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and Japanese are all very
> complicated systems. But I may be wrong here ab out Japanese kana.
*nods* Japanese has kanji, which were imported from China, and those
are indeed complicated and not that easily categorisable.
It also has two syllabaries, though, called kana, and these can be
(and are usually) arranged in a logical order: a-i-u-e-o,
ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, sa-si-su-se-so, ta-ti-tu-te-to, etc. The symbols can
be arranged in a rectangular grid, with each column of syllables
starting with the same consonant phoneme, and each row ending in the
same vowel phoneme. There are a few "holes" in the grid, but those
holes represent sounds that Japanese doesn't have, so it doesn't need
symbols for them.
> But that doesn't mean Shavian is not wonderful. It is far better than
> a Latin alphabet by stretches. That's why my extra fear that Shavian
> enthusiasts don't mimick it in naming patterns.
Well, you've told us now that we're doing it wrong. Now you can let us
walk open-eyed into destruction; it will be our choice.
> I have certain takes on certain Shavian notions and I wanted to share
> them with you. Mostly though, I can be ignored if I sound too negative
> in the way I think of Shavian.
Noted.
> I like the fact Shavian never reverted to diacritics,
This was a specific provision Shaw made.
> the easy trap so
> many spelling reformers easily fall into.
Though two reasons for diacritics are that (a) if you base your
alphabet on the Latin alphabet, there are too few letters to represent
the sounds of English, to making each letter do multiple duties by
adding diacritics is tempting, and (b) many sounds are related, so
representing this relation by diacritics can be logical. (For example,
Shavian uses rotation to connect voiced/voiceless pairs of stops,
fricatives, and affricates; in principle this could also have been
done by diacritics.)
> Shavian remains truly
> impressive in admitting altogether new letters, something many
> traditional reformers shy from.
Though it's necessary if you don't want to use diacritics or digraphs
:) There simply aren't enough letters in existing alphabets to
represent English phonemically.
> On chemical names and abbreviations:
> Same arguments against renaming chemical table elements (Calcium
> Hydrogen Oxygen, Potasium) and mathematical notions
Though to be fair, languages with other writing systems, such as
Russian or Greek or Japanese, also use Latin for chemical element
*symbols*; just treat them as symbols, like "1" or "+", which are also
shared between, say, English and Russian and Greek and ...
> and abreviations
> of words (IATA UNICEF, WHO, NAACP NASA CIA or NCAA).
That's a different thing, though; after all, we write NKVD and KGB and
Cheka when we learn about Russian history; we don't use Cyrillic
letters. So we could abbreviate those in Shavian.
> I thought Shavian would put an
> end to all Latin letters, not remain sub-servient to an inadequate 26
> letter alphabet.
That was not Shaw's aim:
"Shaw did not want you and me to *abandon* the Roman alphabet. The
long-established Roman figures (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX)
remain even after the Arabic figures (the newer and handier 0, 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) have found favour. We now use both, with greater
convenience. The new figures were not imposed, nor the old supplanted.
Similarly, Shaw believed, uses would be found for a new and handier
alphabet *without* abandoning the old one."
> On dogmatic limitations put on Shavian by Shavianists:
> (versus my take that Shavian is a wonderfully flexible all purpose
> alphabet with no need whatsoever for the utilisation of Latin alphabet
> anymore)
>
> What I see is that Shavian enthusiasts are so immersed in one certain
> phase of Shavian so much, and entrenched in that phase of decades ago
> so much they accept dogmatic rulings pronounced very early on the
> development of the Shavian alphabet that they don't want to come out
> of it and explore further possibilities of the new elegant alphabet in
> a multitude of application (math, chemistry, personal and place names)
> and in a group of languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek).
Yes! Exactly. This is our toy, our game, our rules.
If you'd like to play with us, please play by our rules, broken as
they may seem to you.
If you don't like them, then leave us playing in our little corner
with our little Shavian that will never amount to anything because of
its stupid letter names and refusal to include other languages. Let us
watch in despair as a better alphabet captures first Europe, and then
world by storm, and we sit alone with our Shavian. Please.
> If there is a system that is hugely
> adaptable to all walks of life and to all situations, I would have
> thought it would have to be Shavian.
>
> But later on, something happened to put a halt to all forward "leaps
> of faith" and they becmme bogged down in the limiting rules they set
> out to themselves...
Yes! And we like it this way. That's why we chose Shavian. Otherwise
we would have said, "Oh, this has promise, but it's not really going
to work. I think I'm looking for something else."
> To be successful, Shavian should be a comprehensive and a flexible
> system. And it needs imagination and daring. Or else it's chances of
> survival are minimal.
So we agree that Shavian, in its present form, is bad? Good, then.
Make something new! Make something better! But leave us dogmatic
people alone. Promote a better system, with imagination and daring,
that will be successful!
But don't, to use an analogy, tell people that tennis or football or
cricket would be much more successful world-wide as a favourite
pastime if we'd just make a few adjustments to make it more suitable
to more people.
Philip.
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>