Hi Steve
I don't know if it is an Axiom, but it is certainly a common
characteristic of some of the more successsful/widespread Alphabets,
that there is a difference in the extent and size of the Vowel
letters in the writing.
Vowels tend to be minimized in both speaking and correspondingly in
the size of the Vowel letters, that represent them.
The Hebrew Alphabet is an extreme case.
Some people say it has no real vowel letters.
But, contrary to the popular view it does have a few vowel letters to
represent the more significant long vowel.
The Vav is used to represent the OAk or OOze sound.
The Yood is used to represent Eat, Age or Ice
And the Hey is used to represent Ash at the end of a word.
The Aleph at the beginning of word, unless followed by a Vav or Yood
is used to represent Ash and occasionally Egg.
The Ayin at the beginning of word, unless followed by a Vav or Yood
is used to represent Ash and rarely Egg or If.
The Yood and Vav are very common.
These 2 letters take very little space. The Yood lookes like a
Apostrophe and the Vav is a straight up and down slash.
Other softer Vowel sounds inside the word are only optionally
represented by dots or a dash under the
Consonant letter.
You can see other example Alphabets with similar characteristics on
www.omniglot.com
Regards, Paul V.
______________________attached_________________________
--- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, "paul vandenbrink"
<pvandenbrink11@h...> wrote:
Let's look at the type of phoneme. Vowel versus Consonant letters.
>
> And I was indeed talking about the Shape and orientation of the
Roman
> Alphabet letters. (lower case)
> And whether there was a relationship between the type of phoneme and
> the shape of the Roman Alphabet letter.
>
> Roman Alphabet does have its own equivalent of the Shavian's Tall,
> Short and Deep letters
> Tall = bdfhklt
> Short = aceimnorsuvwxz
> Deep = gjpqy
> The interesting thing to note is that the Roman vowel letters are
all
> in the smaller more centrally oriented Short letters. Infact with
the
> exception of csvxz Short letters, the Other Short letters all have
a
> vowel pronunciation (syllabic m and n for example.
> Also the form of the 5 vowels is usually roundish. I would have
> expected the Short round c to be a vowel, if I only considered its
> appearance.
>
> It is even more interesting that Shavian perpetuates and makes
> consistent in its design a form to function relationship already
> inherent (hinted at) in the Roman Alphabet.
>
> Regards, Paul V.
> I hope this answers your question?
> P.S. Evolution is better than Revolution. And Shavian is the more
> highly evolved Alphabet.
> ___________attached________________________________________
> --- In shawalphabet@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> >
> > Paul,
> > Can you answer Jon's question?
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > --- In openrite@yahoogroups.com, stbetta@a... wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > > 2. (PV) In an ideal alphabet, Vowel letters would be
easily
> > > > distinguishable from Consonant letters. Interestingly,
both
> the
> > > > Shavian and the Roman Alphabet appear to to make this
> distinction.
> > > > At least in Lower case Roman Letters, the vowel letters
are
> > > > smaller,simpler centrally located symbols.
(a,e,i,o,oo,u,w)
> > > > Only the letter "c" seems to break this rule. It resembles
> a Vowel
> > > > letter instead of the Consonant letter that it actually is.
> > >
> > > JON: Do you know the kind of sound it has which causes it to
> > resemble a
> > > vowel rather than a consonant?
> > > SB: We will ask Paul.