LL-L "Orthography" 2002.03.03 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 03.MAR.2002 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
 LS=Low Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: Rudi Vari <rudi at its.co.za>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2002.03.01 (04) [E]

Hallo Lowlanders, Ron

All this correspondence about orthography inspired me to look for a
practical
system of spelling simplification. And would you believe it? I actually
found
something interesting. I used google to do a search on the word
"guvrnmnt" and
found 414 references.

Have a look at URL http://answering-islam.org/Humor/humor1.html which is
but one
of them. The text is below for those of you who really are into this
orthography
business ;-)

"English Language Improvement

English spelling may be capricious at times, but...consider this.

Having chosen English as the preferred language in the EEC (now
officially the
European Union, or EU), the European Parliament has commissioned a
feasibility
study in ways of improving efficiency in communication between
Government
departments.

European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is
unnecessarily
difficult; for example: cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What
is
clearly needed is a phased program of changes to iron out these
anomalies. The
program would, of course, be administered by a committee staff at the
top level
by participating nations.

In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using "s"
instead of
the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants in all sities would resieve this
news
with joy. Then the hard "c" could be replased by "k" sinse both letters
are
pronounsed alike. Not only would that klear up konfusion in the minds of
klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.

There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was
anounsed that
the troublesome "ph" would henseforth be written "f". This would make
words like
"fotograf" twenty percent shorter in print.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted
to
reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments
would
enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent
to
akurate speling.

We would al agre that the horible mes of silent "e"'s in the languag is
disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ as
though
nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem
began and
peopl would be reseptiv to steps sutch as replasing "th" by "z". Perhaps
zen ze
funktion of "w" kould be taken on by "v", vitsh is, after all, half a
"w".

Shortly after zis, ze unesesary "o" kould be dropd from vords kontaining
"ou".
Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl
riten
styl. After tventi yers zer vud be no more trubls, difikultis and
evrivun vud
fin it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of ze Guvermnt vud finali
hav kum tru. "

If we applied similar rules to all the lowlands' languages, would they
all be spelled and sound the same?

Kind regards
Rudi Vári

----------

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Orthography
>
> Sandy, Andy, Lowlanders,
>
> Everything Sandy wrote above would, in my opinion, apply to Low Saxon
> (Low German) of Germany if you wrote "Low Saxon (Low German)" instead of
> "Scots" and "(High) German" instead of "English."  In fact, creating a
> generally applicable (also in the Netherlands) system would be
> relatively easy if people were not stuck to the old idea that the
> writing of their "dialects" is beholden to German spelling, and it is
> this introduction of elements from an essentially foreign system that
> makes the orthography haphazard and difficult rather than regular and
> easy.

I've been pondering the consequences of dropping recognisability
as a criterion for Scots orthography to see if I could get at this
"regular and easy" orthography. I've taken it a little further and
decided on the following pronciples:

1. While trying to be logical, I haven't worried unduly
about exactly what grapheme to use to represent a phoneme
(or diaphoneme) - I haven't worried about whether users
would consider it ugly or awkward to type, since cosmetic
decisions can be implemented once the practical, workhorse
orthography is in place.

2. Since I'm not worried about the cosmetics just yet, I
might as well stick to a one-to-one mapping between phonemes
(and diaphonemes) and characters, and use diacritics as
liberally as necessary. Diacritic-free digraphs and suchlike
can be implemented in the cosmetic stage.

OK - so, here are the stages I've gone through in devising
this "easy" Scots spelling system.

1. List all the consonant graphemes available in the
alphabet, along with what Scots speakers would think
of as their characteristic sound:

<b> /b/
<c> /s/ or /k/
<d> /d/
<f> /f/
<g> /g/
<h> /h/
<j> /dZ/
<k> /k/
<l> /l/
<m> /m/
<n> /n/
<p> /p/
<q> /k/
<r> /r/
<s> /s/
<t> /t/
<v> /v/
<w> /w/
<x> /ks/
<y> /j/
<z> /z/

2. Reserve the letters that can already be expressed using
other letters: <c>, <q>, <x>.

3. List the consonantal phonemes still in want of a grapheme
to express them:

/Z/ /x/ /tS/ /S/ /W/ /T/ /D/.

4. Assign as many as possible to the reserved letters:

/tS/ <c>
/x/  <x>
/W/  <q>  (also /f/ in some dialects)

These may seem odd, but remember we can leave worrying about
that to the final "cosmetic" stage.

5. Find some graphemes to represent the remaining phonemes
(I've restored a couple from Old English/Scots and borrowed
the rest from European languages noted for having a
representation of these sounds - although the Spanish
connection is only approximate!):

/T/ <Þ>
/D/ <ð>
/S/ <š>
/Z/ <ž>
/N/ <ñ>

6. As for consonants, list vowels with their characteristic
sounds, taking into account only vowel quality - ignoring
quantity for now (it's convenient to use the "Central" /o/
here, so that quality doesn't matter):

<a> /a/
<e> /E/
<i> /I/
<o> /o/
<u> /V/

7. List the remaining pure vowel sounds (ie not diphthongs
or diaphonemes) and assign graphemes to them:

/Q/ <å>  (from Swedish)
/i/ <í>  (from Lorimer's New Testament)
/u/ <ú>  (by analogy with í)
/e/ <é>  (by analogy with í)

8. Construct diphthongs from these, as the beginning sound
followed by the ending sound (since we have a choice of
twenty digraphs and only four diphthongs to represent, I've
fudged these a bit to avoid unnecessary diacritics):

/a:I/ <ai>
/@i/  <ei>  (should really be <ií>)
/Vu/  <ou>  (should really be <uú>)
/o:i/ <oi>

9. Express long vowels by reduplication, as in Finnish, but
only for those vowels that have long and short forms with
identical vowel quality (again, I've used a "Central" dialect
/o/ but since cosmetics are still to be applied, it doesn't
really matter):

/i:/ <íí>
/o:/ <oo>
/u:/ <úú>

10. We can express vowel diaphonemics by extending the
practice of traditional writers who borrowed the German
<ü> for the secondary vowel in "guid" &c. Calling the
two dots a "diaphonemic" instead of an umlaut or diaresis,
we can write (though I need to do a bit more research to
get this just right):

<ü> for the vowel in words normally written "guid",
    "puir", "beuk", "sheuch" &c.
<ä> for the vowel in words normally written "maet" &c.
<ë> for the vowel in words normally written "deif" &c.

11. Now add any special graphemes you think might be
worthwhile. I would suggest:

<æ> for dialect-variable vowel ending in words such as
dinna, winna, follow &c.

A "d" with a straight stem and a crossbar (Unicode 111)
for the dialect-variable devoicing of /d/ at the end of
such words as "started", "o'd", "feared" &c.

Perhaps something to represent the word endings normally
spelt <ie> or <y>, though perhaps the orthography deals
with this well enough as it stands.

Anyway, that's it, so I'll give an example (the opening
lines of the Tam O'Shanter) of this orthography in its
pure or "ugly" form before going on to describe the cosmetic
possibilities (I've applied homograph avoidance to some of
the smaller common words, but only two or three, and also
distinguished past tense <-en> from present participle <-in>;
I also think it's a good principle to write syllabic consonants
in non-syllabic form, if they can be pronounced that way at all,
eg "jentil", - or "jentol"? - not "jentl"):

Qan capman biliz líívz ði stríts,
An drúÞi níbirz níbirz míts,
Az merkit déz iz wíírin lét,
An fok beginz ti tak ði gét,
Wí Þiñksnæ on ði lañ Skots meilz
Ði mosiz, watirs, slaps an steilz,
Ðat laiz utwín us an úr hém,
Qår sits úr sulki, sulen dém,
Geðirin hir brúz leik geðirin stoorm,
Nursin hir raÞ ti kíp it warm.

Ðis trüÞ fand onist Tam O' antir
Az hé fé ér é nixt did kantir,
Åld ér, qam nír u tún surpasiz
Fir onist men an boni lasiz.

A, Tam! Had ðú but bín sé weis
Az tén ðai én weif Két's udveis,
 i tåld ðí wíl ðú wiz u skelum,
U bleðirin, blustirin, druñken blelum!
Ðat fé Novembir til Oktoobir
É merkit nixt ðú wiznæ soobir,
Ðat ilkæ meldir wi ði milir,
Ðú sat az lañ az ðú had silir,
Ðat iviri nég wiz kåd u šüü on
Ði smiÞ an ðí gat roorin fúú on,
Ðat at ðí Loord'z hús, ívin on Sundé,
Ðú drañk wi Kirktin Jín til Mundé.
 i profisííd ðat lét or sün,
Ðú wad bí fund díp drúnd in Dún,
Or kact wi wårliks i' ði mirk
Bi Alowå'z åld håntit kirk.

A, jentil démz, it garz mí grít
Ti Þiñk hú moni kúnsilz swít,
Hú moni lernit, séj udveisiz,
Ði huzbind fé ði weif dispeisiz.

But ti úr tél...

I'd say that comparing this with other European languages
with regular spelling systems such as Finnish and Czech,
this orthography is pretty good as it stands (we can't
compete with languages like Italian where the structure
of the language matches the Roman alphabet much more
closely!).

And finally, cosmetics...

If diacritics aren't wanted, or if we want to
make it seem more familiar, we could systematically
substitute preferred graphemes. For example, since the
phoneme /Z/ is rare, we might want to just drop the
diacritic and write it as <z>. We can restore the
h-digraphs to some extent, writing /S/ as <sh>, /tS/
as <ch>, but keeping <x>, or possibly using <kh>, for
/x/. We can restore /Q/ to <au> or <aa> since these
digraphs aren't used for anything else, or we could
decide that the distinction isn't all that important
and just drop the diacritic on the <å>. You could also
decide vowel length needn't be expressed and remove all
reduplication.

Well, what a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

Any thoughts?

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
                          - C.W.Wade,
                    'The Adventures o McNab'

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Orthography

Rudi,

> Have a look at URL http://answering-islam.org/Humor/humor1.html which
> is but one
> of them. The text is below for those of you who really are into this
> orthography business ;-)

This essentially anti-European-Union, if not anti-European, assumedly
British piece -- in this case offered at what I understand to be an
essentially anti-Islamic Christian site -- has been floating around for
a long, long time and has been posted here before.  In my humble
opinion, this sort of ridicule does anything but open people's minds to
the issues of orthography and of interregional and international
understanding, communication and cooperation.

> If we applied similar rules to all the lowlands' languages, would they
> all be spelled and sound the same?

No.  The beauty of writing is that it allows abstract representation of
speech and thus wide application.  How each letter or letter combination
is pronounced depends on the language variety and individual speaker.

Sandy,

> I've taken it a little further and
> decided on the following pronciples:

I think you have created a solid foundation schematically and
consceptually.  What you have done (spending your Snday afternoon) is
pretty much what I had suggested "ages" ago when you and I "tangoed."
:)

Reading that, I think I can actually pronounce the text fairly fluently,
and a Scots speaker would probably understand me without too much
difficulty.  I don't think this would be different if you now
substituted "those Continental chicken scratches" with more
English-looking ones, as long as consistency is maintained.

> For example, since the
> phoneme /Z/ is rare, we might want to just drop the
> diacritic and write it as <z>.

How about <zh>?

How about <th> for <Þ> and <dh> for <ð>?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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