Re: þe_getisbyrg_adres

Tristan Mc Leay wrote:

[snip correct observations about the non-dispensability of diacritics]

> My problems with it are that it doesn't note stress...
The system *can* optionally note stress by marking light vowels with
a grave and heavy vowels with a circumflex instead of an acute, thus
_konsêvd in lìbyrti_.

> It randomly gives
> values to schwas so that I took some time to decypher frex. 'konsévd',
> _onord_; _propósiśyn_ just looks absurd (sorry, can't type s-caron, can
> type s-acute, treating as equivalent).
Fair enough, but actually using caron rather than acute on _ž, š_ helps
reading, since they are less likely to be mistaken for an acute on the
preceding vowel.  Also in this sample I limited myself to characters
available in Latin-1.  Otherwise I prefer ŋ to ñ and ʒ to ç; concevably
one could also use ƶ, ʃ for ž, š. Or to be even more radical use
distinct letter shapes like this:

Latin-1: a e i o u y á é í ó ú ý
Unicode  a ɛ ɩ ɔ ʊ y ɑ e i o u ɥ

> You might as well write
> 'propósiśún'.
No, that would be //prQpowsISawn//! tho I guess _propósišn_ would have
been better! I've changed that now.

> _To_ for 'to' but _pur_ for 'poor' strikes me as amazingly
> and unbelievably backward (historically the both represent the same
> vowel---I could justify the lack-of-schwa on grounds of history---so why
> not represent them the same?).
  The idea of the system is
to have, at least to a very high degree, a consistent spelling of the
same morpheme save for accents, so thus /@/ *has* to be spelled
differently -- with the morphonemically underlying vowel if you will.

It's time that I divulge that this example was converted from ordinary
orthography by a perl script!  I have a longish list of exceptional
spellings for words and morphemes that are spelled more or less
irregularly.  Otherwise the script strives to capture the *regularities*
of current English orthography and convert the spelling based on them,
and it works rather damn well given the constraints, even tho the list
of exceptions is up to 56 items by now.  I had still forgotten a couple
of important exceptions when I converted the text I posted, notably
_to_ and _of_ (so that /ov/ got confused with /of/!)  Why _their_ became
_þeyr_ rather than _þár_ is completely beyond me.  One thing which I
alas can't do anything about without making the list of exceptions
very long is the variation between /s/ and /z/ for intervocalic _s_.


> There's also some random accents e.g. in
> _háv_, _líviń_ which as far as I know reflects no English pronunciation
> but rather the irregularity in the English orthography that prohibits
> <v> from ending words or being doubled.
Sure, that is a limitation of the automatic transcription.  To solve it
I would have had to list all words with _ve_ in them, and there would
still be some like _lives_ with two possible pronunciations.

> Similarly, _śål_ for 'shall'.
I'll list that one too.

> Also, 'cannot' is one word, not two :)
Not in my sourcetext! :))

>
> If it's historical (of the if-english-were-different,-here's-how-it'd-
> be-spelt-today sort),
Yes it is, sort of, since the choice of graphemes is obviously inspired
by standardized Old English.

> why not make it historical and spell vowels
> according to Early Middle English values or whatever the intention is?
> If it's revisionary, why not make it easier to read? As it stands, it's
> not easier.
The reason is that it in fact is an automatic conversion of present
English spelling.  It is also a work in progress.  I would have liked
e.g. to mark all stresses, but for this round I choose not to tinker
with the source text!  Ideally I should dump the exception list and
find out what changes need to be done to the source text.  *That*
might prove a viable spelling reform!


/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)

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