I am adding a page to my website about Quickscript (that was). I have a few
questions about the alphabet.

Read evidently replaced three Shavian letters with just one: the Utter
letter. This represents all the vowel sounds in words like "up", "uhuh",
"among" and "girder". Is this right?

There is a letter not found in Shavian: the Why letter. This represents the
/hw/ sound that some people - mainly Scots, I think - pronounce in words
like "whether". I can't find this in the Jerome or Second Shaw fonts. Is it
there somewhere?

Is there a general explanatory web page about the alphabet? I know of only
Bob Richmond's, at:

http://members.aol.com/RSRICHMOND/quickscript.html

Simon Barne

At 01:53 PM 12/23/00 +0700, you wrote:

Read evidently replaced three Shavian letters with just one: the Utter
letter. This represents all the vowel sounds in words like "up", "uhuh",
"among" and "girder". Is this right?

Yes. It is my understanding this is the most common sound in English. I have been using Quikscript for 25 years. Richmond's website states that Roger Collin is the only fluent writer he knew of. I've been talking about Quikscript on and off on the Shavian site for almost a year, but I have received little feedback regarding Quikscript, and I guess Richmond found no need to change the text of his website even though I wrote about my experiences with QS. I had no experience with fonts, and until Jon Zuck came along and put Jerome together, everyone pretty much ignored my comments. I assume two reasons account for this: most of them did not know anything about QS, and they had already spent some time and effort on Shavian, and really did not want to hear that Reed had improved it after extensive testing. I have written both alphabets, and in my opinion, Quikscript is easier to write in. It is a beautiful, cursive script with what I feel are very innovative features.

There is a letter not found in Shavian: the Why letter. This represents the
/hw/ sound that some people - mainly Scots, I think - pronounce in words
like "whether". I can't find this in the Jerome or Second Shaw fonts. Is it
there somewhere?

Yes. Jon Zuck mapped it to the tilda key (next to numeral 1). He is using the name "Wholewheat" for this symbol. The shift-tilda gets you a half-Wheat, which along with a half-Yo, is a letter I have used for a number of years. Read did not actually include it in his QS manual, but I saw no reason not to use it in handwriting as he suggested in the other half-letters as it is just as legible as they are, which is to say, perfectly.

Regarding your comments on the use of this letter. I have not studied the history of linguistic change, but my assumption is that this sound was the norm at one time, and that the people who now think it is archaic because they do not happen to use it are speakers of dialects which have moved away from it. I grew up and have lived in the states of Kentucky and southern Indiana all my life. I have always used the sound, and either most of the people around me do also, or I just have not listened carefully enough to others when they talk. It was only recently after some of the discussions on this site that I discovered that many people seem to think it is extinct or used by people in remote areas or smaller speech communities. A friend of mine pointed out that the following line in the Wicked Witch song in the Wizard of Oz: "which old witch, the wicked witch," was funny because both words were pronounced the same. Well, all my life I missed the point because I don't pronounce the two words the same! They seem quite different to me. In my Webster dictionary, I checked the pronunciation of "which." It lists both pronunciations and neither is favored. In fact the "hw" version is listed first. People are myopic. It seems that everyone believes the way they speak English is "normal," and it is others who speaks another dialect who are "abnormal" or "in the minority." I am willing to bet there are millions of speakers who use "hw" and they are not all Scots.

Is there a general explanatory web page about the alphabet? I know of only
Bob Richmond's, at:

http://members.aol.com/RSRICHMOND/quickscript.html

Not that I am aware of at this time. What is your website URL?
I might work on a website for Quikscript myself at some point down the road when I
can find the time. It would be nice to make the QS manual available for downloading.

Paige Gabhart

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Thank you for the information about the alphabet. I have now found the Why
character in the Jerome font.

My website is at: http://www.geocities.com/simonbarne/

I have not yet added a Quickscript page, but will let you know when I do.
Any other information about the alphabet would be gratefully received.

Simon Barne

Simon:

I checked out your website. I like it. The advertising images are fun. I would ask one thing, however. On one page you make the statement that the English language is difficult to learn. I have seen people make this statement before, and I think it shows a basic confusion which should not occur on websites devoted to Shavian or Quikscript.

Over the centuries, English has simplified itself in ways that many languages have not. We make no distinction of gender as French, Spanish, German, etc. do. We have dramatically reduced the number of case endings. Our verb endings are minimal and simple (with the exception of strong verbs) compared to other European languages. Many words are interchangeable as verbs, nouns or other parts of speech depending upon word order.

A linguist (perhaps, Mario Pei, I cannot remember for sure) wrote that English had made good progress in evolving toward a language structure similar to Chinese in which words are simple, word order determines meaning and what part of speech a word is. This may be overstating the case somewhat, but I take his point. Take a look at Russian sometime if you want to see a language that has not gone down the path of simplification such as English has.

It is not spoken English that is difficult to learn, but the written form. And, as you should know, that problem is due to writing English with the roman alphabet, rather than some intrinsic difficulty with the language.

Paige

Hi, Simon!

Thanks for asking about the Quickscript Alphabet (I prefer to follow Cole's
lead and call it the Second Shaw alphabet, or sometimes the Revised Shaw
alphabet. Others call it other things.)
Not long ago I posted a detailed introduction to it designed for those
already familiar with the First Shaw Alphabet. It's at:

http://www.egroups.com/files/shavian/Reference/Second+Shaw.htm
---
Shalom v'Tovah,
Jon Zuck
Web URL: http://surf.to/frimmin

It is more important to love much than to think much.
Always do that which most impels you to love.
--St. Teresa of Avila