This article chronicles some qualms I have with Shavian and/or the Read Lexicon standard spelling, even (and especially) as an avid fan of them.
I Can’t Stress This Enough (or At All)
Shavian has no stress marker. Often enough, the location of the stress can be determined from process of elimination. But when it can’t, oh boy, it’s a headache.
To date, I’ve found two pairs of words that are spelled the same in Shavian, but have different stress.
- billow – below: 𐑚𐑦𐑤𐑴
- diploid – deployed: 𐑛𐑦𐑐𐑤𐑶𐑛
Maybe someone can perform a search in the Readlex and find more. That someone, at least for now, is not me.
A Candied Confession
Part of this issue is the triple-duty done by the letter “if” (𐑦), showcased in the word “delivery” (𐑛𐑦𐑤𐑦𐑝𐑼𐑦). Every “if” stands for a different vowel:
- The unstressed ᴋɪᴛ, also known as “schwi”. The “e” in “roses” as opposed to “Rosa’s”.
- The (stressed) ᴋɪᴛ vowel.
- The happʏ vowel.
Even though ᴋɪᴛ and happʏ are in complementary distribution at the end of a word, that goes out the window once a suffix like “-(e)d” and “-(e)s” enters the picture.
An example (fortunately the only example I know) is “candy”. Even though “𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑦” can only end with a happʏ vowel, when you make it past tense or past participle as “candied” (𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑦𐑛), it looks exactly like “candid” (𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑦𐑛) with a ᴋɪᴛ.
Dishonorable mention: Merge happʏ with ꜰʟᴇᴇᴄᴇ instead
You can’t disambiguate it by replacing the “if” with an “eve”, because that would spell “Candide” (𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑰𐑛). (You can argue they’re distinguished by the namer dot, but what about the start of a title? What if I wrote two books, one called Candied Apple, and its self-parody called Candide Apple?)
For reasons that should be obvious to you by now, that will not help, at least without also adding stress marks (𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑰𐑛–𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑰𐑛). The same goes for these 10 minimal pairs, which were completely unambiguous before, but would be spelled the same, e.g. trusty–trustee, warranty–warrantee, drafty–draftee, and seedy–CD.
Idea 1: Stress mark
You can’t disambiguate it using just one stress mark either, because both “candid” and “candied” have the stress on the first syllable. You would need a secondary stress marker for these: “cándied” vs. “cándìd”, kind of like how poets spell “cursèd” (𐑒𐑻𐑕𐑩𐑛) to distinguish from “cursed” (𐑒𐑻𐑕𐑑).
Idea 2: Respell all “-ed” words
You could make it so that “candied” shows that it has the “-(e)d” suffix, possibly as 𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑦’𐑛 or 𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑦-𐑛, but that would be inconsistent with the other words. “Candid” is the weird one! Should we write “vallied” as 𐑝𐑨𐑤𐑦-𐑛 because of “valid” (𐑝𐑨𐑤𐑦𐑛)? If you woke up from a coma you went into before 2019, would you be able to tell if 𐑒𐑴𐑝𐑦𐑛 is “COVID” like “corvid”, or “covied” like “envied”?
Idea 3: Introduce a separate happʏ letter
An idea I’ve been playing with is to introduce a separate letter to indicate that an “if” is unstressed, by borrowing the Latin “i” to serve that purpose. This letter could even be used only in contexts like these where it would cause confusion. “Candid” and “Candide” would stay as 𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑦𐑛 and 𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑰𐑛, while “candied” would now be spelled 𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛i𐑛. Personally, I like this idea best because it would kill two birds with one stone. It would also distinguish billow–below (𐑚𐑦𐑤𐑴–𐑚i𐑤𐑴) and diploid–deployed (𐑛𐑦𐑚𐑤𐑶𐑛–𐑛i𐑐𐑤𐑶𐑛).
Idea 4: A Canneded Confession
Someone has informed me that the Macquarie Dictionary (Australian English) lists “candid” ending with /əd/ (𐑩𐑛). (The Macquarie generally merges schwa and schwi.) While this sounds weird to me, since it deviates from how I pronounce “candid” (i.e. “the candid talk” exactly like “the can did talk”), the Shavian standard for the “-ed” suffix already deviates from it in the exact same way. Spelling “candid” as 𐑒𐑨𐑯𐑛𐑩𐑛 might be the least-worst way out of this mess.