XXIIVV

Assorted notes on the English language.

English Prime is a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb "to be", including all conjugations, contractions and archaic forms. Its goal is to leads to a less dogmatic style of language that reduces the possibility of misunderstanding or conflict.

Bourland sees specifically the "identity" and "predication" functions as pernicious, but advocates eliminating all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the "existence" form (and less idiomatically, the "location" form), one might (for example) simply substitute the verb "exists". Other copula-substitutes in English include taste, feel, smell, sound, grow, remain, stay, and turn, among others a user of E-prime might use instead of "to be".

Identity The cat is my only pet
Class membershipGarfield is a cat
Class inclusion A cat is an animal
Predication The cat is furry
Auxiliary The cat is sleeping
Existence There is a cat
Location The cat is on the mat

For example, instead of saying, "I am depressed," a student was asked to eliminate that emotionally primed verb and to say something else, such as, "I feel depressed when ..." or "I tend to make myself depressed about ..."

Spivak Pronoun

The Spivak pronouns are a set of gender-neutral pronouns in English.

Masculine he laughs I hugged him his heart warmed that is his
Feminine she laughsI hugged her her heart warmed that is hers
They(s.) they laughI hugged themtheir heart warmedthat is theirs
Spivak e laughs I hugged em eir heart warmed that is eirs

Oulipo Social

Oulipo social is a fedi instance where the letter is not allowed. Try to stop looking for synonyms; if you try to swap out individual words, you'll find it tough going. Pull back and think abstractly about what you want to say and find words for that.

Knock knock
Who's there?
To
To, who?
It's to whom, actually.

Eldsay Wordlists

The American Sign Language has a set of 26 signs which can be used to spell out words.

Morse code is a telecommunication method encoding text characters as sequences of two different signal durations.

Braille is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired.

Assorted notes on various nautical language systems.

The Shavian phonemic alphabet.

The Shavian alphabet is a constructed alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonemic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of conventional spelling using the Latin alphabet. A phonetic alphabet would look quite different depending on the accent it represented. Shavian, on the other hand, does not purport to represent exactly sounds, but classes of sounds.

stupendous written in the Shavian script
Tall Deep
๐‘ /p/ peep ๐‘š /b/ bib
๐‘‘ /t/ tot ๐‘› /d/ dead
๐‘’ /k/ kick ๐‘œ /ษก/ gag
๐‘“ /f/ fee ๐‘ /v/ vow
๐‘” /ฮธ/ thigh ๐‘ž /รฐ/ they
๐‘• /s/ so ๐‘Ÿ /z/ zoo
๐‘– /สƒ/ sure ๐‘  /ส’/ measure
๐‘— /สง/ church ๐‘ก /สค/ judge
๐‘˜ /j/ yea ๐‘ข /w/ woe
๐‘™ /ล‹/ hung ๐‘ฃ /h/ ha-ha
Short
๐‘ค /l/ loll ๐‘ฉ /ษ™/ ado
๐‘ฎ /r/ roar ๐‘ณ /สŒ/ up
๐‘ฅ /m/ mime ๐‘ช /ษ’/ on
๐‘ฏ /n/ nun ๐‘ด /ษ™สŠ/ oak
๐‘ฆ /ษช/~/i/ if ๐‘ซ /สŠ/ wool
๐‘ฐ /iห/ eat ๐‘ต /u(ห)/ ooze
๐‘ง /ษ›/ egg ๐‘ฌ /aสŠ/ out
๐‘ฑ /eษช/ age ๐‘ถ /ษ”ษช/ oil
๐‘จ /รฆ/ ash ๐‘ญ /ษ‘ห/ ah
๐‘ฒ /aษช/ ice ๐‘ท /ษ”ห/ awe
Compound
๐‘ธ /ษ‘ห(r)/ are ๐‘ผ /ษ™(r)/ array
๐‘น /ษ”ห(r)/ or ๐‘ฝ /ษชษ™(r)/ ear
๐‘บ /ษ›ษ™(r)/ air ๐‘พ /ษชษ™/ Ian
๐‘ป /ษœห(r)/ err ๐‘ฟ /ju(ห)/ yew

Examples

Keyboard Input

There is an onscreen keyboard written for Varvara.

Unicode Chart

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+1045x ๐‘ ๐‘‘ ๐‘’ ๐‘“ ๐‘” ๐‘• ๐‘– ๐‘— ๐‘˜ ๐‘™ ๐‘š ๐‘› ๐‘œ ๐‘ ๐‘ž ๐‘Ÿ
U+1046x ๐‘  ๐‘ก ๐‘ข ๐‘ฃ ๐‘ค ๐‘ฅ ๐‘ฆ ๐‘ง ๐‘จ ๐‘ฉ ๐‘ช ๐‘ซ ๐‘ฌ ๐‘ญ ๐‘ฎ ๐‘ฏ
U+1047x ๐‘ฐ ๐‘ฑ ๐‘ฒ ๐‘ณ ๐‘ด ๐‘ต ๐‘ถ ๐‘ท ๐‘ธ ๐‘น ๐‘บ ๐‘ป ๐‘ผ ๐‘ฝ ๐‘พ ๐‘ฟ

Pixel fonts

Glyphs by Dechifro.

shavian6x13 shavian7x14

incoming: thousand rooms latin sin flexion