TV has two letters and it promises so much fun. Imagine what we can do with 26 letters. However the words that these letters combine to form are often pronounced differently from how we write them. Phonetics as this study is called, is a character of any language that is present or absent in varying degrees in all languages. Sanskrit and Hindi are highly phonetic where as Bengali, French or English are far less. Pygmalion the play or My Fair Lady the movie elucidated this point very well. Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl in the play Pygmalion speaks English so well that her listeners were deluded to believe that she is too good to be an English lady and must be a Hungarian princess. And she was able to learn her language and pronunciation in less than six months under the guidance of speech coach Prof Henry Higgins.
The 26 letters in the English alphabet seemed to pose a challenge to linguists who wanted the language to be simpler, to have a more phonetic orthography and to reduce the difficulties of conventional spelling. George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright, proposed a research to evolve an alphabet with minimum 40 letters, the letters to correspond with their sounds and the alphabet should be distinct from the current Latin letters. On his death, George Bernard Shaw in his will bequeathed a part of his fortune to further research in this area and the alphabet, so developed, was named after him as Shavian alphabet. In the new alphabet however only one book could be published due to paucity of funds and general indifference. It was one of the popular and most notable plays of Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion.
Bernard Shaw, as he is popularly known, was Irish and had the quirkiness that is normally associated with Irish people. He is the only person to have won both Nobel Prize and an Oscar and refused to take either. Shaw as a person probably comes closest to the idea of a modern Socrates, and was often called a social gadfly. Through his works and his life, he raised uncomfortable questions about prevailing issues and concerns of contemporary society. He did this also by writing very long prefaces to his not so short plays. His prefaces are some of the best commentaries available in literature and philosophy. The Trial of Christianity and the objective analyses of the trial of Joan of Arc are some of the most illuminating articles that one may read on the subjects.
Bernard Shaw wrote sixty three plays, five novels and innumerable essays, letters and articles. Shaw died at the age of 94 in 1950. His ashes mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte Payne-Townshend were scattered around the statue of Joan of Arc in his garden. He in his inimitable style composed his own epitaph and said “I knew if I stayed around long enough, something like this would happen”.
The 26 letters in the English alphabet seemed to pose a challenge to linguists who wanted the language to be simpler, to have a more phonetic orthography and to reduce the difficulties of conventional spelling. George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright, proposed a research to evolve an alphabet with minimum 40 letters, the letters to correspond with their sounds and the alphabet should be distinct from the current Latin letters. On his death, George Bernard Shaw in his will bequeathed a part of his fortune to further research in this area and the alphabet, so developed, was named after him as Shavian alphabet. In the new alphabet however only one book could be published due to paucity of funds and general indifference. It was one of the popular and most notable plays of Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion.
Bernard Shaw, as he is popularly known, was Irish and had the quirkiness that is normally associated with Irish people. He is the only person to have won both Nobel Prize and an Oscar and refused to take either. Shaw as a person probably comes closest to the idea of a modern Socrates, and was often called a social gadfly. Through his works and his life, he raised uncomfortable questions about prevailing issues and concerns of contemporary society. He did this also by writing very long prefaces to his not so short plays. His prefaces are some of the best commentaries available in literature and philosophy. The Trial of Christianity and the objective analyses of the trial of Joan of Arc are some of the most illuminating articles that one may read on the subjects.
Bernard Shaw wrote sixty three plays, five novels and innumerable essays, letters and articles. Shaw died at the age of 94 in 1950. His ashes mixed with those of his wife, Charlotte Payne-Townshend were scattered around the statue of Joan of Arc in his garden. He in his inimitable style composed his own epitaph and said “I knew if I stayed around long enough, something like this would happen”.
Interesting one....
ReplyDeleteNisheet
Great stuff.Any thing on Shaw has to be great.What happenendto Shavian.
ReplyDeleteDev
BIM III