Arbdot is a spelling system designed to look like Bob Boden's Bobdot, but changing it in some ways I consider important. If I had designed Arbdot from scratch, it would look a lot different (in fact, it would look just like my WMM), but I simply adopted Bob's decisions on many points, if I didn't feel they were important. So I use zh for the second consonant of <vision>, I avoid the use of y as a vowel, and I use both c and k for the k sound, even though my personal preferences differ.
I consider this an interesting and valuable thing to do
because it is rare for people to have a chance to consider two such
similar systems by different authors. It provides an opportunity
for interested parties to express an opinion on some fundamental
issues, without being distracted by differences of no importance.
The differences between Bobdot and Arbdot can be summed up
as follows:
Arbdot emphasizes morphology at the expense of phonemic accuracy.
Bobdot is oriented towards NBC English, while Arbdot takes a more international approach.
Bobdot marks primary stress. Arbdot marks both primary and secondary stress (without distinguishing them).
Bobdot uses "citation pronunciation". Arbdot is based exclusively on dictionary pronunciation.
Arbdot emphasizes morphology at the expense of phonemic accuracy.
Arbdot represents the schwa with the same vowel as TS. (If there is no corresponding TS vowel, it uses u, like Bobdot.) This should not surprise anyone, as I have been advocating this strategy for some time. It makes the spellings of related words more similar, as in Arbdot fótogräf/fotögrafè versus Bobdot fótugraf/futögrufè. Additionally, unstressed short i may be spelled with an e, as in TS, which helps with pairs like ekspëkt/ekspektáshon, which would otherwise be spelled ikspëkt/ekspektáshon in Arbdot. Interestingly enough, Bobdot often also spells these words with e rather than i, for completely different reasons. This is discussed further in point 4 below.
Arbdot always uses the letter -z for plurals, and the letter -d for past tenses, as in trikz and trikd (triks and trikt in Bobdot).
Arbdot never changes k to c in derived words, e.g., mistik/mistikal (versus Bobdot mistik/misticul). Similar rules apply to oy and ow at the ends of words: Arbdot spells cowboy and joyfûl, not couboy and joifeul, as in Bobdot.
In compound words, the stress for each part is indicated separately. In Bobdot, this is only true in hyphenated words. For instance, Arbdot spells comonsens and hichhíker, in Bobdot cömunsëns and hichhìcur.
Bobdot is oriented towards NBC English, while Arbdot takes a more international approach.
Arbdot spells some words with the same sounds differently in accordance with their British pronunciations. For instance, it spells fâther/bother (fothur/bothur in Bobdot), marè/Márè/merè (all merè/Merè in Bobdot), sérèus/delïrèus (sirèus/dèlïrèus in Bobdot), blêrè/hurè (blurè/hurè in Bobdot) and gûrù/gúrmá (gûrù/gûrmà in Bobdot).
Arbdot spells the vowel of law with ô rather than aw. This is to allow words such as krôs and alông to be spelled more like the British forms kros and alöng.
Some words, like <new> and <attitude>, differ in British and American English by whether a y sound precedes the long u. Arbdot spells these words with an eu vowel: neú and atiteúd. This favors neither form of English - all must remember which words require this special treatment.
Arbdot does not show stress for the vowels â, êr, ô and û. This makes Arbdot less precise than Bobdot, but because these vowels are usually stressed, this is rarely significant.
Bobdot marks primary stress. Arbdot marks both primary and secondary stress (without distinguishing them).
Bobdot uses the dieresis to indicate a short vowel with primary stress, the acute accent a long vowel with primary stress and the grave accent a long vowel without primary stress. This is a very precise system: it shows the primary stress, and the only apparent ambiguity is the unaccented letter u. (humdrum does not rhyme with cunündrum. Well, it doesn't when I say them. Bob says they rhyme for him. So, depending on your dialect, maybe this is a feature, not a flaw.)
Arbdot makes the distinction between stressed and unstressed vowels rather than between primary stress and its absence. This is more or less a consequence of Arbdot's way of handling the schwa - otherwise you can't distinguish between the schwa and a secondarily stressed short vowel. But I believe this is the right thing to do anyway. I find it's far easier to tell stressed and unstressed vowels apart than to accurately work out the primary stress in long words.
Example words: Arbdot: hümdrüm, aligátor, prótëst; Bobdot: humdrum, alugàtur, prótest.
A side-effect of the above is that the rule about
when you
can leave the accent off the first syllable differs between the two
systems. With
Bobdot,
every syllable must be taken into account, while with Arbdot, only the
second syllable matters - if the second syllable is not stressed, the
first one must be. (Bob has pointed out that there is at least one
dictionary which lists words (like <indigestion>) in which both
of the first two syllables are shown as unstressed. Arbdot is
based on other dictionaries which do not contradict the stress rule
just stated, a rule which I find very plausible, and hold to be
true. See the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary for an explicit
statement of the rule.)
Bobdot uses "citation pronunciation". Arbdot is based exclusively on dictionary pronunciation.
My rejection of "citation pronunciation" is very simply explained - I don't trust my own judgment of when it is necessary to alter vowels from their dictionary pronunciation. Bob is comfortable with making his own judgments on this matter, but I am not, and will stick to what the dictionaries tell me.
There are a few other differences between Bobdot and Arbdot deriving from their approaches to determining the pronunciation regarded as standard. For instance, Bobdot spells <with> as witþ, while Arbdot spells it with. Arbdot pronunciation is a consensus pronunciation derived from three dictionaries, while Bobdot pronunciation is what Bob believes NBC English pronunciation to be. Whose pronunciation is more "correct" or, for that matter, closer to yours, is not for me to say, but I like to think that the Arbdot approach is more objective.
As noted in point 1 above, Arbdot spells many words
like <explain> with an initial e (eksplán) rather than
the initial i its (dictionary-derived) pronunciation would imply.
It would seem that this would result in substantial deviation from
Bobdot, which has no such rule. In fact, it does not, because of
citation spelling and divergences between Bob's pronunciation standard
and my own. My dictionaries show the first syllable of
<extreme> and <refrain> with a short, unstressed i, which I
represent with an e for morphological reasons: ekstrém, refrán.
Bob represents them as ekstrém
and rèfrán respectively, in the former case because
he (rightly or wrongly) believes the usual NBC English pronunciation
begins with a short e rather than an i, and in the latter case as a
citation pronunciation. The net effect is that both systems often
use some form of the letter e to represent an unstressed short i, even
though their rationales are completely different.
Which of Bobdot and Arbdot is superior is probably not clearcut, except in the eyes of their creators. As I see it, the advantages of Bobdot are:
Bobdot is far more precise about stress than Arbdot is, especially primary stress.
For NBC English, Bobdot is very close to phonemic.
Bobdot is much easier to explain.
The advantages of Arbdot are:
In Arbdot, related words are more likely to be spelled similarly.
Arbdot is suitable for RP as well as NBC English, though not a perfect match for either.
Arbdot is significantly closer to TS than Bobdot.
Arbdot represents a more objectively determined set of
(American) pronunciations.
To comment on this page,
e-mail Alan at wyrdplay.org