Onyx

WIP Phonetic Steno Theory.

See Onyx Spec.

Goals

• Simplicity and Consistency
• Obvious, consistent entries
  • User-tailored pronunciations, and perfectly consistent phonetics (via Quartz)
  • Minimal mandatory orthography (candid and completely enumerated, via Quartz)
• Open for user briefing

Beliefs

“Simplicity is the prerequisite for reliability.”

• Inconsistencies are annoying when learning. They are incredibly dangerous when you have to build on top of a shaky foundation. Inconsistencies propagate.
• Smaller theories are better. Smaller theories are easier to learn, easier to build, easier to understand, easier to maintain, easier to extend, easier to keep consistent, easier to document…

Single-stroke Outlines

Monosyllabic words are preferentially constructed consistent to their pronunciation, resorting to orthography only when absolutely necessary.

• KAT -> cat
• TPOEPB -> phone
• PHAOEPB -> mean

Homophonic conflicts necessarily exist.

• PHAEUPB -> main
• PHAEPB -> mane

See the Onyx Spec for a more exhaustive enumeration of how symbolic units are constructed around chords, conflict resolution, etc.

Conflicts are resolved via rules before mandatory outlines. If a sensible rule with minimal coverage can be made, or multiple similar conflicts exist, a rule will be prefered.

“Just one more rule.”

Multi-stroke Outlines

For multi-stroke outlines, Onyx Splitting is used.

That means consecutive strokes in multi-stroke outlines are skeletonized.

Take a word like “helmet”. In Onyx, it’s (only) outline is HEL/PH-T. Rather than HEL/PHET (orthographic) or HEL/PHEUT (phonetic), the vowel is dropped, and the unstressed vowel is implied.

What about a large word that you might not have ever seen before? Sound it out.

What about a compound word you might not have ever seen before? Just sound it out.

Take “international”. I use the write-out EU/TPH-R/TPH/SH/TPH-L, which is exactly how I pronounce the word (i ner na shuh nl). Perhaps you say “in ter”, or “in tuh”, whatever your pronunciation, it is supported.

As for pros and cons, the downside of Onyx Splitting is that you can’t use skeletons or the starter bank on it’s own (strokes like TPH, and TR-RB, are not allowed).

The upside? You entirely remove word boundary conflicts.

I don’t think people realize that word boundary conflicts are a HUGE deal. The mere presence of word boundary conflicts in a theory means that you can never really be certain that your outlines will even work at all! You haven’t tried every combination of outlines with different surroundings.

Theories without word boundary conflicts are way simpler. Outlines exist completely on their own, and not complected with their surroundings.

As for conflicts Onyx Splitting creates, I believe I’ve found four, though it varies from person to person (documentation wip). For example, “relive” and “relieve” are not conflicts in my accent, as I pronounce the first vowel in “relive” as AOE, and the first vowel in “relieve” as U.

The lack of skeletons can make briefs more complex, as they’re in the same space as normal entries, though this isn’t a huge problem (briefs should be obvious, and skeletons are a cop-out, IMO).

Not having naked starters does suck though :/

I have found a lot more synergies with Onyx Splitting, though I’ve largely forgotten them (whoops!).

With Onyx splitting, you also don’t need joiners, linkers, dedicated prefix and suffix outlines. It also makes squishing strokes down easier, templates galore.

Briefing

Templated briefs are briefs built around theory rules. Templated briefs are largely the only briefs onyx will provide. I believe that arbitrary briefs are very personal, and shouldn’t be dictated by your theory. If you want to use my arbitrary briefs, you’re wrong.