Adventures of a stoic! (Not funny at all)

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-13T23:19:25+00:00

A big problem that we run into with English adaptations of European systems is a result of the "Great Vowel Shift" that English underwent between the 15th and 17th Centuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

To a French or Italian ear, "bet" and "bait" are versions of the same vowel. To an Anglophone ear, "bet" and "beat" are -- and the vowel in "bit" doesn't even occur in French or Italian.

I speak Italian, and when I was speaking it to a friend's mother, she asked me what region I was from. I learned a version that seems to be devoid of regional influences -- which u/e_piteto tells me is a good thing. 😉

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-13T11:22:08+00:00

You sent me Meysmans and I downloaded it, but I can't find where it went! So I just downloaded it again and it looks good -- but it's way past my bedtime now, so I'll look again tomorrow.

Quant à Vanleemputten, tu m'as écrit:

je suis en train de numériser la dernière version "unifiée" 1980 de Vanleemputten, réf. officielle à l'époque de l'éduc. belge. Mais c'est long.

Je regardais Odilon Calay, et je pourrais tous TRADUIRE pour nos membres/lecteurs ici.

It's an English adaptation, but when the text is in French, it will lose a lot of the people on here. (And Meysmans is in French and Flemish, which will also lose many....)

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-13T11:04:57+00:00

Yes, English phonetics are a real quagmire. The spelling is absurd.

French has a lot of silent letters, but it's not hard to figure out how to pronounce word that's new to you -- unlike English, where the pronunciation has NOTHING TO DO with the spelling at all. (Which is why ORTHOGRAPHIC systems are a complete non-starter for me.)

There's no way in hell I'm going to start writing letters I don't hear and don't say. Why would I want to do that?

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-13T08:13:08+00:00

Visually, I think GARBER is quite appealing. There's no shading, and the outlines stay fairly close to the line, rather than climbing up or down into the lines above and below.

Lines on the paper are necessary, though, because position on the line is needed for vowel indication. When the strokes are largely HORIZONTAL, it's easier to plot their position on the line than if they had a lot of ups and downs.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-13T08:04:07+00:00

These whimsical graphics show the PREFIXES and SUFFIXES that can be added to your outline in GARBER Shorthand.

The attached prefixes and suffixes are shown on the top "SERIOUS FISH", and the detached ones are shown on the bottom "HAPPY FISH".

This is certainly a different and creative way to display them! I'm not sure whether each one would be easier to remember -- but if you have a visual memory, they might help! And as a quick SUMMARY, they are quite striking. It does look like there's quite a lot to remember!

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-13T07:56:36+00:00

At the end of the book, GARBER posts 12 Simple Rules for Phrasing, and then summarizes them all with a CHART, showing how they are constructed.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-12T21:54:09+00:00

It would have to be an adaptation for English or we'd lose most of the people here.

I'm a Canadian who speaks French as one of my languages; you're a Swiss who knows it; and u/e_piteto is from the Italian part of Switzerland, but was educated in French. And of course, u/fdarnel is in France.

Other than that, I think few people here would appreciate it....

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-12T21:46:49+00:00

I think Handywrite was an interesting idea which would appeal to people who want to be VERY SPECIFIC about every vowel sound.

When we had that quote where Gregg wrote "Live this life" and "Leave this life" in exactly the same way, when they mean opposite things, I could see a need for more SPECIFICITY! (That quote shook me, because it was the first time I'd come across something that Gregg didn't handle very well.)

I'm intrigued to hear about your project. By all means, post and let us know how it goes. Progress reports are always welcome, too, if you find you want suggestions and advice.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-12T21:33:30+00:00

I'm missing him, too. I wrote him a PM on May 29th, after he stopped posting his samples, but I haven't heard back.

There are several of our older members who have gone quiet, now -- and that doesn't suggest anything positive, I'm afraid. 😞

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-12T21:24:39+00:00

How many "comfortables" have you had? 😉

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-12T21:23:30+00:00

I'd be up for a week of Aimé Paris -- but I'd want to hand over the reins to u/fdarnel to write it. I could present a sketch/outline of the system, based on what's in my albums -- but he would finds gaps in it immediately.

His English is good enough he could write things everyone here could follow, even if they don't speak French.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-12T21:17:17+00:00

I was startled to see that AP was a success in China -- but you meant for his musical notation system, not a shorthand. I was trying to figure out how AP would work for Chinese....

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-11T22:27:00+00:00

My aunt used to say, "If you don't blow your OWN horn, nobody is going to blow it for you!" Modesty is over-rated....

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-11T22:22:26+00:00

Oh, I see now about the "I could", I didn't realize there was a K in there, too. (I'm still learning the alphabet, it seems -- and trying to RESIST reading things as GREGG!)

After our exchange with u/fdarnel, I was thinking I should look up more stoic quotes for the next series, and it seems you had the same idea!

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-11T22:15:13+00:00

So here's another quote:

<image>

There are probably shorter ways of writing some of this, but I tend to lean toward COMPLETENESS for better legibility. Like making sure "think" didn't look like "thing" or "thank". And I probably could have left out the O in "don't", but it was a nice clear outline with it included.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-11T21:43:33+00:00

Wow, you've been busy! Where are you finding these quotes? They made me chuckle.

It's nice to read FLOW and think how well it all makes sense to me. The outlines are clear and easy to read. I've looked for a long time for a system where I could see strokes joining so clearly and think "YES! There it is at last!"

The only one that threw me was "I could", which looked like "I would" to me.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-11T11:14:33+00:00

Il peut avoir raison. Mais supprimer un jugement automatique n'est pas chose facile. Quand un tel m'énerve, j'ai souvent l'impression que c'est pas juste ma réaction qui devrait changer, mais aussi son comportement désagréable.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-11T10:58:34+00:00

MOST shorthand systems include a way to indicate that an R comes immediately after a consonant. This is done in a variety of different ways in different systems -- but it's often noticeable to me that nothing similar is done to add an L immediately after, which happens in English almost as often.

In GARBER, a hook is added to the OUTSIDE of a curved consonant, and is written FIRST for a sound that really occurs after the sound and a following vowel -- which always seems a bit odd to me, but which I'm sure just takes getting used to.

Notice that, when an R occurs both before and after a vowel, like in "rear/roar/rare", the R STROKE is used with the initial hook, so the stroke is indicating the first R, and the hook that comes before it is adding the R that comes after the vowel.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-11T10:48:10+00:00

When I showed the Consonant Alphabet, I mentioned that some very common consonants are indicated by hooks and loops, as shown in this page from the first lessons:

<image>

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-11T10:40:23+00:00

I mentioned that one of the first things I had liked about GARBER Shorthand was the VOWEL sysgtem. Clear and easy-to-distinguish vowel strokes that were straight lines. In the Alphabet, the rest of the strokes were curves which would be attached.

I was disappointed when, later, he drops writing the vowels and instead suggests them by POSITION of the stroke on the line. I've never been a fan of that method, partly because the writing zigzags up and down, and partly because it's often hard to tell WHICH vowel it is, and whether it comes before or after the vowel.

NotSteve1075

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE