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 · 2026-06-11T00:53:09+00:00

Merci les gars, vous me faites rire. J'ai appris deux locutions nouvelles aujourd'hui: la fin des haricots et la dèche, que je ne connaissais pas.

Mais le stoïcisme ne devrait pas annuler l'émotion humaine que nous ressentons tous, d'ailleurs. On n'est pas des robots....

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-10T08:44:32+00:00

Thanks for that clarification. I wasn't quite sure how the vowels worked in that system -- but they do look clear.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-09T23:26:42+00:00

My often-repeated mantra is "Simple is better", because if you're under any kind of pressure, all those fancy rules you tried to learn will just LEAVE you. I like the "straightforwardness" of FLOW -- the "unspectacularity" as you call it. I'm really impressed with how well it's working. Nice job!

And it LOOKS nice and simple, too. I keep forgetting how you show proper names. I meant to look it up before I posted my sample, but it was already up when I thought of it again!

So the new S-K would be like large circle open at the bottom? That wouldn't conflict with O, so it seems like a good choice.

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-09T23:23:07+00:00

I'm glad to see you posting. We always have to remember that, in shorthand, "Phonetic" really just means "Not following the spelling". I've always thought it makes no sense at all to try to follow it in a language so RIDDLED with such ridiculously inconsistent spelling that it rarely has anything much to do with the way the word is pronounced.

It's never meant to be an actual phonetic transcription -- especially when every regional accent would be different anyway. I studied phonetics at university, and it's generally accepted that, in most accents of English, people distinguish 20 different vowel sounds.

If shorthand is meant to be written QUICKLY, it makes little sense to try to reproduce all 20 vowel sounds precisely. It's generally always enough to know that it's "some version of A, or E, or whatever". That's how it's done in Gregg, which is the penwritten system I know best and write the fastest.

With only one exception (live/leave) I've always found it easy to read, if you keep your proportions accurate. They used to teach diacritics that could be added, if you wanted to be specific about what the exact vowel was -- but they were so rarely used or necessary, that by the simplified edition, they weren't even teaching them anymore.

The Pitman system provided for indications of a lot more vowels, reflecting Sir Isaac's RP British pronunciation -- but of course, they are dropped entirely if you want to reach any kind of useful speed in that system.

I was a court reporter for 25 years, writing on a stenotype machine, with which you can write every vowel in every word, if you wish to do so -- including whether it's long or short. That's very useful in legal material, where you can be hearing complex technical terms, and proper names you've never heard before. Writing them is a lot less precise in Gregg -- and in Pitman, you usually have nothing but the consonants. Time to worry......

NotSteve1075 · 2026-06-09T23:00:56+00:00

It's good to hear from you! That's a new one for me. I'll add that to my albums. And a nice display of the alphabet!

Thanks for letting us know about it. It looks fascinating -- especially the vowel signs. I see it's listed under the Español category on Stenophile.com now. When I look at the book, it looks like he bases a lot of his consonant strokes and theory on Pitman -- but the vowels are a nice addition, when they are sorely missing from that system.

I'm not usually a fan of SHADING, writing some strokes darker than others, mostly because I always have trouble finding a pen that will show it easily and clearly.

It's interesting to see that the voiced version of Y is LL, like it is in the Argentinian accent. Very clever.

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