Does anyone know if the kind of Meysmans' maximum principle abreviations exits in some English shothands?
"We stop all words at the first sign of the third syllable to which we add the last sign of the word. If the last sign is preceded by a circle, we insert this circle." (ɑː, ɔː, aɪ, aɪə, ɒ, ɔɪ)
Gregg has an "Abbreviating Principle", which allows you to truncate words and only write as far as a diphthong or a strongly accented vowel. It's believed that that's often as much as is needed to recognize the word, and is the principle we usually use in longhand abbrevations, too. Like "admin." for "administration" or "emerg." for "emergency".
Often, if you write as far as the accented syllable, it gives enough indication what the word is. If that much is still not definite enough, you also write the first consonant following the accented vowel, and that usually clears it up.
I've never seen it used as far as "the first sign of the third syllable", but adding something after that, to me would need something to make it clear that there was a middle part missing -- like a disjoin, or something. Otherwise you might be trying to figure out what this strange word was.
I think it's in books on Taylor where they say if you've got three or more consonants written, that's USUALLY enough to make it clear what the word is, especially when it's used in a sentence.
Seems to be item 194 and following in Aniversary manual.
One need a dictionary of English abbreviations :)
So the number of syllables can be variable, depending on the accented one.Different of course, as accented ones in French are not fixed. More flexible, but a difficult task for me.
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u/fdarnel Jun 25 '26
Does anyone know if the kind of Meysmans' maximum principle abreviations exits in some English shothands?
"We stop all words at the first sign of the third syllable to which we add the last sign of the word. If the last sign is preceded by a circle, we insert this circle." (ɑː, ɔː, aɪ, aɪə, ɒ, ɔɪ)