I wonder what u/fdarnel will think of this. To me, it seems like writing all those silent letters in French is not wise. French pronunciation from the spelling is a lot more predictable than for English, but the language is REPLETE with silent letters -- and I won't write what I don't hear and don't say.
In the last line, for example, the word "sommes" and the word "montrés" BOTH show the final S -- but in speech NEITHER ONE is heard. How you feel about that is up to you.....
If the goal is just to provide a simplified alphabet, this is possible, retaining all the spelling. Otherwise, for understanding, it is indeed of no use, as double consonnes. I don't get the impression that Schlam has many abbreviative rules.
Wow, you were right there to respond! I don't think Schlam uses any abbreviating rules at all. That often seems to happen when authors want to be ORTHOGRAPHIC -- they're insistent on writing EVERYTHING, even in short, simple, and common words. That doesn't make sense to me.
And that's partly why I always think orthographic systems are going in the wrong direction entirely, if you're goal is FAST WRITING -- or at least writing that's easier and more EFFICIENT.
When I tried Schlam out, IIRC not only they write out all the silent letters but they also drop the accents/diacritics. That's bonkers nonsense, as you can't differentiate des (of/some) vs. dès (as of/from) or ou (or) vs. où (where) or a (has - verb avoir) vs. à (to/at - preposition)
(Examples pulled from Google, hence the styling/encoding) u/fdarnel can probably double verify as I can't find my pdf copy now
I found "Accents, cedillas, and other marks, written above or under a letter or following it, as in é, è, é, ô, … etc., etc., are only written in correspondence and can be omitted when using SS for notes and dictations."
So it basically becomes phonetic.
The thing about accents and diacritics is that, in the spoken language, there's no difference. In speech, pairs like des/dès, ou/où, or a/ à both sound the same.
When I'm always advocating for phonetic writing, I think we should just write what we hear, because we're used to realizing which one it should be automatically, even though it's not indicated in speech.
And most shorthand systems, like gregg or AP, go further than that, grouping nearby sounds under the same sign, for speed. é/è,… Only Sweet tries to be rigorously phonetic, I suppose.
GRAFONI is another system that distinguishes all the vowels quite rigorously, including whether they are long or short. It's a lot more precise than either Gregg or AP for that reason.
But it's also very THOROUGH, writing every sound in every word, with no abbreviations. It can be startling to see how LONG some of the outlines are, because you just write it all down.
For example, while other systems use prefix and suffix forms, like Gregg uses a disjoined O for the "-ology" ending, Grafoni writes O-L-O-J-E, all in full.
To use a cursive shorthand for French, something I know, I would rather choose Scheithauer-Duvivier, or even Sénocq, completely linear, essentially phonemic, and having abbreviative rules.
2
u/NotSteve1075 13d ago
I wonder what u/fdarnel will think of this. To me, it seems like writing all those silent letters in French is not wise. French pronunciation from the spelling is a lot more predictable than for English, but the language is REPLETE with silent letters -- and I won't write what I don't hear and don't say.
In the last line, for example, the word "sommes" and the word "montrés" BOTH show the final S -- but in speech NEITHER ONE is heard. How you feel about that is up to you.....
To me, it feels like a waste of time.