They kind of resemble Arabic writing. Especially the words "adder", "fed", "hit" or "city".
Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
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Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use other languages, perhaps? English is a relatively compact language in terms of visual space, but there are even more compact languages. Typical examples include East Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) and Nordic languages (Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish).
Sorry, no, Nordic languages are not compact. They may stuff more words together (e.g. generalforsamling instead of general/annual meeting), but just putting two words together doesn't make it more compact or easier to read.
As I noted in the other comment, there does exist multiple guidelines that do suggest a relative text compaction of many Nordic languages when translated from English. Guidelines themselves may have been biased to specific set of texts, of course. If it's the case I'd like to hear counterexamples.
Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Han characters are of course much larger than Latin characters, but the resulting space usage is more nuanced AFAIK. My data about the relative compactness of languages mostly comes from localization researches [1], and I believe CJK is generally more compact even when such differences are accounted for (but the actual expansion ratio can greatly vary). [1] Search for "text expansion translation" to get the general i…
The only thing that was correct in your link regarding Japanese is "varies". As for Han characters, Chinese uses those. Japanese uses a mixture of kanji (ancient Chinese characters) and native phonetic characters. So the space needed really depends on the content. As I said before, if it's full of English loanwords (or worse, English technical terminology that's been adopted into Japanese), it'll likely be larger, si…
> The only thing that was correct in your link is "varies".
Because I didn't bother to link all guidelines I've found. ;-) Other sources, for example, say that Japanese has a relative contraction of 10% to 55% [1], which is really variable but still supports my claim. There is also an inforgraphic about specific scenarios [2] with a similar conclusion for all CJK languages. It might be possible that some guidelines only show the character count and thus adjusted for the visual space, but I see no reason that most guidelines, primarily from professional translation companies, would get that same point wrong.
[1] https://gtelocalize.com/text-expansion-and-contraction-in-tr...
[2] https://d1sjtleuqoc1be.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/202...
> So the space needed really depends on the content. As I said before, if it's full of English loanwords (or worse, English technical terminology that's been adopted into Japanese), it'll likely be larger, since all that is expressed in katakana (phonetic characters). If it's something that can be written in mostly kanji, then it'll be quite compact.
You are correct (I do speak Japanese), but again, the general concensus seems that average Japanese texts do have enough kanjis that make up for some loanwords. I'm well aware that the balance has been greatly changed in recent decades though, so I'd like to be corrected if there is a well-known analysis.
> Korean does not use Han characters at all. It uses Hangul, an artificial phonetic writing system invented about 100 years ago.
Hangul was invented in the 15th century. Only the specific orthographic rules and the current name "hangul" were established ~100 years ago. It took more decades (i.e. circa 1990) for Han characters to be mostly gone from the written Korean, and I observed the final transition as a native Korean speaker.
Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#24The best shorthand for onscreen writing is the way SwiftKey keyboard supports. Basically you swipe your finger in one continuous path between letters stopping between words. It let's one write in comparable speed to typing on a smartphone onscreen keyboard.
Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#25See also:
Shavian alphabet https://www.shavian.info/alphabet/
Which has similar goals
Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#26My mom went to a professional school for "company secretary" or something like that in the 70s and learned shorthand notation (and typing). I recall trying to learn from her books as a kid, it's not that hard. But she never seemed to actually use it later in her life (she still touch typed tho!). I wonder how useful shorthand is in these days when cheap recording devices are available in everyone's pocket. Maybe peop…
My mother-in-law was taught shorthand in the 1960s UK and still uses it regularly. We work together in a family business and any meetings we go to she'll jot notes down using it, the amazing thing [to me anyway] is that she can read it afterwards!
It's a fantastic skill but so rare to see these days, it was mainly used by secretaries dictating notes to then type up I think. Now we are our own typists, it's largely relegated to history.
Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#27They kind of resemble Arabic writing. Especially the words "adder", "fed", "hit" or "city".
Isn't there a theory that writing medium effects scripts? IE the angles of Runes lended themselves well to carving. And something about left-to-right scripts was to avoid smudging.
So I wonder the writing medium Arabic was for. Roman Alphabet does lend itself reasonably well to stone work I feel.
Or is that one of those linguistic myths that doesn't play out like that.
Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#28They kind of resemble Arabic writing. Especially the words "adder", "fed", "hit" or "city".
Isn't there a theory that writing medium effects scripts? IE the angles of Runes lended themselves well to carving. And something about left-to-right scripts was to avoid smudging. So I wonder the writing medium Arabic was for. Roman Alphabet does lend itself reasonably well to stone work I feel. Or is that one of those linguistic myths that doesn't play out like that.
There might be some stretches of imagination there, but the base is solid - cuneiform writing was definitely formed by the medium (pressing a cut reed into clay).
Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#29They kind of resemble Arabic writing. Especially the words "adder", "fed", "hit" or "city".
Isn't there a theory that writing medium effects scripts? IE the angles of Runes lended themselves well to carving. And something about left-to-right scripts was to avoid smudging. So I wonder the writing medium Arabic was for. Roman Alphabet does lend itself reasonably well to stone work I feel. Or is that one of those linguistic myths that doesn't play out like that.
I don’t think it’s a myth at all. Arabic was written with a reed pen or ‘qalam’ [0], and that can certainly be seen in the modern script (e.g. [1], to take the first random example I found). But its ‘joined-up’ nature seems to have been a regional style — it’s also found in scripts like Syriac, Avestan, Mandaic, Manichaean, and even the delightfully bizarre Bactrian Greek (there’s some nice samples in [2]).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qalam
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mppajQ7TLGs
[2] https://greekasia.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-bactrian-language...
Re: Orthic Shorthand – Write as fast as you type
#30Trading off writing speed for legibility seems wrong to me. Writing fast is a skill that can be learned by regular practice. If you spend half the time to learn an illegible code like orthic on simply practicing your usual handwriting you'll end up writing quite a bit faster while increasing legibility. I would try that first.