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Eclectic Shorthand
Eclectic shorthand (sometimes called "Cross shorthand" or "Eclectic-Cross shorthand" after its founder, J. G. Cross) is an English shorthand system of the 19th century. Although it has fallen into disuse, it is nonetheless noteworthy as one of the most compact (and complex) systems of writing ever devised. Overview While most later responses to Pitman shorthand aimed for greater simplicity and an elimination of such characteristics as shading and positional writing (cf Gregg shorthand), Cross took his system in the opposite direction. Noting that English spelling is able to express all its many vowel sounds using only five vowel symbols, Cross adopted a five-position system for expressing vowels in his system (Pitman uses three). From there he went on to apply the five positions to consonant symbols as well, and to eliminate perpendicular strokes to make the writing more cursive. Curiously for a symbol system, the writing is based on English spelling rather than phonetics &md ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllable, and logographic systems use characters to represent words, morphemes, or other semantic units. The first fully phonemic script, the Proto-Sinaitic script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is considered to be the first alphabet and is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and possibly Brahmic. It was created by Semitic-speaking workers and slaves in the Sinai Peninsula (as the Proto-Sinaitic script), by selecting a small number of hieroglyphs commonly seen in their Egyptian surroundings to describe the sounds, as opposed to the semantic values of the Canaanite languages. However, Peter T. Daniels distinguishes an abugida, a set of graphemes that represent consonantal base ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eclectic Shorthand
Eclectic shorthand (sometimes called "Cross shorthand" or "Eclectic-Cross shorthand" after its founder, J. G. Cross) is an English shorthand system of the 19th century. Although it has fallen into disuse, it is nonetheless noteworthy as one of the most compact (and complex) systems of writing ever devised. Overview While most later responses to Pitman shorthand aimed for greater simplicity and an elimination of such characteristics as shading and positional writing (cf Gregg shorthand), Cross took his system in the opposite direction. Noting that English spelling is able to express all its many vowel sounds using only five vowel symbols, Cross adopted a five-position system for expressing vowels in his system (Pitman uses three). From there he went on to apply the five positions to consonant symbols as well, and to eliminate perpendicular strokes to make the writing more cursive. Curiously for a symbol system, the writing is based on English spelling rather than phonetics &md ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''stenos'' (narrow) and ''graphein'' (to write). It has also been called brachygraphy, from Greek ''brachys'' (short), and tachygraphy, from Greek ''tachys'' (swift, speedy), depending on whether compression or speed of writing is the goal. Many forms of shorthand exist. A typical shorthand system provides symbols or abbreviations for words and common phrases, which can allow someone well-trained in the system to write as quickly as people speak. Abbreviation methods are alphabet-based and use different abbreviating approaches. Many journalists use shorthand writing to quickly take notes at press conferences or other similar scenarios. In the computerized world, several autocomplete programs, standalone or integrated in text editors, based on w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Writing
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically Epigraphy, inscribed, Printing press, mechanically transferred, or Word processor, digitally represented Symbols (semiotics), symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute human languages (with the debatable exception of computer languages); they are a means of rendering language into a form that can be reconstructed by other humans separated by time and/or space. While not all languages use a writing system, those that do can complement and extend capacities of spoken language by creating durable forms of language that can be transmitted across space (e.g. Letter (message), written correspondence) and stored over time (e.g. libraries or other public records). It has also been observed that the activity of writing itself can have knowledge-transforming effects, since it allows humans to externalize their thinking in forms that are easier to reflect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pitman Shorthand
Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman (1813–1897), who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a phonetic system; the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds, and words are, for the most part, written as they are spoken. Shorthand was referred to as phonography in the 19th century. It was first used by newspapers who sent phonographers to cover important speeches, usually stating (as a claim of accuracy) that they had done so. The practice got national attention in 1858 during the Lincoln–Douglas Debates which were recorded phonographically. The shorthand was converted into words during the trip back to Chicago, where typesetters and telegraphers awaited them. Pitman shorthand was the most popular shorthand system used in the United Kingdom and the second most popular in the United States. One characteristic feature of Pitman shorthand is that unvoiced and voiced pair ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gregg Shorthand
Gregg shorthand is a form of shorthand that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is completely based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them. Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in the United States; its Spanish adaptation is fairly popular in Latin America. With the invention of dictation machines, shorthand machines, and the practice of executives writing their own letters on their personal computers, the use of shorthand has gradually declined in the business and reporting world. However, Gregg shorthand is still in use today. There is a reasonable possibility that John Robert Gregg structured his shorthand on the Mnemonic major system based on the previous work of Pierre Hérigone and others following the publication of ''The Anti-Absurd or Phrenotypic English Pronouncing and Orthographical Dictionary'' by Major Beniowski in 1845. Many versions of this system were published. The last version was ''Centennial'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress. The word ''vowel'' comes from the Latin word , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). In English, the word ''vowel'' is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y). Definition There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological. *In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English "ah" or "oh" , produced with an open vocal tract; it is median (the air escapes along the middle of the tongue), oral (at least some of the airflow must escape through the mouth), frictionless and continuant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; , and , pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and , which have air flowing through the nose ( nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels. Since the number of speech sounds in the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to each attested consonant. The English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than the English language has consonant sounds, so digraphs like , , , and are used to extend the alphabet, though some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For example, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines based on the research questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech (articulatory phonetics), how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound (acoustic phonetics), or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information (auditory phonetics). Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones. Phonetics deals with two aspects of human speech: production—the ways humans make sounds—and perception—the way speech is understood. The communicative modali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech organ, speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In most International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects, varieties of English language, English, the phrase "no highway cowboy" () has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable. Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue or other speech organs do not move and the syllable contains only a single vowel sound. For instance, in English, the word ''ah'' is spoken as a monophthong (), while the word ''ow'' is spoken as a diphthong in most varieties (). Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables (e.g. in the English word ''re-elect'') the result is described as hiatus (linguistics), hiatus, not as a diphthong. (The English word ''h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copperplate Script
A copperplate script is a style of calligraphic writing most commonly associated with English Roundhand. Although often used as an umbrella term for various forms of pointed pen calligraphy, Copperplate most accurately refers to script styles represented in copybooks created using the intaglio printmaking method. The term ''Copperplate Script'' identifies one of the most well-known and appreciated calligraphic styles of all time. Earlier versions of this script required a thin-tipped feather pen. Later, with the rise of industrialization, the use of more flexible and durable fine-point metal nibs became widespread. Many masters offered their contributions in defining the aesthetic canons of the copperplate script, but what really stood out as fundamental was the work of the writing master and engraver George Bickham, who in his book ''The Universal Penman'' (1733–1741) collected script samples from twenty-five of the most talented London calligraphers. Copperplate was undoub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
