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Tironian notes ( la, notae Tironianae, links=no) are a set of thousands of signs that were formerly used in a system of
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 ''s ...
(Tironian shorthand) dating from the 1st century BCE and named after
Tiro Marcus Tullius Tiro (died 4 BC) was first a slave, then a freedman, of Cicero from whom he received his nomen and praenomen. He is frequently mentioned in Cicero's letters. After Cicero's death Tiro published his former master's collected w ...
, a personal secretary to
Marcus Tullius Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
, who is often credited as their inventor. Tiro's system consisted of about 4,000 signs, extended to 5,000 signs by others. During the
medieval period In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
, Tiro's notation system was taught in European monasteries and expanded to a total of about 13,000 signs. The use of Tironian notes declined after 1100 but lasted into the 17th century. A few Tironian signs are still used today.


Note on sign counts

Tironian notes can be themselves composites ( ligatures) of simpler Tironian notes, the resulting compound being still shorter than the word it replaces. This accounts in part for the large number of attested Tironian notes, and for the wide variation in estimates of the total number of Tironian notes. Further, the "same" sign can have other variant forms, leading to the same issue.


History


Development

Before Tironian shorthand became popularized, literature professor Anthony Di Renzo explains, "no true Latin shorthand existed." The only systematized form of abbreviation in Latin was used for legal notations (). This system, however, was deliberately abstruse and accessible only to people with specialized knowledge. Otherwise, shorthand was improvised for note-taking or writing personal communications, and these notations would not have been understood outside of closed circles. Some abbreviations of Latin words and phrases were commonly recognized, such as those inscribed on monuments. Scholars believe that
Marcus Tullius Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
(106–43 BC) recognized the need for a comprehensive, standard Latin notation system after learning about the intricacies of the Greek shorthand system and delegated the task of creating this new system to his slave and personal secretary
Tiro Marcus Tullius Tiro (died 4 BC) was first a slave, then a freedman, of Cicero from whom he received his nomen and praenomen. He is frequently mentioned in Cicero's letters. After Cicero's death Tiro published his former master's collected w ...
. Tiro's position required him to quickly and accurately transcribe dictations from Cicero, such as speeches, professional and personal correspondence, and business transactions, sometimes while walking through the forum or during fast-paced and contentious government and legal proceedings. Nicknamed "the father of stenography" by historians, Tiro developed a highly refined and accurate method that used
Latin letters The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...
and abstract symbols represented
preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s, truncated words, contractions, syllables, and
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
s. According to Di Renzo: "Tiro then combined these mixed signs like notes in a score to record not just phrases, but, as Cicero marvels in a letter to Atticus, 'whole sentences.'" Tiro's highly refined and accurate method became the first standardized and widely adopted system of Latin shorthand. The system consisted of abbreviations and abstract symbols, which were either contrived by Tiro or borrowed from Greek shorthand.


Controversy

Dio Cassius Lucius Cassius Dio (), also known as Dio Cassius ( ), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history on ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the ...
attributes the invention of shorthand to
Maecenas Gaius Cilnius Maecenas ( – 8 BC) was a friend and political advisor to Octavian (who later reigned as emperor Augustus). He was also an important patron for the new generation of Augustan poets, including both Horace and Virgil. During the r ...
, and states that he employed his freedman Aquila in teaching the system to numerous others.
Isidore of Seville Isidore of Seville ( la, Isidorus Hispalensis; c. 560 – 4 April 636) was a Spanish scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of ...
, however, details another version of the early history of the system, ascribing the invention of the art to
Quintus Ennius Quintus Ennius (; c. 239 – c. 169 BC) was a writer and poet who lived during the Roman Republic. He is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was born in the small town of Rudiae, located near modern Lecce, Apulia, (Ancient Calabr ...
, who he says invented 1100 marks ( la, notae). Isidore states that Tiro brought the practice to Rome, but only used Tironian notes for prepositions.Isidorus. ''
Etymologiae ''Etymologiae'' (Latin for "The Etymologies"), also known as the ''Origines'' ("Origins") and usually abbreviated ''Orig.'', is an etymological encyclopedia compiled by Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) towards the end of his life. Isidore was ...
'' or ''Originum'' I.21ff, Gothofred, editor
According to
Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for hi ...
in "Life of Cato the Younger", Cicero's secretaries established the first examples of the art of Latin shorthand:


Introduction

There are no surviving copies of Tiro's original manual and code, so knowledge of it is based on biographical records and copies of Tironian tables from the
medieval period In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...
. Historians typically date the invention of Tiro's system as 63 BC, when it was first used in official government business according to
Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for hi ...
in his biography of
Cato the Younger Marcus Porcius Cato "Uticensis" ("of Utica"; ; 95 BC – April 46 BC), also known as Cato the Younger ( la, Cato Minor), was an influential conservative Roman senator during the late Republic. His conservative principles were focused on the ...
in ''The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans''. Before Tiro's system was institutionalized, he used it himself as he was developing and fine-tuning it, which historians suspect may have been as early as 75 BC, when Cicero held public office in
Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...
and needed his notes and correspondences to be written in code to protect sensitive information he had gathered about corruption among other government officials there. There is evidence that Tiro taught his system to Cicero and his other scribes, and possibly to his friends and family, before it was widely used. In "Life of Cato the Younger",
Plutarch Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for hi ...
wrote that during Senate hearings in relating to the
first Catilinarian conspiracy The so-called first Catilinarian conspiracy was an almost certainly fictitious conspiracy which – according to various ancient tellings – involved Publius Autronius Paetus, Publius Cornelius Sulla, Lucius Sergius Catalina, and others. Anci ...
, Tiro and Cicero's other secretaries were in the audience meticulously and rapidly transcribing Cicero's oration. On many of the oldest Tironian tables, lines from this speech were frequently used as examples, leading scholars to theorize it was originally transcribed using Tironian shorthand. Scholars also believe that in preparation for speeches, Tiro drafted outlines in shorthand that Cicero used as notes while speaking.


Expansion

Isidore tells of the development of additional Tironian notes by various hands, such as Vipsanius, Philargius, and Aquila (as above), until Seneca systematized the various marks to be approximately 5000 in number.


Use in the Middle Ages

Entering the Middle Ages, Tiro's shorthand was often used in combination with other abbreviations and the original symbols were expanded to 14,000 symbols during the
Carolingian dynasty The Carolingian dynasty (; known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolingus, Carolings, Karolinger or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family named after Charlemagne, grandson of mayor Charles Martel and a descendant of the Arnulfing and Pi ...
, but it quickly fell out of favor as shorthand became associated with witchcraft and magic and was forgotten until interest was rekindled by
Thomas Becket Thomas Becket (), also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Thomas of London and later Thomas à Becket (21 December 1119 or 1120 – 29 December 1170), was an English nobleman who served as Lord Chancellor from 1155 to 1162, and the ...
,
archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Just ...
, in the 12th century. In the 15th century
Johannes Trithemius Johannes Trithemius (; 1 February 1462 – 13 December 1516), born Johann Heidenberg, was a German Benedictine abbot and a polymath who was active in the German Renaissance as a lexicographer, chronicler, cryptographer, and occultist. He is co ...
, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Sponheim in Germany, discovered the ''notae Benenses'': a psalm and a Ciceronian lexicon written in Tironian shorthand. The Tironian can look very similar to an ''r'' , , depending on the
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...
. In
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
manuscripts, the Tironian served as both a phonetic and morphological place holder. For instance, a Tironian between two words would be phonetically pronounced ''ond'' and would mean 'and'. However, if the Tironian followed the letter ''s'', then it would be phonetically pronounced ''sond'' and mean 'water' (ancestral to Modern English ''
sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by ...
'' in the geographical sense). This additional function of a phonetic as well as a conjunction placeholder has escaped formal Modern English; for example, one may not spell the word ''sand'' as ''s&'' (although this occurs in an informal style practised on certain Internet forums and sometimes in texting and other forms of instant messaging). This practice was distinct from the occasional use of ''&c.'' for ''etc.'', where the ''&'' is interpreted as the Latin word ('and') and the ''c.'' is an abbreviation for Latin (' herest').


Current

A few Tironian symbols are still used today, particularly the Tironian (⁊), used in Ireland and Scotland to mean 'and' (where it is called in Irish and in
Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
), and in the ''z'' of '' viz.'' (for in  – though here the ''z'' is derived from a Latin abbreviation sign, encoded as a casing pair U+A76A Ꝫ and U+A76B ꝫ). In
blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norwe ...
texts (especially in German printing), it was still used in the abbreviation = (for ) throughout the 19th century.


Support on computers

The use of Tironian notes on modern computing devices is not always straightforward. The Tironian is available at Unicode point U+204A, and can be made to display (e.g. for documents written in Irish or Scottish Gaelic) on a relatively wide range of devices: on
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
, it can be shown in Segoe UI Symbol (a
font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a " sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mo ...
that comes bundled with Windows Vista onwards); on
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
and iOS devices in all default system fonts; and on Windows, macOS,
ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfa ...
, and
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
in the free DejaVu Sans font (which comes bundled with ChromeOS and various Linux distributions). Some applications and websites, such as the online edition of the ''
Dictionary of the Irish Language ''Dictionary of the Irish Language: Based Mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials'' (also called "the DIL"), published by the Royal Irish Academy, is the definitive dictionary of the origins of the Irish language, specifically the Old Irish, ...
'', substitute the Tironian ''et'' with the
box-drawing character Box-drawing characters, also known as line-drawing characters, are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes. Box-drawing characters typically only work well with monospaced fonts. ...
U+2510 ┐, as it looks similar and displays widely. The numeral 7 is also used in informal contexts such as Internet forums and occasionally in print. A number of other Tironian signs have been assigned to the Private Use Area of Unicode by the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI), who also provide links to free
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...
s that support their specifications.


Gallery

File:Reg.lat.846 fol. 103v.jpg, " Letter of Consolation for Departing Warriors", 9th century File:Tironian Notes Psalm 68.png, Psalm 68. Manuscript, 9th century File:Tironian Notes Codex Casselanus.png, Tironian note glossary from the 8th century, codex Casselanus. "Notae Senecae", Seneca's notes. File:Initialen.jpg, Tironian in the abbreviation at the end of the nobility title list. German printing, 1768


See also

*
Ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter tha ...
* Gaelic script *
Scribal abbreviation Scribal abbreviations or sigla (singular: siglum) are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mechanica ...


References


External links


Wilhelm Schmitz: Commentarii notarum tironianarum
1893 (Latin) *
Émile Chatelain Émile Chatelain (25 November 1851 – 26 November 1933) was a French Latinist and palaeographer. Biography A member of the École française de Rome (1876–1877), collaborator of Henri Denifle for the ''Chartularium'', curator of the Bibl ...

Introduction à la lecture des notes tironiennes
1900 (French)

Manuscript B 16 of the Bibliothek der
Monumenta Germaniae Historica The ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica'' (''MGH'') is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of Northwestern and Central European history from the end of the Roman Empir ...
, c. 1960 (German) (See 33. within for examples of composite Tironian notes.)
Martin Hellmann: Supertextus Notarum Tironianarum
Online dictionary of Tironian notes, based on Schmitz 1893 (German) {{DEFAULTSORT:Tironian Notes Shorthand systems Latin language in ancient Rome Typography Latin-script letters 60s BC establishments Writing systems introduced in the 1st century