This is unrelated to the main thesis of the article, but worth pointing out as too many people equate the Cyrillic script with Russian language.
The Cyrillic script was invented in Bulgaria (during the First Bulgarian Empire), and was used to write Bulgarian language, creating a huge literary corpus, long before it began spreading to Kievan Rus. The Russian language itself comes from Old Bulgarian / Old Church Slavonic, as does Serbian and other "Slavic" languages.
And no, Bulgaria was never part of Russia nor the Soviet Union.
Huh, I just indirectly learned from this article that the way I write a lower-case "t" in cursive is a Dutch way of doing so (edit: sollniss' comment suggests it was a common style in Germany too). A quick search suggests it has been replaced with an English style of "t" in the last decades too.
I wonder if that makes my handwriting harder to read for anyone who isn't Dutch and over 40 years old.
Anyway, just bringing it up because you don't need to lift up your pen to write that kind of "t".
Search for "koordschrift" on https://primarium.info/countries/the-netherlands/ to find the illustration showing how I was taught to write it in the late 80s. It's the letter vaguely shaped like a pine tree.
This is the kind of thing that makes cursive painful to read. The `i` and `j` in this script are harder to quickly lex, and the `t` (especially in the `tt` ligature) with the added loop flourish diverges sufficiently from a standard `t` to make it hard to decipher in running text.
In text, as in code, I prefer to optimize for easy reading rather than faster writing.
Hey, that's the same one I was taught in the Netherlands in the late 80s! It seems to have been replaced with an English-style in recent decades though, is that the case in Germany as well?
You may want to look into Sütterlin script. It's a bit harder to learn than standard cursive, but it's very pretty, and a level-0 encryption since few people can read it nowadays.
I have had similar thoughts recently when attending language courses where I write a lot of notes by hand. This problem is exacerbated by umlauts. If the language doesn't have letters like ō (are there any? i only see this letter to represent a sound, never in a word), then the two dots can be replaced with a line and so, I guess, the lowercase T technique from the blog post could be adapted to it. I think I know what I am gonna do after work today
For anyone interested in optimising this further, orthographic (letter-based) cursive shorthand systems are the answer. I personally only know part of the Melin system[1], but there are variants designed for English as the primary language too. (Melin is of course perfectly usable with English also.)
The flow of a cursive shorthand system is unmatched by anything else. I highly recommend learning enougnh to experience it.
(The drawback with more phonetic systems like Gregg is that one has to learn entirely new ways of spelling words. But normal English spelling is so complicated that tradeoff can be worth it for heavy usage. Orthographic systems often also contain phonetic components, but they tend to be optional extensions that improve efficiency, rather than required like with purely phonetic systems.)
What a rabbithole ;) TIL about "Stiefography". I wonder how useful this is. I remember math lectures - typically, our prof used the white^H^H^H^H^Hchalkboard, so I could just write down things fast enough.
There is evidence that typing is actively bad for memory rentention compared to writing things down with a pen. I wonder where Stenography falls in this continuum.
> Isn't that what everyone is doing, or are we Frenchmen the exception?
> For reference if the author reads this, we write the latin x exactly like the cyrillic х, i.e. reverse c, bottom-left to top-right diagonal, normal c.
I was taught script in the US and Italy as a child, and never learned it like this.
> One way to remove backtracking is to lift the pen immediately instead of waiting until the end of the word, as if doing italic calligraphy. Pen lifts alleviate the mental queue problem and give a chance to readjust the palm, but they break the writing flow.
Usually writing small, in all-caps, except code: in lowercase, and the "t" and "i" retain their lower curve. Cursive is difficult; easy to write, but (later) hard to read.
Can see how penmanship there would be appreciated.
This is unrelated to the main thesis of the article, but worth pointing out as too many people equate the Cyrillic script with Russian language.
The Cyrillic script was invented in Bulgaria (during the First Bulgarian Empire), and was used to write Bulgarian language, creating a huge literary corpus, long before it began spreading to Kievan Rus. The Russian language itself comes from Old Bulgarian / Old Church Slavonic, as does Serbian and other "Slavic" languages.
And no, Bulgaria was never part of Russia nor the Soviet Union.
> The Russian language itself comes from Old Bulgarian / Old Church Slavonic, as does Serbian and other "Slavic" languages.
That's some interesting nationalistic propaganda, never heard that one before
Huh, I just indirectly learned from this article that the way I write a lower-case "t" in cursive is a Dutch way of doing so (edit: sollniss' comment suggests it was a common style in Germany too). A quick search suggests it has been replaced with an English style of "t" in the last decades too.
I wonder if that makes my handwriting harder to read for anyone who isn't Dutch and over 40 years old.
Anyway, just bringing it up because you don't need to lift up your pen to write that kind of "t".
Search for "koordschrift" on https://primarium.info/countries/the-netherlands/ to find the illustration showing how I was taught to write it in the late 80s. It's the letter vaguely shaped like a pine tree.
This is the kind of thing that makes cursive painful to read. The `i` and `j` in this script are harder to quickly lex, and the `t` (especially in the `tt` ligature) with the added loop flourish diverges sufficiently from a standard `t` to make it hard to decipher in running text.
In text, as in code, I prefer to optimize for easy reading rather than faster writing.
The t I've learned in school in the 90s is a single stroke.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulausgangsschrift
Hey, that's the same one I was taught in the Netherlands in the late 80s! It seems to have been replaced with an English-style in recent decades though, is that the case in Germany as well?
You may want to look into Sütterlin script. It's a bit harder to learn than standard cursive, but it's very pretty, and a level-0 encryption since few people can read it nowadays.
Eve can probably just take a picture and ask her AI assistant to read your Sütterlin?
I have had similar thoughts recently when attending language courses where I write a lot of notes by hand. This problem is exacerbated by umlauts. If the language doesn't have letters like ō (are there any? i only see this letter to represent a sound, never in a word), then the two dots can be replaced with a line and so, I guess, the lowercase T technique from the blog post could be adapted to it. I think I know what I am gonna do after work today
In German the Umlaut started as a quicker way to write ae, oe and ue. Perhaps develop your ideas from there?
For anyone interested in optimising this further, orthographic (letter-based) cursive shorthand systems are the answer. I personally only know part of the Melin system[1], but there are variants designed for English as the primary language too. (Melin is of course perfectly usable with English also.)
The flow of a cursive shorthand system is unmatched by anything else. I highly recommend learning enougnh to experience it.
(The drawback with more phonetic systems like Gregg is that one has to learn entirely new ways of spelling words. But normal English spelling is so complicated that tradeoff can be worth it for heavy usage. Orthographic systems often also contain phonetic components, but they tend to be optional extensions that improve efficiency, rather than required like with purely phonetic systems.)
[1]: http://melinsstenografi.nu/image/sti-ukast.png
What a rabbithole ;) TIL about "Stiefography". I wonder how useful this is. I remember math lectures - typically, our prof used the white^H^H^H^H^Hchalkboard, so I could just write down things fast enough.
There is evidence that typing is actively bad for memory rentention compared to writing things down with a pen. I wonder where Stenography falls in this continuum.
> The drawback with more phonetic systems like Gregg is that one has to learn entirely new ways of spelling words.
The point of the phonetic systems is that you don't have to ‘spell’ words at all: what you say is what you write.
(Then there are briefs, of course, but those are for additional benefit.)
> Only й and э require two strokes
Wouldn't the ф as well?
> [for the x], I draw two mirrored c’s
Isn't that what everyone is doing, or are we Frenchmen the exception?
For reference if the author reads this, we write the latin x exactly like the cyrillic х, i.e. reverse c, bottom-left to top-right diagonal, normal c.
> Isn't that what everyone is doing, or are we Frenchmen the exception? > For reference if the author reads this, we write the latin x exactly like the cyrillic х, i.e. reverse c, bottom-left to top-right diagonal, normal c.
I was taught script in the US and Italy as a child, and never learned it like this.
> Wouldn't the ф as well?
Not if you write it as qo for lower case and oJo for capital.
Oh nice, I was taught to write it first a “barless small-case f”, then an “infinite” in the middle.
You only need 1 backtrack if you do the dots and crosses after you've written the word
That’s addresses in the blog post:
> One way to remove backtracking is to lift the pen immediately instead of waiting until the end of the word, as if doing italic calligraphy. Pen lifts alleviate the mental queue problem and give a chance to readjust the palm, but they break the writing flow.
Right, but multiply that by half the total number of words, and it's a lot.
Usually writing small, in all-caps, except code: in lowercase, and the "t" and "i" retain their lower curve. Cursive is difficult; easy to write, but (later) hard to read.
Can see how penmanship there would be appreciated.
> ... in Russian. Only й (short i) and э (pronounced like e in end) require two strokes.
Plus some uppercase e.g. A, B, H, right?