Characterie
In 1588 , the Englishman Timothy Bright published the first real shorthand system of the modern age and the first for the English language under the name of Characterie .
background
With the final disappearance of the ancient Roman Tironic notes from the European monasteries in the 11th century, there was no longer any real shorthand in Christian Europe for five centuries. During this time, abbreviations in long script were used. In addition, ciphertexts were in use, which were also recommended for quick typing due to their mostly shorter characters.
In the 16th century England experienced a political and cultural boom under Queen Elizabeth I. The rules of the written English language were formulated in a grammar and there was a uniform spelling. This prepared the ground for the creation of a shorthand. Bright's writing was inspired by the Tironic notes and the medieval secret scripts. Bright also recommended his handwriting not only as a shorthand, but also as a secret.
system
The Characterie is a word font , that is, the characters stand for individual words. The starting material is an alphabet made up of 18 characters consisting of simple smears on the head:
a
b
c / k / q
d
e
f
G
H
i / j / y
l
m
n
O
p
r
s
t
and many more
These basic characters always stand for the first letter of the word to be written. By additionally forming the alphabet characters on the base in twelve different ways and using the strokes in four different positions (next to vertical, horizontal and in the two diagonals), he created dozen of derivations from each alphabet character, each of which stood for certain words . The following characters for words that begin with the letter A show the twelve possible shapes of the character base:
abound
about
accept
accuse
advance
air
again
age
Alles
almost
so
although
The same shapes but rotated 90 degrees to the left represent twelve more words:
Age
at the
ammend
anger
anoint
apparel
appertain
appoint
poor
art
ass
at
In total, Bright has assigned a word meaning to 538 characters formed in this way. He made much less use of the means of inclination. For words beginning with the letter B, they are:
bone
book
borrow
both
bottom
bread
break
breed
breast
bright
brittle
brother
bruise
burn
busy
but
Words that are missing in this basic stock could be represented with two methods: The first method consisted in writing a character for a word with a synonym and placing the character for the first letter of the new word to the left. For example, there was no separate symbol for apple . So this word was written with the symbol for fruit , which was in the basic stock, and the symbol for a :
fruit
(fruit)
apple
(apple)
With p as the distinguishing letter, the typeface accordingly meant pear (pear) etc.
Further examples:
desire
(craving)
wish
(want)
beast
(animal)
horse
(horse)
In the second method, a word with the opposite meaning was written and the alphabet character for the first letter of the new word was placed to the right of it. The sign for good and the sign for e thus resulted in evil (bad):
good
(good)
evil
(bad)
Further examples:
up
(up)
down
(down)
begin
(begin)
define
(terminate)
winter
(winter)
summer
(summer)
Finding suitable words for these methods could of course not be done at the moment of writing, but had to be prepared and practiced. For this purpose, Bright provided a long list of suitable word pairs in his textbook. However, this system was not clear and often only allowed an approximate reproduction. So could
(The symbol for bird "Vogel" with the symbol for s added to the left ) mean swan (swan), snipe (snipe), sparrow (sparrow), stork (stork), swallow (swallow) etc.
For 32 common words (especially particles) and phrases, Bright has created special characters, some of which come from a preliminary stage of the characterie. The direction of writing was from top to bottom.
Despite its degree of difficulty, the characterie was successfully used for transcribing sermons and speeches. Theatrical performances (for example of Shakespeare dramas) were also secretly stenographed with this system in order to then publish the plays against the will of the authors, who themselves had no interest in publication due to a lack of copyright.
Bright's typeface was superseded from 1602 by the system according to John Willis , who had designed his typeface as a letter font.
literature
- Johnen, Christian: General history of shorthand . 4th edition. H. Apitz, publishing house limited partnership. Berlin 1940.
- Faulmann, Karl: Historical grammar of shorthand . Published by A. Pichler's Witwe & Son. Vienna 1887
- Melin, Olof Werling: Stenografiens historia 1st part. Nordiska bokhandeln. Stockholm 1927
- Mentz, Arthur / Haeger, Fritz: History of the shorthand . 3. Edition. Heckners publishing house. Wolfenbüttel 1981
- Moser, Franz / Erbach, Karl: Living shorthand story . 5th edition. Winklers publishing house. Darmstadt 1957
- Friedrich, Paul: Studies on English shorthand in the age of Shakespeare. Timothe Brights Characterie viewed critically and historically. Leipzig 1914 ( on Archive.org )
- Bright, Timothy: Characterie . Reprint from 1888 (PDF file; 3.47 MB)