Yash: Yet another short hand.

Introduction

I’ve been interested in shorthand for quite some time, and I’ve taught myself Gregg shorthand and to a degree also Teeline shorthand. These are both super shorthands, even though I prefer Gregg, it’s just cleaner, and looks a lot better. So what’s the problem? I already know shorthand, so why have I bothered making another one? The problem with both of them are that they are exclusively handwritten, which mean for most of the time, where I’m writing on my phone or the PC I can’t use it.

The alternatives

There are other written shorthands, such as keyscript and others, but they are something one either has to pay for, or it’s using letters that are hard to reach on many keyboards, such as / \ < | or excessive use of numbers, something that makes one have to stretch ones fingers a lot while writing. So I have tried to make something that works for me, and that one can write on most keyboards without much trouble, this means that I’m keeping to the letters in the English alphabet, as these seem to be more or less the lowest common denominator.

The basics and alphabet

Written English is chaotic, it has so many ways to write words that it gets confusing, so we’ll reduce the alphabet to the letters that we actually need, and then we’ll write words phonetically, this way we have freed some letters for other use, and we have already compacted our writing a bit. The letters that we use in yash are:

a b d e f g h i k l m n o p r s t u v 

We’re left with some letters that will get their own use later, namely:

c j q x y w z

None of these letters are used often enough, or can’t be replaced with combinations, so here are the ways we’d write the letters that are missing:

So now we have a reduced alphabet, and we also have some free letters. These letters are given new meanings in yash, mostly combinations of 2 letters or a sound that occurs often, so that it’s worth replacing it.

This allows us to shorten down words quite a bit, so with these two basic things out of the way we have a couple of principles left.

Omission of vowels

Most of the times words are pretty easy to read without vowels, so we’ll mostly leave them out writing yash, with a couple of exceptions:

• Diphthongs are written with the main vowel, great for example would be written gret
• When one feels that the word would be unclear without the vowels one can put in vowels to make it clearer

Phrasing

We will phrase together short words and phrases so that we won’t need to push the space bar after every single letter. This way something like “it will be” will be phrased together to tlb, we’ll also phrase the (y) together with the word that it describes, and also do the same with a, this way we can cram our text together a bit more, and it will be quicker to write.

Examples

I’ll write some examples here to try and show that yash can shorten down texts quite a bit, and it’s still not that complicated to figure out what it’s supposed to be.

Some shorthand systems attempted to ease learning by using characters from the Latin alphabet. Such non-stenographic systems have often been described as alphabetic, and purists might claim that such systems are not ‘true’ shorthand. However, these alphabetic systems do have value for students who cannot dedicate the years necessary to master a stenographic shorthand. Alphabetic shorthands cannot be written at the speeds theoretically possible with symbol systems—200 words per minute or more—but require only a fraction of the time to acquire a useful speed of between 60 and 100 words per minute.

sm cwhx szms atmw tis lrnx b usq krkws frm y ltn lfbt. sc nn-zngrfk szms hv ofn bn dskrbd s lfbtk, x przs mat klam yt sc szms rx tru cwhx. hvvr ys lfbtk szms dhv vlu f stdxs vo kx ddkt y irs nssri tmzr a stngrfk cwhx. lfbtk cthxs kx b rtn at y spds yretkli psbl vy smbl szms 200 ws pr mx r mr bt rkvr nl a frkc fytm t akvr a usfl spid f btvn 60 ws pr mx

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and
t crlk hms cs lvs yvmn. i hv swm hw hm mnc hr xr ni yr nm. nhs as c klpss x

predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly,
pdmnz yhl fhr sks. tvsx yt h flt ni emcn akn t lv f irn awr. ll mcns, x yt on pwklli

were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the
vr abhrx ths kw, pss bt dmrbl blnsd mx. hvs, itkt, ymz prfkt rsnq x bsrvq mcn yty

world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and
vw hs sin, bt s alvr hvdv plsd hmslf na fls psc. h nvr spk fy sfw pcs, sav vy gab x

a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner
a sner. ye vr admrbl yqs f ybsrv-kslx f wvq yvel frm mns mtvs x kcs. bt f y wax rsnr

to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt
t admt sc xwcs xo hs vn wkt x fnli ajsw tmprmx vs t xwds a dswktq fkw vc mat yrv a dbt

upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than
pn lhs mxw res. gw na snzv xzrmx, ra krk n on f hs vn ha-pvr lnss, vdxb mr dswbq yn

a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and
a zrq emc na nw sjs hs. x it yrs bt on vmn thm, x yt vmn vs ylt irn adlr, f dbis x

questionable memory
kvscab mmr.