June 2022: Learning Teeline Stenography
Not gonna lie, I'll probably have a hard time defending this decision. I write pretty fast as is, same for typing, even if it does tend to sound like I'm dismantling my keyboard. Learning stenography - or shorthand, as it's also known - is probably going to exacerbate the legibility problem of my handwriting, and I'm not sure how much mileage I can gain from that. Nevertheless, it sounds like a skill that's pretty useful to know, even if you have to pin down which version you wanna learn. I wanted something that's technically compatible with typing as well, because I don't see myself learning two or three separate writing systems just to be able to type and write a bit faster, so I settled on Teeline. From what I've read it's pretty versatile, it's conventions can be easily adapted to typing and it works in English as well as a number of Germanic languages. There's also a small number of readily available resources out there to learn it, and I figure, if I know how to write most of the phonetics, I'll find my own opportunities to practice. I'm half expecting this to take longer than the month I have, but I think that would be fine.
After a quick look through the internet archives, I found a Youtube Channel, which I might use, and a book called Teeline Fast by Ann Dix, technically meant for children, so that's perfect. You know I prefer learning by reading, over learning by watching, so I'm going to see how far I can get with that book. At least I can expect to understand what's going on in there. At the end of this process I want to know how much faster I can write by hand. I should probably benchmark my current speed, but I don't really feel like it at the moment, so maybe I'll do it later this week. It's Tuesday, so there's plenty of week left...
About the Alphabet
Turns out, this alphabet is slightly familiar to me. Maybe this is just how I ought to engage with writing systems: Try once, fail, try again, succeed kinda. This isn't my first attempt at learning stenography, but the last time I looked for resources, I didn't have my handy-dandy books website, so I took up a system for a different language. This is pretty good though. It feels much better to have this lined up on two pages like it's in the book, instead of stretched across ten or so videos. However, I'm gonna have to familiarize myself with actually reading the alphabet as it's employed though. That's gonna probably take a few sessions, but maybe this will be somewhat worth the effort? After all, that's the largest part done.
I had to find some engaging way to practice the alphabet, otherwise I was definitely going to forget all of it, the second I close the PDF. I learned the Kana by reading a bunch of it, and I learned the ASL alphabet by signing it in my pocket on train rides, so something similar had to give. The book features exercises for both reading and writing, but I feel positively dyslexic trying to read Teeline, so I thought I'd try to focus on writing first. Reading will probably become easier with the time. Besides the exercises, which I'll use somewhat sparingly, until I'm a little more familiar with the alphabet, I'm going to get some randomly generated words from somewhere and write those, using the exercises and their solutions as a reference, so I don't do anything horribly wrong. I am aware that I'll most likely have to do corrections later on, but as is, I have trouble finding a good entry point into the material.
Most of the instructions I think are pretty clear. There are some special symbols for common combinations of letters or sounds, such as "TH" and "CH", but you can get used to them pretty well and after some time, I do think I've learned to appreciate having them around for shorthand. However, the letters "T" and "D" are giving me trouble. The signs are identical in their form, only distinguishable by their positioning. "T" is higher on the paper than "D", and that's it, folks. However, joining a "T" to a "P" feels kinda wrong, because no matter what you do, the line is going to be low on the paper. The book tells me it's fine, but I can't help but read it as a "D", until I notice that it doesn't make any sense. It's such a noticeable problem, that the book has an entire chapter dedicated to it, which reassures me that this is in fact how you write it. I'm going to trust them, because let's be honest, I don't have any other good resources.
There are some additional rules for readability, because the letter disappears into other shapes, like with the "L". "T"s and "D"s after "L"s detach from the stroke.
Detached Letters and Vowel Indicators
The importance of spacing between words wasn't necessarily lost on me before I went through the book, but there's a new dimension to them in Teeline. Like in most shorthand systems, detached single letters can be used for abbreviations. So far I'm familiar with the ever-present "ING", represented by a detached "I" indicator at the end of a word - the same goes for all other detached vowel indicators . Other phonetic simplifications help clearing up some combinations of letters I wasn't too keen on at first. "AY" at the end of a word gets shortened to "A", "Y" in the middle of the word is written as an "I" indicator, "PH" becomes "F", etc. There's also some cases, where the extra vowel in the middle of the word does characterize the word. "Hat" and "Hut" for example. In this case, the vowel indicator goes below the previous consonant. Naturally, this looks like chaos when I do it. The detached indicators especially are liable to look like abbreviated whole words (e.g. "O" indicator for "of"). That's probably why the spacing between words tends to be pretty liberal for people who can use it fluently, and why shorthand writers go through paper notebooks so quickly.
Weird, weird anomalies
I still can't write Kana well. I can read them almost fluently, but writing them has taken a backseat, and hence my Kana look kinda squiggly and I forget how to write "mu" every few weeks. The same goes for Kanji, obviously. However, what I've noticed with Teeline is that while writing is starting to improve, my reading Teeline is absolutely terrible. I might as well be illiterate. I understand that shorthand writing tends to look more like esoteric shapes, but I would have thought that the reading would improve at least a little bit. Now, to be fair, there are reading exercises featured in the book, presumably for that exact reason, and I'm going to try and do a few of them.
The End of the Month
At the end of the month, I'm able to write functional Teeline. I'm not at all at the point where it would save me any time, and the book still has a lot to say on further optimisations on the basic system. As a reference, I can write about 50 words per minute, 55 on good days. Using Teeline, it's more like 20. Much of that is thinking about how to shorten the words rather than assembling the letters. Thinking of words in phonetics is presenting itself as a challenge that might require a completely different comprehension method. I'm assuming stenographers can switch between phonetics and orthography freely. It does still seem like a good skill to learn though, so I might keep up with it, especially since using Teeline isn't too much extra work for me currently. I don't really write too much by hand currently, because I'm mainly at home, surrounded by keyboards, so the times I do write down something by hand, there's no reason I can't use that to practice Teeline. Regarding the phonetics problem, that is technically easier to practice in day to day life, but I'm not confident I'll remember, because most of the time comprehending words isn't really a conscious process anyway. Thinking about how I'd shorten it in real time is such an unnatural thought to me as of yet, though I'm sure if I managed to improve that to talking speed, Teeline might actually save me time.
