User:Cassyjanek/sandbox

KEYSCRIPT SHORTHAND

Keyscript employs only the lower case letters of the alphabet. The letters are not shortened or modified in any way.

Basically, the vowels in a word are omitted, leaving only the consonants.

The consonants are written phonetically, e.g. 'ph' is written as 'f'. All consonant sounds are written with one letter: 'ch', 'sh' & 'th' are 'c', 'j' & 'h' respectively.

The vowels, and the least common English consonants in the alphabet are used as 'indicators'. An indicator shows a combination of consonants which occur frequently in English. For example, in the word 'people', 'pl' is represented by the vowel 'i'. So 'people' becomes 'pi'. Combinations of various consonants with 't' 'd' 'l' 'r' & 's' are shown using indicators.

Common prefixes and suffixes are represented by one letter, e.g. 'self-' or '-self' is 's'.

There are about 80 very common words that are written somewhat outside the rules of Keyscript so that they may: 1. be written with only one letter and 2. not be able to be confused with each other in context, for example, 'have' is 'v'; 'he' is 'i' to distinguish it from 'they' which is 'h'.

Some other common words are contracted but are spelled with more than one letter, e.g. 'important' is 'mp'.

Where the spelling of two words in Keyscript would be the same, and they could be mistaken in context, one of these is written not quite according to rule, for example, 'amuse' is written as 'mus' to distinguish it from 'amaze', which is 'ms'. Keyscript joins words together according to definite rules based on the natural flow of the English language, so 'I am' is 'ym'.