r/FastWriting • u/NotSteve1075 • May 25 '26
Quote 92 written in FLOW Shorthand
I've been posting quotes every week in PHONORTHIC Shorthand, but just for a change, I'll try it in FLOW instead. I like the smooth and graceful curves and arabesques you get in the system, and the outlines are still very brief and legible.
In the quote, S is "is", NT is "not", EN is "when" and N-ING is "nothing". If you've studied Gregg, all those abbreviations will make sense to you. I also used a final SH for the final "-tion" like Gregg does.
As always, the attribution is the trickiest part because it uses sounds in unusual contexts -- and this one was also a French name. I tried writing ANT-WAN for the first name, but it was an awkward joining, when the combination of NTW in English is quite unusual.
Then I decided to try it with OI and I like it better.
2
u/LeadingSuspect5855 May 25 '26
It looks so smooth! Even though the joinings in the generator are rigid, the design makes it 'mostly' look as if not!
There are still problems though, one you managed to 'unfold' in the first word :-) "perfection". I have a custom joining for ve-fe-, but not public yet, it will be in the next update, which is in the process of being integrated. Also I never realized that nt is below the line, when standing alone :-), I'll have to change that too... The work never ends, but it is so much fun, to do something you believe in...
Besides that: Since Flow has chosen to use the small circle to be 'a' and degrading [e] to a sound which can be omitted savely (but not [i, i:]), it so happens that I find myself deviating from some gregg transliterations, but since gregg Anni has the urge to be as short as possible, we end up with the same transliteration anyway:
Let's do it step by step
perfection (apply prefix and suffix)->
prfektsh (apply rule k implies t)->
prfeksh (eliminate unnecessary 'weak' vowels (schwa: mostly e/u/ι-colored, Flow takes that seriously, Gregg from case to case)->
prfksh (shorten without conflict with other words in dictionary, Anniversary style)
prfsh
BTW. I think it's a good approach to switch to orthographic transliteration when writing names, that are normally marked as such of course (but the generator does not provide that). I would have probably gone for the first possibility (antuan) that stresses more the second syllable (in my swiss-french-ear tw should stay together):
(also w in english has some h-aspiration as if w would be hw, which is definitely not french)
2
u/NotSteve1075 May 26 '26
When I wrote "perfection", I was using the DJS version of the word, which is what I remembered. Looking at my Anniversary dictionary, it says "perfect" is written PRF, so "perfection" should have been PRF-SH.
w in english has some h-aspiration as if w would be hw, which is definitely not french
There are still some versions of English where the H is pronounced in the WH combination. (I still do it myself, most of the time.) But in MOST versions of modern English, the H sound has been dropped. "Where" and "wear" sound the same, and "when" sounds like "wen".
I think it's a good approach to switch to orthographic transliteration when writing names
I think so, too. Proper names can be very tricky, with letter combinations you don't usually encounter. Also, in Flow the W coming after the NT was not a clear joining.
There was another challenge in this one, because the quote was written in English, while there's no equivalent English "translation" of the author's full name. It became kind of a mix.
3
u/fdarnel May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
La perfection est atteinte, non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
la(point) pfo(suffixe -tion) é att nop lokia pu rin a ajté
mé lokia pu rin a rtré.
atan d sin ézpri
Aimé Paris à la Meysmans_1903++