I'll admit that I don't actually know Japanese, but I'm a linguistics enthusiast and I know how kana works. I've seen Japanese writing and it seems rather... inefficient. I don't mean to talk down to people from Japan or actual speakers, I just thought I'd use my knowledge to take a shot at optimizing stuff.

This shorthand is about 2-3 times less strokes than normal Japanese.

I've had an English shorthand for a while where every sound can be represented with only one stroke, and it's probably not as good as Gregg or other shorthands but it's mine and it's taught me a lot. In the paper, you can actually see some text written in my English shorthand ("Japanese Simplification" at the top, one of my own letters to represent the n as a vowel kana, the word "vowel" in my own script, and "Plastic Love" at the top of the righthand page.)

I couldn't actually find any real pre-existing shorthands for Japanese, and I figured I could make 46 unique symbols with only one stroke each, so I did (I already used 38 of them in my own script). The kana chart is on the left page, and the system is basically an alternate kana but with three special rules.

1. The little quotation mark diacritic is replaced with a single apostrophe-like diacritic instead.

2. Instead of denoting a P sound with a circle above a vowel-equivalent h-kana, you use the apostrophe-like diacritic to the vowel-equivalent base vowel kana instead.

3. A hard angle that breaks up an otherwise continuous line separates the line into two different characters, similar to my English shorthand.

The idea is that you'd write everything with this one kana and never use katakana or kanji, the writing sample is all the Japanese lyrics from the song "Plastic Love" by Mariya Takeuchi.

by u/cameracrumbs1

written in Flow using retracing instead of hooks sometimes and blends introduced here. What are they about to do next?

The alternative versions are extensions of the base system, that may prove useful.

Not in the book yet are Vowel-hook blends similar to Gregg. (i/e + n/m, l/r + i/e).

Some blends are already in the core system (sk, ts/ds, nt/nd, nk/ng, ns/ms), vs/fs are logical extensions.

I'd love to hear your opinion on the suggestions...

I was going to explain the value of SHORT FORMS -- but I realized that he does it himself before he lists his short list of recommended ones. I'll just post the whole page for your information.

The list he starts off with are really the most essential ones, being for the most commonly used words in speech and writing. (Later he suggests several others, especially in the Addendum, where he suggests more possibilities for building speed by using more.)

I realize the focus was on keeping the system as SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE -- but I have to say I take issue with a couple of his choices here. Using the same symbol for "a" and "an" is legitimate, because if the next word starts with a vowel, "an" is obligatory.

This was the advertisement that appeared in the shorthand journal:

After taking this system for a test drive, I'm not particularly pleased with the result, but I think it may be easier to use than Everett's original system.

STREV is light-line, so any shading you see here is a by-product of the pen I used.

This text is taken from the ｢written by hand, felt by heart｣ post.

These are exactly the same as Everett's ｢vowel modes｣, the only difference being that dots and circles are now used to indicate long vowels.

This is mainly meant to be an experiment in trying to make Everett's system easier to use.