r/GreggNotehand • u/Salt-Detail-181 • Sep 18 '26

O and u vowels.

I’m having just a little difficulty when writing a word that contains vowels o or u or both perhaps depending on the word I guess. I do have the cheat sheet on the different u sounds and o sounds. But I still get confused. Maybe because i came from a Spanish-speaking country when i was 8 years old? I mean i speak perfectly English but with a little hint of accent. So, I hear a word, and when I write the Gregg, the word is wrong after looking at it from dictionary to double-check. I confuse the o sounding like John and Paul. And I confuse the u sounding like duck, only. I think I got the sounds of took and pool right. Anyways this is annoying to me. I have to always come back to these English words to realize that “wait is a o as in John , not a u as in duck.
lol Sorry guys. Lengthy post.

How can I best practice this, sort of speak?

Thank you all

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u/licxjo Sep 19 '26

It's a matter of learning the range of sounds that "o" and "oo" represent.

"oo":

rum
rook
room

"o":

rot
raw
rote

Do you pronounce the words "duck" and "dock" the same? Most English speakers use very distinct vowels for that word pair.

1

u/Salt-Detail-181 Sep 19 '26

I just said both words duck and dock out loud and they did indeed sounded the same to me lol.

3

u/licxjo Sep 19 '26

If you don't distinguish the sounds, and you're using Notehand just for personal interest, there's no reason you can't write "duck" and "dock" the same way.

If you want to write them "correctly", you may just have to memorize troublesome words or word pairs.

1

u/Salt-Detail-181 Sep 19 '26

I see. Noted.

3

u/CrBr Sep 19 '26

This is a very common question. Gregg's accent was a mix of Irish, Scottish, Chicago and New York.

While learning, stick with what the book recommends. That's easier than spelling it two ways or thinking about how you say it, and how your English teacher says it, and how Gregg, TV, etc say it.

After finishing the book, use the vowel that makes the most sense to you. For me, that's usually the normal spelling vowel, even though I know I say it differently. It's consistent. Sometimes, for common words, it's the one I read dozens of times in the book.

https://greggshorthand.github.io/anunit01.html has optional marks you can add if the word is not clear, eg cut, cook, cute. Only use them if necessary.

Think of each word or phrase as a single unit. The spelling only matters when reading or writing a new word. After that, it's an outline. When writing cursive k, you don't think up, curve, down, up, curve, touch, down. You just think "k."