shorthand

[Sandy Fleming]

Hi Tini and everyone,

>> Sandy you were talking about shorthand in Sign Writing. I am very
interested in it too. When I am asking a deaf person here in town for advise
I often whished I knew short hand. I have done some scribbling myself, see
attachment, but it is far from perfect.<<

I like the idea of just not drawing the flat hand shape - I find this the
most difficult shape to draw, especially when it's at an angle. This won't
work very well when there aren't enough fingers, will it? The "flat hand,
open thumb" shape will just be a little tick! Or have you thought of a way?
You could draw a straight line through the knuckles to show the hand in the
floor plane, I think that would work for that.

The idea of just not drawing the hand and just drawing the fingers is really
good, though, especially since fingers are so easy to draw  :)  It gave me
an idea for writing pronouns just as fingers (see the attached scan for
BSL). I think this is good, because even although it only applies to a few
words, these are words that are used very often in BSL - I mean people point
all the time when they're signing! Another good thing is that it's not
really departing from Val's notation at all, it's just missing out elements
that aren't really needed for comprehension.

This is a bit like in English where very frequent words are sometimes
spelled more simply, eg "be, we, me" rather than "bee, wee, mee". And then
there are shorthand systems where you just write the strokes for "b, w, m".

(It seems that I change my hand orientation when I point to the right - this
may just be me!)

Does it make sense? Any other ideas?

Sandy
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