sp3dl3t notes
OK, so Todd was asking. Here's more about sp3dl3t
I'm no expert on stenography or shorthand, but AFAICT most shorthand systems are based on written or expanded alphabets. The ones that are based on typed alphabets are either stenographic ones based on chords or they're adapted from the handwritten systems.
Either way, it sure seems like when people put together any kind of typed shorthand, they either completely ignore a bunch of the keys on the keyboard, or they want to reinvent the keyboard layout altogether.
sp3dl3t is basically an adapted form of a universal english alphabet that tries to use as few keystrokes as possible while utilizing the entire QWERTY (US) keyboard. l33t kidz already get the idea of number/letter substitution, and to me l33t in general understands the semiotic play inherent in the keyboard-as-ground. If you're already comfortable with l33t, or even with the ultra-abbreviated English that's evolving out of texting & twittering, this shorthand style should be a breeze, since you're already used to looking at & thinking of your keyboard in a slightly tweaked way.
There's no actual system to learn, unlike in just about every shorthand method, just a couple rules, and those come pretty naturally if you're already texting. Basically, the whole thing comes down to this: make it as short as possible while using actual English. In that, it's not the same as the total mangling you do in SMS. Texting is more about transmission of memes and signifiers in the most compact way possible and elegance or precision is not ever really the point, but the idea of a shorthand is about typing real sentences at the speed you think or hear.
Every lowercase character stands for a unique sound. Mostly, all the lowercase alphabetical chars (a-z) keep their meaning that you already know, except for q and c. q now makes the sound 'ng' and c is now 'ch' (the hard c and q are handled by k, and the soft c is handled by s, to c and q weren't needed for those). All the numbers make vowel sounds, and 4 3 1 0 come right from l33t. U is weird, cuz there's no close number, so I picked ], since it looks like a u. l33t vowels 4 3 1 0 and ] are long, alpha vowels a e i o u are short. To keep it easy, the vowel sounds related to o and 0 look like 0-- 6 (like the ow in now) 8 (oo, of course) and 9 (oy in toy). 5's kind of odd in that it sounds 'or' (like in sort) but kind of looks like 'or' anyway.
Every shifted char stands for a word. Right now the only allowed shifted chars are numbers and nonletters. That might change. They should be used only when they actually shorten something. Mostly, they stand for what you already think they stand for. In many cases, they stand for more than one thing. For example, + can be plus, with, yes, agree, add, increase, or alright, depending on context. I haven't thought about all the possibilities here, so it probably needs some hashing out. The idea of introducing a level of semiotic disruption into the system is kind of nice-- you've got a strict correlation with the lowercase vowels and a pretty loose play with the uppercase ones. It's a little like heiroglyphics & kanji, now that I think about it....
This is version 0.1. I'm already thinking about whether some chars shouldn't be reassigned-- like making q be 'sh' for example and , be 'ng.' Or, whether it's possible to assign all the major dipthongs to a part of the keyboard...
