Michael,
> At 15:40 -0700 2001-10-11, Kenneth Whistler wrote:
>
> >The Canadian aboriginal syllabics, derived from a shorthand
> >system,
>
> Which one? What are the common elements? (I have never checked this myself.)
I may have overstated the case. It was probably a Zeitgeist
thing, rather than a direct derivation. James Evans invented
the orginal set of aboriginal syllabics in the 1830's.
Isaac Pitman developed his system in 1837 in England,
and it spread to the U.S. through his brother Benn, who
moved to Cincinnati.
There are some similarities, in the use of straight lines
or semicircular arcs (rather than the cursive elliptic
arcs later introduced by Gregg in this system), and in the
use of dots (or dashes) to indicate vowelling.
Whether there was any more direct commonality, I don't know.
--Ken
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