Word frequency in shorthand
7 March 2012 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeWhile obediently learning my General Contractions (now up to paragraph 188 of 200 in Pitman's Shorthand Instructor!) in order to be able to do the exercises, I can't help asking myself if the language can really have changed that much since this textbook was published in 1913: was there ever a time when shorthand writers truly, desperately needed to write 'constitutional', 'ironmonger', 'bondsman' or 'dethronement' on a daily basis, such that words like these were provided with dedicated short forms as part of Pitman's shorthand scheme?
Some of the weirder inclusions make sense when you realise that a significant proportion of shorthand usage in the Victorian era consisted of taking down sermon texts -- either while their author was in the throes of composition or as a record after they were preached -- and the utility of including common words like 'there', 'over', 'happen', 'must', etc. is obvious. But I honestly cannot see why anyone would ever take the trouble to fill the necessarily limited list of General Contractions with obscurities like 'minstrel' when they could instead have provided shortcuts for words such as 'obvious'...
Some of the weirder inclusions make sense when you realise that a significant proportion of shorthand usage in the Victorian era consisted of taking down sermon texts -- either while their author was in the throes of composition or as a record after they were preached -- and the utility of including common words like 'there', 'over', 'happen', 'must', etc. is obvious. But I honestly cannot see why anyone would ever take the trouble to fill the necessarily limited list of General Contractions with obscurities like 'minstrel' when they could instead have provided shortcuts for words such as 'obvious'...