Swedish Gregg

My grandmother, who was born and lived until adulthood in Sweden, saw me studying Gregg this afternoon and revealed that when she had learned shorthand in Swedish, it had been a Gregg adaptation! She said that Gregg had been in common use in Sweden, and recognized the letter-forms in my Anniversary manual, but said she hadn’t read English-language Gregg, and at any rate didn’t recognize the brief forms. I hadn’t heard of Gregg being used in Scandanavia, and there doesn’t seem to be any mention of it on the list. If anybody’s interested, I could ask her more about it, and probably get my hands on books and writing samples.

-Christian Conkle

(by christian_conkle for everyone)


Previous post:
Next post:
5 comments Add yours
  1. To retell my story somewhat more precisely, my grandfather asked what I was doing, I said that I was learning shorthand, and my grandmother (who couldn't see my book) independantly identified the system she had used as Gregg. She's not the sort of grandmother that would be careless about that sort of thing. 🙂 Her comments on a very cursory examination of a sample from the boox and the alphabet list suggested that the letters meant the same to her as to me. I don't read Swedish, but I'll ask to borrow her books and see what's what.

    -Christian

  2. Sorry to have taken so long–just got back from Europe. My grandmother was taking care of the cat, so when we went to pick the little terror up, we chatted about her shorthand.

    It looks to be the same system that GeorgeAmberson1 linked to; it very much looks like a modified Gregg, but very much isn't. For one thing, most of the strokes we use as consonants are vowels, and they use rings and other vowel-like shapes for consonants! From a brief read through her phrasebook, it looked like the alphabet and blending rules were pretty elaborite. It also uses European-style 'shading' in places, although it seemed like heavy strokes might only come into play in brief forms.

  3. Yes, Melin is the most popular stenography method in Sweden (Stenograph has not made a machine for that language).

    It looks sorta natural upon first glance. However; once you investigate its alphabet, it seems more geometric.

    Gregg still rocks. 🙂

    —Andw. Owen

Leave a Reply