The Gregg Group was founded 22 May 2004, prompted by the lack of online shorthand resources. As the primary use for shorthand — business and legal recording — has waned in recent decades, we generally acclaim the skill as a hobby or personal tool. The purpose of the group is to promote the use of Gregg systems of shorthand by providing advice to beginners, support for students, and an association of users of this efficient, attractive, and enjoyable method of writing.
Voici un petit texte pour mes amis francophones et francophiles.
Here is a small selection transcribed in both French Anniversary and French Simplified Gregg by yours truly (my first Sténographie Gregg post ever!).
Attachment: histoire-du-francais-anniv.pdf
Attachment: histoire-du-francais-simpl.pdf
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Hello, Carlos!
A text in French! I can’t tell how much I’m overjoyed you thought to us, the ‘francophones’ who are a tiny fraction of your readership!
I admit I have struggled sometimes, I’m used to know by heart the limited ressources I have.
I found some passages ‘puzzling’… but I don’t want to nitpick as it would be ungrateful.
Merci! Merci!
🙂
You're welcome, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! Since not that many people write French Gregg, I thought it was a good idea to write something small to test the waters so-to-speak and see if others could read it.
Even though it's a small passage and simple to understand in regular print, they are not the easiest to write in shorthand from scratch if you're not used to it (I'm not writing French every day!), so if you find something that you would've written differently, just let me know and I'll take a look.
Actually, Carlos, you have already modified the passage that had been the most problematic to me:
"je vous dis de réciter votre géographie".
I suppose that the 'oo-hook' stands for 'your' in English…
Well, actually, you say 'géographie' in the 'simplified version' but it looks more like 'géologie'…
I stumbled also on 'Cralo-romain'.
The rest is nitpicking, really and didn't impair my comprehension.
"Mais le poète qui a écrit cela, s'il revenait (yes, I saw, you modified it) au monde ne comprendrait…" there, it's the same like in simplified: there should a 'r', you can see it in 'Études Graduées…' p.99 n. 146.
Hair-splitting, now: in the world 'simple', your pronounce the 'm' in English but not in French 'in' or 'im' is the same, it's written 's-i-n-p' and in the world 'Franc', the 'c' is not pronounced, so it's 'F-r-a-n'… (Don't pay too much attention to my 'nitpicking' and 'hairsplitting', please, it's just things I saw.)
Really, you didn't choose the easiest way for your first text in French. The ease with which you write (and read) all these versions of Gregg is impressing… Thanks again. 🙂
You're welcome and thank you for the feedback! I was thinking in English with some of those (you-your for vous-votre, frank for franc, simple for simple, etc.)! Even though in French I pronounce those words as you say, the reflex is to write the English outline, but they're corrected now.
Also, I don't know what I was thinking with "geology" vs. "geography", but it's fixed. And I see why the confusion with gallo-romains (I wrote it nicer in the Simplified version), so I fixed it too.
Another set of eyes is always good!
Yes, when I post something, you always find many more mistakes than I thought.
I re-read several times, though…
🙂
Amazing!!!! Thank you so much! I’ll go and copy this right away instead of my boring commercial letters. Even though this is sometimes a bit different from French DJS, I think I can understand most of the simplified version (unlike the Anniversary one).
Here is what I understand from the simplified text:
La langue française n’a pas toujours existé. Elle n’était pas au 13e ou au 16e siècle ce qu’elle est de nos jours. Vous ne comprenez pas ce qu’écrit [?] Roland dans la vieille chanson du 11e siècle : "Mieux je veux mourir que la honte me vienne". Mais le poète qui a écrit cela, [s’il ne venait] au [is that monde]?] ne comprendrait pas ces simples mots : "Je vous dis de réciter [vous ? votre ?] géographie". En son temps, les mots réciter et géographie n’existaient pas, et "je vous dis de" ne s’employait pas dans le sens de : je vous comman(de?).
La langue française a [din/tin/time/tume : donc ?] son histoire.
En Gaule, les [habitants?] parlaient différences [-tes ?] langues : le gaulois [?] et le ligure.
Le pays ayant [?] été conquis parles Romains, leur langue remplaça les langues indigènes : on parla le latin ou romain, ou roman. Les conquérants francs parlaient un [idiome ?] germanique : le franc ou francique ; mais comme ils étaient peu civilisés, et que leur langue pouvait exprimer moins [?] d’idées que celles des gallo-romains, ils se mirent eux aussi à parler roman. À partir d’Hugues Capet, les rois mêmes cessèrent de parler le franc.
Dans les nombreuses seigneuries du [monde ?] féodal, il se parlait des variétés différentes de la même langue romane ; ce sont ces dialectes qui ont subsisté sous le nom de [palois (patois ?)]. Mais à partir du 14e siècle, le roi de France [imposa ?] peu à peu son autorité aux seigneurs : les dialectes de ses États [ces lieux ?] de l’Île de France (?) l’emporta sur les parlers rivaux. Depuis le 16e siècle, le français est la langue officielle ; ce fut d’abord celle de l’administration, puis celle des [livres ?] et enfin des sciences.
Hello, Aymeric!
Yes, I understood the same way as you did. All your suggestions are correct, according to me.
Just, in my opinion:
En Gaule, les habitants parlaient différentes langues : le gaulois, l'ibère et le ligure.
[…]les dialectes de ses États, celui, de l’Île de France l’emporta sur les parlers rivaux.
And at the end:
ce fut d’abord celle de l’administration, puis celle des lettres et enfin des sciences.
🙂
You're welcome, and your transcription was fantastique! This means that what I wrote is legible, which is a good thing, :-). I imagined that you would be able to read the Simplified text because it's closer to DJS (and for me it would be easier to write than DJS). But now you can take the same text and write it in DJS. Here are some clarifications:
1. Vous ne comprenez pas ce que crie Roland
2. cela, s’il revenait au monde (sorry for the mistake on revenait, corrected now).
3. Je vous dis de réciter votre géographie (corrected)
4. donc is correct
5. les habitants parlaient diverses, le gaulois, l'ibère
6. ayant été and idiome are correct
7. moins is correct (this word has the weirdest outline in Simplified, I’m glad it was changed in DJS!)
8. de Hugues
9. palois, imposa, ses États, and l'Île-de-France are correct
10. puis celle des lettres (lettre is a brief form in Simplified)
Oh it was VERY clear Carlos, my French DJS manual got me used to outlines and proportions that are nowhere near as clean as yours.
Thank you for the clarifications. I wonder why the dot for -ant was later ditched, I find it pretty efficient, isn’t it?
I wonder about "palois", is it not rather patois ? I just looked up palois, thinking it might be some older form of the same word, but I can’t find it online.
Anyway: please, more!
I find that Sister Marie Ernestine went a little overboard with so many further simplifications in DJS for the sake of clarity, and for some of those I'm still scratching my head. It was one of the reasons that I decided to write the Simplified version of the text instead: it's still readable and faster to write.
About palois, the scan of the text comes from a very old book in which the word is written in italics. I just checked a separate text (related to this one) which mentions patois instead, and that makes perfect sense in the context. So I made the executive decision to change this one to patois too because that should the correct word, and attribute palois to a scan error.
About the proportions in the DJS manual, I feel your pain. I'm writing a transcript of the French Simplified manual, and I'm having issues with some of the outlines too. The plate writer (credited as Sister Marie Perpétue in the Simplified book) is the same person who wrote the DJS book, I believe. She really needed to look at Mrs. Ramsey's writing in the early books so that she could improve her proportions! (It really makes me want to rewrite the whole book!)
By the way, did you finish the DJS manual? Are you studying the Vitesse progressive book?
(I may post some more French later on. I agree with you, the passages in those books are so boring!)
Sadly, one year one (or even more since I started?) I still havent’t finished the DJS manual. I’m at lesson 31 out of 47, and I’m taking advantage of the lockdown in France to make more effort and finish one lesson per day. But those letters are excruciatingly boring and I actually have to take a break between each single text and do something else before coming back to finish the rest of the lesson. That’s why I sometimes transcribe other texts (such as the ones I posted here), at the risk of lacking the necessary knowlegde for some outlines, because otherwise my learning really gets too stale.
Yes, initially the idea was to continue with Vitesse progressive, because I very much like the method used in there (going over the use of whole syllables and doing drills to automatize the rules), but the amount of pure business letters, although lower than in the first manual, is still very significant and might exhaust all my motivation before I ever get to even the middle of it.
So, I really wouldn’t want to pressure you in any way, but if you ever feel bored and have spare time to write a couple of things in French, please give a shorthand drink to a thirsty traveler.
You're almost done with the theory. You already have the basics. Brief forms will end in lesson 33. The rest of the lessons are more prefixes and suffixes, the omission of r principle in term/tern/derm/dern/ort, the Abbreviating Principle, geographical names, and more phrases (including the principle of intersection). Just bear with the boring letters a little more, because those give you practice. It would be a good idea to keep running lists of (1) brief forms, (2) prefixes and suffixes, (3) phrases, and (4) words written with the Abbreviating Principle (you will see these soon). Once you finish the manual, then you can do a thorough review with those lists.
There is a second edition of the French DJS book with only 32 lessons: same theory, but there was more packed in each lesson, and the principles were rearranged. Unfortunately, the same boring material. The French Series 90 book (yes, there is S90 in French!) is exactly the same as this book (even the same reading material), except for some changes in the principles and the dropping of some brief forms with required just minor modifications in the already existing DJS shorthand plates for the book.
The Vitesse book is very good — it gives you even more examples, more vocabulary, and more drills — but I know, reading those Cher Monsieur letters again …
I'll be writing some more French Gregg, so don't worry.
Moi aussi, j'avais des ennuis avec ces lettres ennuyantes (jeu do mot volontaire !). Je n'ai pas eu la chance d'étudier la sténographie française, mai en anglais c'est la même chose : lettres d'affaires par centaines. Pour survivre tout cela, je les ai lues comme si elles étaient des chapitres de petites histoires. Je vous assure, ça fait beaucoup mieux !