I’ve been dabbling in English Gregg (or rather simply trying to read texts) and now that I identify letters more quickly than before and without confusing them as much as in the past, I find English DJS to be quite legible, apart for the occasional short forms or unusual diphtongs that are not used in French DJS which I have to just try and guess.
I’m also increasingly aware of how le, la, les, de la, takes up space (and probably writing time), and since French DJS was never supposed to be used as a standalone system, but rather as a complement to English DJS, I was wondering if it would be acceptable AND viable to just re-use English DJS “the” in French as an ideogram, i.e. taking it to stand for “le, la” / “, de la” instead of actually transcribing those words phonetically.
Since “the” would be read as and isolated “ye” in French, it could not possibly mean anything other than “the” (le, la) so it would not be confused with anything else. The only possible ambiguity I can think of at the moment would be when using this symbol along with a word ending in -ain/aine or -in/-ine, whereby there would be no way to tell the gender of the corresponding word since the endings are transcribed identically. That said, this ambiguity already exists with “un, une” which are both transcribed as a dot.
And maybe the plural could be indicated by adding a small circle. I know this really looks like makeshift arrangements but it’s really been bothering me lately and I can’t think of a more appropriate system to get rid of those huge French articles.
What do you think?
Thanks.
Hello, Aymeric,
I tend to be annoyed by the space taken by these articles. Nevertheless, it’s hard to tell if you save a lot of time by writing shorter forms and there are other things that annoy me more in the French adaptation…like the distinction between “sur” and “sous” which has been solved in quite a unsatisfying way in the Sénécal, in my opinion.
In a PDF I’ve found, there are indeed advices about using forms from others languages when it’s more convenient. I have been personally interested by using “now” instead of “maintenant” and “everyone“ instead of “tout le monde”…
Hi Christine, nice to see you back here!
In DJS sur and sous are written quite differently (with an R for sur) however "we" have a similar issue with dessus and dessous.
I’be be very interested to read the PDF you mention.
I agree that tout le monde is very cumbersome. Even abbreviating it the traditional French way to "tlm" still makes for a rather large outline. I also have qualms with "également".
Actually, when I complained about the lack of the distinction between “sur” and “sous”, it’s when they are included in words. For example, “survivre” is written “s-u-v-i-v” and it’s not a problem because “souvivre” doesn’t exist but there are words more troublesome like “surestimer” and “sous-estimer”… So the “o” and the “u“ look more tempting to me.
And yes “dessous” and “dessus” are not very telling…
For the PDF, I don’t remember where I found it. It’s mostly about “note-taking”, so it’s more pragmatic than aesthetic-oriented. In short: “whatever works”… On this subject, it’s actually quite short:
« Si vous pratiquez une langue étrangère, utilisez les mots ou expressions plus courts que dans notre langage courant. » And there is a list of examples.
I think you can use all the abbreviations you want, you just have to remember them when you can use them. I definitely adopted “hydrogène” and “oxygène” the way I changed them and use them when necessary. (“Des” in Sénécal is just “d”, by the way.)
You can always omit du and de la and write the next word closer together to the one before the prepositional phrase, almost touching each other. It is a principle that is used in Spanish, and in the 1916 New and Revised edition of Gregg. For example, in the sentence C'est le jour de la rentrée du chef de service, instead of writing
you would write
To use this method, you have to write with consistent spacing so that you know that some words were omitted.
Another technique is to eliminate the de, du, or de la altogether and make a phrase if the two words can be easily joined.
All in all, as long as you can transcribe what you wrote, it doesn't really matter.
Thank you Carlos for this example, it makes sense too. With practice, are you able to read back such a sentence even weeks later?
On another note, am I right that in English, "the" is never attached to the next word, only to the one before?
Yes, I can — when I use that technique, I make sure that I can read it!
As to the phrasing of “the”, there’s no rule. You can attach "the" to the following word if the joining is easy. I do it all the time: for example, I phrase "the day", "the other", "in the morning", etc. This expedient was common to see in Anniversary and earlier Gregg series. Starting with Simplified, Leslie and Zoubek decided to drop the number of phrases (and the use of phrasing) in Gregg books, and limit them to those that were common at that time in the business environment, so as not to burden students with learning outlines that would not be used (or only be used infrequently). As a consequence, the expedient of joining "the" to the following word was not implemented.
Thank you Carlos. I’ve been flying through Angelfishy’s Gregg manual (not sure which version it is) and never came across "the" joined to the next word. I’m actually curious to see what it looks like, but haven’t seen any example of it yet.
For later series, do you feel that lifting the pen after every single "the" can cause significant delay, in your experience?
As for your technique, I’ve been thinking about how to use it myself but I wonder how to deal with ambiguities, such as, in your example: how can you tell if it was "du chef de service (singular) or "des chefs de service" (plural)?
Also, how do you differenciate "de" (followed by an undetermined noun) and "du, de la, des" (determined noun)?
For example : in the context of a text discussing mortality rates in diabetic patients, it is said that X thousand diabetic people died last year, and that "Le diabète est sans doute la/une cause du/de/des décès". Is it "the" cause, or "one" (possible) cause among other factors, and are we talking about diabetis as a general cause for deaths (cause de décès) ou a cause of those specific deaths( cause du/des décès).
Thanks!
As an example, see the last outline of the first line of this selection: it reads "from the day."
Lifting the pen for the small stroke does not cause a lot of issues because it is a small stroke.
Since plurals and singulars usually have the same pronunciation in French, then use this omission technique for the singulars only (du, de la). In plurals, write the d-e for des as you would normally do and it shouldn't be a problem. In your diabetes example, you would only use the omission for du and write out normally for de and des.
I hope this helps.
Angelfishy (Andrew Owen's Gregg page) presents the Anniversary manual, but reformatted for a browser rather than photocopied. I believe there are one or two places where he made minor changes in the presentation.