Origins: Relationship with shorthand

When Evans was first working on the Ojibway language in Ontario, he developed a syllabary for that language. It turns out that this syllabary is a list of the possible syllables in the language using a Latin-based orthography. It is not a preliminary stage to the syllabary he used for Cree. Such syllabaria were common in Native language prayer books in the nineteenth century.

It is safe to say then that Evans first began using syllabics in Norway House, Manitoba in 1840, three years after Pitman’s shorthand was published. That said, there is still no structural connection between Pitman’s shorthand and syllabics. I suggest the webpage Basics of Pitman Shorthand as a good place to see how shorthand works.

It is interesting to note that the four stop consonant finals (p, t, k, c) used in the Evans syllabary are the same as PItman Shorthand consonants, but turned 45° clockwise. The two nasal consonant finals are turned 45° counter-clockwise. The other six syllabics finals have no relation with Pitman Shorthand.

Sound	Pitman Shorthand	Syllabics
p		ᑊ
t		ᐟ
k		ᐠ
c		ᐨ
m		ᒼ
n		ᐣ
w		ᐤ
s		ᐢ
y		ᐩ
h		ᐦ
r		ᕒ
l		ᓬ

It would seem clear that the system of finals has a certain symmetry to it: the stops are all indicated by straight lines, the nasals and fricatives by curves, the two liquids (‘r’ and ‘l’) are mirror images of each other. This symmetry should not be surprising as the writing system as a whole is based upon geometric patterning. It is reasonable, then, to assume that Evans did have a passing familiarity with Pitman shorthand, yet one wonders why the one series of consonants were turned clockwise and the other anti-clockwise—perhaps he had confused ‘m’ and ‘n’. In any case, the fact that only six characters in the entire syllabics writing system have an identifiable relationship with PItman Shorthand in no way permits the conclusion that syllabics is based on (or even inspired by) shorthand.