[Reviewing 15-18]
We will now make bale by combining the b
the a
firstly to get bay
and to that we add l.
which gives us finally bale
Instead we might want bile. We will start with by
add the l
and obtain bile.
Now instead we want tail or tale. So we begin with t
and add the al sounds as from bale
The word tell has the same vowel as tail, only tell's vowel is short, and tail's vowel is long. In English, often short vowel sounds are indicated by double consonants as in this case of double l. Hence to write tell, we double the l glyph.
Recall bale
to make it bell we likewise double the l.
Notice again that we use the same vowel marking for bale and bell. This is because they are both the same vowel, only bale's vowel is longer. Tail and tale both have the same phonetic shorthand, but we can tell by the context which one is intended.
Let's consider ale
and lay
The a stroke blends with the initial or the final l stroke in both cases. Now consider lie
and ally.
The y in ally has the same sound as lie and so it takes the same i stroke. Consider now alight
and able
We see how the i stroke joins to a t, and in the other case, how the a stroke is raised to join to b. We always raise the beginning of the mark when the following letter does not start on the line. Note also how we make the word table.
We extended the a up to the top of the b. Hence the rule: the a stroke between two consonants is always made in such a direction as to met the following letter. So in other words, the connecting stroke between two consonants expresses the vowel-sound "a", provided there is no other vowel expressed.
There are no capital letters in shorthand. So we write Bible as
Compare also with libel
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