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Asides, and other stuff...
Mar. 16th, 2010 09:29 amSome brief notes before I dive into what will surely be a fascinating 4,000 words on the conflict in the Caucasus in the early 90s:
The Winter 2010 issue of the SlavFile (the quarterly newletter of the ATA Slavic Languages Division) is available via the link in PDF format. (Apropos of which, there's still no word as to whether my proposed presentation has been accepted for the Denver conference.)
I have always been easily sidetracked by words and books. In elementary school, I had the most difficult time looking up words, because I'd invariably stop to read definitions of words that caught my eye, so that referring to words often took much longer than it should have.
In this connection, a few days ago, I unearthed my mother's old Gregg shorthand dictionary, which (among other things) fanned the flames of my wanting to address what I've long considered a deficiency in my arsenal of work tools: to learn some kind of stenography. A subject like Gregg, however, appears to take some time to master, and I hardly have time to deal with the stuff that crosses my desk as it is.
Then it struck me that the only (I cross my fingers when I say this) reason to study something like Gregg is to learn a standardized system for taking shorthand. Standardization is important primarily if stenographers are considered interchangeable cogs in the great machinery of commerce. For my purposes, I just need to be able to capture words quickly.
I realized that over the years, I have developed my own ersatz shorthand, loosely patterned on "Speedwriting" (how well I remember the Speedwriting ads in the NYC subway cars, which began "f u cn rd ths" and promised life-changing results). Perhaps what I need to do is just supplement what I do now with some common word forms (and mathematical operators I've been using for many years) and then fly with that?
Right now, I need to despeckle the item I finished yesterday, send it off, and then settle down and explore the intricacies of war between neighboring peoples.
Cheers...
The Winter 2010 issue of the SlavFile (the quarterly newletter of the ATA Slavic Languages Division) is available via the link in PDF format. (Apropos of which, there's still no word as to whether my proposed presentation has been accepted for the Denver conference.)
I have always been easily sidetracked by words and books. In elementary school, I had the most difficult time looking up words, because I'd invariably stop to read definitions of words that caught my eye, so that referring to words often took much longer than it should have.
In this connection, a few days ago, I unearthed my mother's old Gregg shorthand dictionary, which (among other things) fanned the flames of my wanting to address what I've long considered a deficiency in my arsenal of work tools: to learn some kind of stenography. A subject like Gregg, however, appears to take some time to master, and I hardly have time to deal with the stuff that crosses my desk as it is.
Then it struck me that the only (I cross my fingers when I say this) reason to study something like Gregg is to learn a standardized system for taking shorthand. Standardization is important primarily if stenographers are considered interchangeable cogs in the great machinery of commerce. For my purposes, I just need to be able to capture words quickly.
I realized that over the years, I have developed my own ersatz shorthand, loosely patterned on "Speedwriting" (how well I remember the Speedwriting ads in the NYC subway cars, which began "f u cn rd ths" and promised life-changing results). Perhaps what I need to do is just supplement what I do now with some common word forms (and mathematical operators I've been using for many years) and then fly with that?
Right now, I need to despeckle the item I finished yesterday, send it off, and then settle down and explore the intricacies of war between neighboring peoples.
Cheers...
