For example, in English, you might type something like:
r u going out 2nite?
Instead of:
Are you going out tonight?
How does that sort of thing work when texting in a logographic language? Is it just emoji city, or can they mix and match characters to make things more compact?
And similarly, is there a formal journalistic shorthand system that gets used when jotting down comments in real-time, e.g. in China, Korea or Japan?
Thank you kindly!
There are a few ways we do it in Chinese.
In mainland, people would sometimes just type the initials of the pronunciation of the character. For example, hhhhh (哈哈哈哈哈, hahahahaha), sb (傻逼 sha bi, dumbass). It can get out of hand for people who are not super familiar with their vocabularies (like me, a Hong Kong Cantonese speaker)
Alternatively, one can just use a different dialect/version of Chinese. In Hong Kong, we can have both written Chinese and spoken Cantonese mixed in the same message. We simply pick which one of them gives a shorter version of the word. For example, 回家看看有無撞其餘活動 ([Written] Go home and see [Spoken] if it conflicts with other events). Sometimes we even mix in ancient Chinese.
Isn’t there also shorthand where you just write the base components and people understand what you mean because even though the radicals are missing, the core meaning of the glyph is still close enough?
The difference is that the shorthand isn’t based on phonetics but on the core meaning of the calligraphic strokes.
It’s why Japanese writers can communicate with Cantonese speakers through quick strokes on their palms. The radicals are all different but the base components are the same.
Similar to a German person stripping back words to core syllables.
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I know for sure Korean does this, though technically their writing system is a syllabary. Symbols representing vowel and consonants are arranged into blocks that represent a syllable.
For example ㅈㅅ is short for 죄송합니다 meaning “I’m sorry”. Talk about efficient shorthand! The first consonants of each syllable block are used to makeup the shorthand, the ending 합니다 is a polite conjugation which is ignored in shorthand. You can look up “korean texting slang” for more. It’s apparently used a lot. The shorthand some might already be familiar with is ㅋㅋ which is “lol”.
Damn, I don’t have an answer, but that’s a fucking great question. I had just assumed it would be the case, but never thought to ask about it.
I’m still learning, so I don’t know the language well enough to give you examples. One of the things I’ve seen is using single Latin characters as replacement for Chinese characters that are homophones. This is often seen when writing things out in dialects that have unique words that don’t exist in the Mandarin writing system.
It’s already shorthand, no?
r u going out 2nite?
Before t9, this could save time. After t9, it was needless and tired. In my circle, now, we call that kid-pidgin.
T9 was a mid-'90s thing. We are now closer to a 3c warming target than we are to pre-T9 texting.
I just see it as how words shrink over time turned up to 10. Like how"God be with ye" changed to “goodbye”, Gen Z turned “Charisma” to “rizz” (char - ris - ma)
Do you read any social media with Gen z? Shorthand is alive and well, it just changed how it’s shortened.
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bro rq wyd tn finna slide by in min fr fr ong v gd story
Brother real quick what’re you doing tonight, fixing to slide by in a minute for real, for real, on god very good story
