frustrated

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ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?

Barber

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Solomon Grundy

Another Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme.
picked especially so I could practice the days of the week and some -nd blends



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Hickory Dickory Dock

Chapter 5 review week this week.
have another nursery rhyme:




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To Market

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still here

Hello, sorry about the big gap in posting there.  I've been bitten by the spring cleaning bug, And while I have been doing my studies, I haven't been putting as much effort into finding good quotes or things to post, and most of the things I did find had diphthongs or blends.

But I started Chapter 5 this week, which means I can do diphthongs now!



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sunset

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You Do Something to Me

Unit 10 - to OO hook



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be yourself

Review week.  this is the week when everything comes together - lots of reading and practice with the new rules and brief forms all together.

this week I actually have a real quote for you, instead of some random nonsense sentence!  yay!

catching up

I'm lagging a bit behind this month.

The last part of last week and the beginning of this week were a bit crazy and I just didn't have the time/energy to study as I should. So the remainder of this week will be catching up with unit 9 and review will be pushed back to next week.

Here is something I wrote up last week but ran out of time to write it out neatly to scan and post:

Arrrrrr!

(And it isn't even Talk Like a PirateDay)

Image via Daily Gregg

(warning this post uses a bit of IPA)

I just finished up Unit 8, where we are introduced to the special "R" rules. Unit 8 is only concerned with the "ur/ir/er/ar" sound in relation to the beginning or ending of a straight stroke. For the rest of the Anniversary's method of expressing "R" I'll need to wait until Unit 20.

R is weird - In America, some people say it is a vowel, but that isn't quite right. R is a bully, specifically R doesn't like shwas (ə). To quote one of the phonics books that I used to teach my son to read: when R comes after an I, E or U it likes to squish it down so far that you can hardly hear it at all - all you can hear is "er"(ɚ) (note: "ar" is really "ɑ" plus "ɚ")

So in Anniversary Gregg, R colored shwas are expressed by reversing the circle.*

Like the graphic above states, this special method (reversing the circle) is unique to Anniversary, In simplified and later editions, they just write the R out. I don't have the simplified manual, so I don't know exactly how the rule is stated, and I'm not quite sure why they decided to change it. (Ok, I actually do have an idea: This special rule is one more thing to memorize, and [looking ahead to unit 20] it can probably be a bit difficult to write smoothly without a lot of drilling practice. And it may be a bit more difficult to read fluently.) But it is definitely something to keep in mind when reading old found shorthand notes, or when choosing a method to learn.

On a personal note I usually prefer the way the Anniversary reversed circle words look, but there are a handful of Simplified versions that I think look nicer.  Maybe once I'm all done with Anniversary I'll get a Simplified manual and I'll blend the two versions for a more pleasing to my eye hybrid.

*

There are exceptions when it would be impossible or really hard to write quickly, like "air"

And since Gregg isn't really a wholly phonetic system, sometimes the rules are bent a bit to to make other words that don't quite fit that description easier/quicker to write.

books

halfway through unit 8

Knitting is awesome

with photographic evidence

Started unit 7 last night - the O-hook




photographic quality not exactly the best, sorry,

sleepy: a true story

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two part letter

working of unit 6 - 'x' rules and lots of new short forms to memorize.




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pretty cat

happy Jays

started unit 5 yesterday - "s" rules!



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red apple

I started chapter 2 yesterday.
unit 4 adds "P" "B" "V" "F" "SH" "CH" & "J" and a bunch more brief forms to my vocabulary.

I feel kind of giddy, there are so many more things I can write now!
(although I will definitely need a lot more practice to get the new shapes down and memorize everything.)



key after the jump.
(As always, if you know Gregg and spot a mistake, please let me know.)

grey cat

Coming up on the end of chapter one. A little nonsensical due to the limited vocabulary, but getting better. Still need to work on my penmanship.
(if you know shorthand and you spot a mistake, please feel free to let me know so I can fix it)

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I can knit...

can you read it?
(just started unit two, I hope I wrote this right...)
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Week One / Unit One

 


I finished up unit one today.

I spent a lot of time trying to draw the forms properly, especially ar/al and ac/ag. I can read pretty well, but the shapes don't stick in my head when it comes to writing. I'm painfully slow at writing, and have trouble remembering the letters and proper way to attach letters and vowels. I think I'll have to pay better attention to writing and form shapes in coming weeks.

Despite all this I'm still enjoying myself, It's only been a week and I'm still making a lot of progress. I've known for a while that I'm better at learning to read than to 'spell' so I knew this would probably be a problem, and the best way to counter it is to copy more and practice, practice, practice! I'm taking pictures and keeping my notes to compare as I go along so I can see how much progress I'm making.