Gabelsberger shorthand, named for its creator, is a form of

shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to Cursive, longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Gr ...

previously common in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

and

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. Created c. 1817 by Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, it was first fully described in the 1834 textbook ''Anleitung zur deutschen Redezeichenkunst oder Stenographie'' and became rapidly used. Gabelsberger shorthand has a full alphabet with signs for both consonants and vowels. The

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

signs were made by simplifying the features of

cursive Cursive (also known as joined-up writing) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and m ...

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

letters. The vowel signs are used mainly when a vowel stands at the beginning or the end of a word. Vowels in the middle of words are represented symbolically, mainly by varying the position and the impact of the following consonant signs. Contrary to the practice in many English shorthand systems (e.g. Pitman Shorthand), vowels are never entirely omitted. Most German shorthand systems published after 1834 are ultimately based on Gabelsberger's system. Modern German shorthand,

Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift (, German Unified Shorthand) is a German language, German Shorthand, stenography system. DEK is the official shorthand system in Germany and Austria today. It is used for word-for-word recordings of debates in the Federal Parliament of Germany. ...

, retains most of the consonant signs of Gabelsberger's alphabet but has a modified system of vowel representation. Gabelsberger shorthand was adopted into many languages and was particularly successful in Scandinavia, the Slavic countries, and Italy. A host of shorthand systems has since appeared that build on the graphic principles laid down by Gabelsberger.

External links

*
''Anleitung zur deutschen Redezeichenkunst oder Stenographie''
at

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

. Shorthand systems {{Austria-hist-stub