I found this interesting in the relevance to what’s happening all across America right now. So many people are saying keep the peace while the peace is already gone. They just want silence.
There are 3 main types, but from my research, this looks to be American Gregg Shorthand.
As you can see, there are set symbols for every letter.
Let’s break one of the words down:
Using the Gregg Alphabet as reference, we can see most of the letters in “atrophied” are present. But why no “o” vowel, and why is “ph” written as “f”?
Simple. In shorthand, you cut out all vowels in a word when writing it down, with the exception of words that BEGIN or END with a vowel (hence the “a” at the start being present), or like in the “i” in “atrophied”, to make it more readable when the sound could be harder to distinguish if it isn’t written. In “atrophied” if the the “i” isn’t written, it could be hard to tell if the writer meant a “fud”, “fad”, “fod” or “fid” sound, for example.
Also, since Shorthand is a phonetic writing system, you are encouraged to write down the phonetic sounds of words rather than the actual letter blends - in this case, write an “f” instead of a “ph”.
So in actuality, these aren’t just meaningless scribbles - it’s Gregg Shorthand, a writing system developed to take down notes more quickly than when written out in full, which is very useful in a medical or journalistic environment.
Some people can even write over 100 words in a minute! And, it’s been in use since John Robert Gregg invented it in 1888! Wow! So old!
(Quick note, due to the MASSIVE list of spells Negi has. I may miss a few spells.)
Over his adventures, Negi has accumulated an absurd amount of spells to be used at his disposal. These range from the basic spells, to even the most complex and advanced, including his own created spells. it should be noted that as Negi is a ridiculously powerful mage, he can use most of the spells listed here at an extremely high level, his strongest offensive spells being easily able to cover and destroy a sizable amount of a planet.
While most magic has a set function from the chant, unchanted spells can be used for pretty much anything the mage using them desires as long as the mage has the magical power. In effect this gives Negi a far more diverse arsenal then listed here, however, more or less all of those unlisted spells could be considered to be mundane utility like magic, such as lifting small objects, rather than the combat effective or more high specialized spells listed here are.
