I wondered about the speed limitation of Notehand, and whether it is as bad as reputed to be.
Although I've settled on Simplified for now, I still like to use the Notehand book for additional reading practice. Much better stuff than, "A girl doesn't have to be a beauty to get ahead in business." :) I stick within the same level of lessons as I'm on in Simplified, and don't have too much trouble reading the Notehand. I find this especially useful when I have trouble absorbing a new principle in Simplified. For example, learning the NT and ND blends seems to benefit from that extra reinforcement.
I can see the differences between Notehand and Simplified. For example, Notehand alots one word only to its brief forms, whereas Simplified (and others) may have two or three words. The o is not written sideways. "That" is th-a-t; "they" is th-a; and words tend to use some more letters. One that I particularly notice is picture. In Simplified: p-c-t-r. In Notehand: p-i-c-t-r. (Side question: should I write that as "e" instead of "i"?) Interestingly enough, I actually think that extra vowel makes it easier to write.
I know people have talked about DJS and later removing some blends. As mentioned, I'm currently on the NT/ND blend lessons, so evidently Notehand has some of those. How much they drop, I'm not learned enough to know yet. I have skimmed the book before, and it does get into vowel omissions, and various word beginnings and endings. I'm not sure if this is the same as analogical endings, that I've seen on this blog.
So in summary, Notehand has 42 brief forms which seem to be one word each; a little more writing; and presumably fewer esoteric principles, compared to Simplified in particular. I'm curious to know the differences between Notehand and DJS then, or even Series 90. The DJS comparison is intriguing since Notehand preceded it.
Is Notehand really that slow, then? Compared to, say, DJS which I assume it's more closely related to?
Labels: djs, general, notehand, simplified, speed