Introduction

A short history of the project

The genesis of 'briefscript' dates back to the mid 1950s when I learnt Speedwords by correspondence course from its inventor, Reginald John Garfield Dutton (born 8th November 1886 in Nottingham, UK; in 1890 his family moved to Skegness in Lincolnshire and he lived there till his death on 23rd June 1970).

I was intrigued at Dutton's idea of a "World Brief-Script", i.e. a constructed language that could serve both as an international auxiliary language (IAL) and as an alphabetic shorthand. But as I got to know the language, I found certain aspects of it (particularly that its roots & affixes are not self-segregating, its pronunciation is complicated and somewhat kludgey, and there were obvious word-building problems) unsatisfactory and wondered if I could do any better.

In my late teens I experimented with several schemes, including the use of Roman letters as a syllabary. But partly because I was never satisfied with such solutions and also because of my concern that morphemes be self-segregating, in my early twenties another scheme took shape. This scheme never got a proper name and, indeed, after marriage it lay dormant for very many years as the constraints of work and a growing family left little time for such things. It was not until the early 1990s when I got on-line and joined the Conlang and Auxlang groups that interest was rekindled.

This scheme is what I used to call 'briefscript' on the Auxlang and Conlang lists, and always in quotes as shown. Dutton had used the term briefscript as a common noun; I simply adopted it as a sort of "place-holder" until I could think up a proper name for the language. The quotes were meant to show its use a a place-holder, waiting for its own proper name. We may now call this form of the Project Classical Briefscript.

Several things happened after I joined the two lists.

1. The scheme I had outlined for Classical Briefscript came in for much needed criticism as regards its use of consonants and was thus modified.
2. I became and remain very disenchanted with the bigotry and bitterness of IAL politics. I had no intention of promoting Classical Briefscript as an IAL nor shall I ever promote any other language as an IAL.
3. The term 'briefscript' became abbreviated by some to BrSc (which I also adopted but continued to pronounce the abbreviation as 'briefscript').
4. Later, other changes took place, and two prototypes came into being: BrScA (Briefscript version A) which followed the traditions set in Classical Briefscript; and BrScB (Briefscript version B) which revived the idea of a Roman letter syllabary.
5. It became apparent, however, that the abbreviations BrSc, BrScA and BrScB were not only awkward to type but also were being taken as the actual names of the languages and being given all sorts of pronunciations! This was clearly unsatisfactory and in January 2005 the abbreviations BrSc, BrScA and BrScB were abandoned; I wrote:
   I propose that:
   1. as a generic term for both possible developments, I revert to the term briefscript instead of BrSc;
   2. the language hitherto dubbed 'BrScA' be named _bax_;
   3. the language hitherto dubbed 'BrScB' be named _brx_.
6. Bax, pronounced [pi'aːçi] and anglicized as Piashi, was developed as a single form of the language. This was formally abandoned in October 2009 and I wrote:
   One of the two aims of Piashi is to "serve as an international auxiliary language (IAL)." …
   The other aim of Piashi was to create a language "which, when written alphabetically, can serve as an alphabetic shorthand."
   It seems to me that:
   - English is, for better or worse, the current de_facto global auxlang;
   - there already exist 'alphabetic shorthand' varieties, e.g. Speedwriting, Textese (also known as: chatspeak, txtspk, txtk) etc.
   Therefore, the two primary aims of Piashi have already been met.
7. Brx, pronounced ['puɺaçi] and anglicised as Pulashi, was a revival I began in August 2011 which adapted an earlier BrScB scheme to avoid the unsatisfactory compromise orthography and pronunciation of Piashi. But as work effectively ground to a halt in May of 2012 and as the considerations I wrote above when I abandoned Piashi are still valid, I also formally abandoned Brx in April 2013.

Notes:

• Besides Textese, otherwise known as SMS (Short Message Service language), other examples of 'alphabetic shorthands' are: Forkner shorthand, Speedwriting and Stenoscript.
• I was prompted by Ars Glossopoetic (Festschrift edited by Jörg Rhiemeier and presented to me on the occasion of my 80th birthday, 15th January 2019) to revive it. Twice in the past five years, I have had private emails asking about Lin, R.Srikanth's unfinished project,, to see how spatially compact a written language could be. I became quite interested in developing a briefscript along the lines of Lin and may, perhaps, do so.

The Briefscript Project pages

They are set out thus (links are given in the navigation bar menu):

1. The Introduction
2. 1951 Speedwords Dictionary (PDF file)
   Speedwords-English and English-Speedwords with an introduction which briefly explains the language. It is the final full dictionary published by Dutton.
   Speedwords was developed from 1935 to 1951. It is thus very dated; there have been many advances in communication technology since then and the language is not likely to appeal to modern conlangers (there have been at least two attempts at revival that I am aware of, both in traditional IAL style claiming to have the only official Speedwords page, but they never caught on). I have, therefore, now removed these pages except for the dictionary since (a) I am not aware of any other online source for it, and (b) it give a fair flavor of the language.
3. Phonology and Orthographies
   I retain these five pages as some conlangers may find ideas they my find of interest.
   1. Classical Briefscript (aka BrScA)
   2. Two methods of using Roman letters as syllabaries (aka BrScB)
   3. The Bax (Piashi) quasi-syllabary
   4. The Brx (Pulashi) syllabary;
   Please feel free to use any of the ideas found within these pages, on condition that:
   1. If you acknowledge your source, which it would be polite to do, and you do not imply that I endorse your own project.
   2. You do not call your project/ language 'briefscript', BrSc, BrScA, BrScB, Piashi, Bax or any name so similar as to cause confusion with my own abandoned schemes.
   3. You show respect for anyone else who may be adapting any of my ideas.
   4. You do not presume to claim to know my mind or to be doing what I would have done.