iPedia Free Information Center

Information about Tironian Notes

Tironian et, U+204A "⁊".
Tironian notes (notae Tironianae) is a system of shorthand said to have been invented by Cicero's scribe Marcus Tullius Tiro.
Enlarge picture
Two Tironian et in context (third line from bottom and second line from above), from a Bible written by a Belgian scribe.
Its first use is reported by Plutarch to be 63 B.C., when Tiro noted a speech of Cato the younger against Catiline. Tiro's system consisted of about 4,000 signs, somewhat extended in classical times to 5,000 signs. In the Medieval period, Tironian notes were taught in monasteries and the system was extended to about 13,000 signs. The use of Tironian notes declined after A.D. 1100 but some use can still be seen for the 17th century.

Two Tironian notes are still used today: the Tironian “et” in Ireland – also used elsewhere in blackletter texts as late as 1821 – and the “z” of “viz” (short for videlicet), which denotes a Tironian symbol shaped somewhat like a “z”.

The Tironian “et” can look very similar to an “r rotunda” , depending on the typeface.

In Old English Manuscripts, the Tironian "et" served as both a sonic and morphological place holder. For instance a Tironian "et" between two words would be phonetically pronounced "ond" and would mean and. However if the Tironian "et" followed the letter "s", then it would be phonetically pronounced "sond" and mean water (cognate with English sound). This additional function of a sonic as well as a conjunction place holder has escaped Modern English. For example one may not spell the word sand "s&".

See also

Enlarge picture
A pay and display sign in Dublin with the Tironian et for the Irish agus (“and”).

External links

Shorthand is an abbreviated, symbolic writing method that improves speed of writing or brevity as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is stenography, from the Greek stenos (narrow, close) and
..... Click the link for more information.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Cicero around age 60, from an ancient marble bust
Born: January 3, 106 BC
Arpinum, Italy
Died: December 7, 43 BC
Formia, Italy
Occupation: Politician, lawyer, orator and philosopher
Nationality: Ancient Roman
..... Click the link for more information.
Marcus Tullius Tiro (d. ca. 4 BC) was first a slave, then a freedman of Cicero.

The date of Tiro's birth is uncertain. From Jerome it can be dated to 103 BC,[1] which would make him only a little younger than Cicero.
..... Click the link for more information.
Plutarch
Mestrius Plutarchus
Πλούταρχο?

Parallel Lives, Amyot translation, 1565
Born: Circa 46 AD
Chaeronea, Boeotia
Died: Circa 120 AD
Delphi, Phocis
..... Click the link for more information.
1st century BC - 1st century
90s BC  80s BC  70s BC - 60s BC - 50s BC  40s BC  30s BC 
66 BC 65 BC 64 BC - 63 BC - 62 BC 61 BC 60 BC

Politics
State leaders - Sovereign states
Birth and death categories
-
..... Click the link for more information.
Marcus Porcius Catō Uticensis (95 BC–46 BC), known as Cato the Younger (Cato Minor) to distinguish him from his great-grandfather (Cato the Elder), was a politician and statesman in the late Roman Republic, and a follower of the Stoic philosophy.
..... Click the link for more information.
Lucius Sergius Catilina (108 BC–62 BC), known in English as Catiline, was a Roman politician of the 1st century BC who is best known for the Catiline (or Catilinarian) conspiracy
..... Click the link for more information.
Ireland
Éire
Airlann <nowiki />

Northwest of continental Europe with Great Britain to the east.

Geography <nowiki/>
Location Western Europe <nowiki />
Archipelago
..... Click the link for more information.
Blackletter, also known as Gothic script or Gothic minuscule, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to 1500. It continued to be used for the German language until the twentieth century.
..... Click the link for more information.
Viz (also "viz.", with a period) and videlicet are adverbs used today as synonyms of "namely, precisely, that is to say". Videlicet is Latin for "one may see; clearly, evidently", while viz
..... Click the link for more information.
r rotunda (, always lowercase) is an old letter variant. Between the Middle Ages and today, many ways of writing alphabetical characters were lost.
..... Click the link for more information.
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.
Please help recruit one or [ improve this article] yourself. See the talk page for details.
..... Click the link for more information.
Old English/Anglo-Saxon}}}
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: ang
ISO 639-3: ang Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon[1], Englisc
..... Click the link for more information.
Modern English}}}
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: —
ISO 639-3: — Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the great vowel shift, completed in roughly 1550.
..... Click the link for more information.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The term Gaelic script, a translation of the Irish phrase cló Gaelach (pronounced /kɫ̪oː ˈgeːɫ̪əx/
..... Click the link for more information.
The Monumenta Germaniae Historica (frequently abbreviated MGH in bibliographies and lists of sources) is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published sources for the study of German history (broadly conceived) from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500.
..... Click the link for more information.


This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus


page counter