There were a number of
shorthand systems I tried to learn that are based on dropping the short vowels but leaving the long ones in, and replacing articles with simple symbols: ". bk s nu & i cn gt t f u" means "the book is new and I can get it for you."
I was really interested in learning
Handywrite, as it seemed the most simple, but because my handwriting is very poor, the differing lengths of the lines for different sounds were tough for me. For example, the difference between a "k" and a "g" sound is the length of the curved line. Meanwhile, the "th" sound and "p" sounds are made by lines that look the same, but are drawn in different directions (up and to the right or down and to the left). I couldn't keep them consistent. I'd still love to learn it, but since I don't do much writing longhand anymore there's not as much need.
All that to say that txtspk and all that aren't new; variants have been used by specialists for over 100 years. It's only now coming to the masses out of a perceived need for it to keep SMS messages small.
