In Pitman, most vowels are shown as light or heavy dots, or light and heavy dashes, with a smattering of other small squiggles.

These little signs usually attach to one side of a consonant. If a vowel sign is on the left side of a consonant (or the top, in the case of a flat shape), the vowel sound is spoken before the consonant. If it's on the right (or bottom), it happens afterwards. Only one vowel symbol can attach to each side of a consonant. You can have one vowel on either side, or on both sides.

A light dot in the middle of a line makes the sound "e", as in "bed" or "said", or "Fred is dead". A heavy dot in the same position makes the sound of "ay", as in "say" or "tray" or "the laser ray may splay your brain".

The position of the vowel symbol along the line determines the sound the vowel makes. In the example above, the vowel dots are all in the middle of the line, which is called "second position". The vowel can be in one of three positions - First Position - near the beginning of the line; Second Position - near the middle of the line, or Third Position, near the end of the line.

The terms "beginning", "middle", and "end" refer to the direction the line was written in. In the the case of an upward line, the beginning is near the bottom. In the case of a downward line, it's near the top. Don't worry - in practice, this is easier than it sounds.

First position vowels

These vowels are written at the beginning of the line. In this position:

A LIGHT DOT indicates the sound "a", as in "hand".
A HEAVY DOT indicates a longer "a", as in "part".
A LIGHT DASH is the sound of "o", as in "top".
A HEAVY DASH is the sound of "aw", as in "thaw".

Here are examples of the first position vowels, attached to a T symbol. They make the words "Ta" (short a), "Tah" (long a), "To" (not "to" but T, followed by the o sound) and "Taw".

I know, those are pretty lame examples. Here are better ones.

Second position vowels

Here are the second position vowels. These are written in the middle of the stroke.

A LIGHT DOT is the sound of "e" as in "ten".
A HEAVY DOT is the sound of "ay" as in "brain".
A LIGHT DASH is the sound of "u" as in "rush".
A HEAVY DASH is the sound of "oe" as in "boast".

Here are examples of the second position vowels, attached to a T symbol. They make the words Teh, Tay, Tuh, and Toe.

Third position vowels

A LIGHT DOT is the sound of "i" as in "thin".
A HEAVY DOT is the sound of "ee" as in "keen".
A LIGHT DASH is the sound of "uu" as in "book".
A HEAVY DASH is the sound of "oo" as in "soon"

And again, here are examples of the third position vowels, attached to a T symbol. They make the words Tih, Tee, Tuu (like the beginning of "took"), and Too.

In most cases, the heavy vowel is a lengthened, or drawled version of the light version. Stretch out an "a" and you get "ahhh". Stretch out an "i" sound and you get "eeee", as Nintendo so correctly observed when naming their Wii. A "u" doesn't exactly stretch out to make "oe" ( it makes "uhhhhhhh"), but the first part of the "oe" sound is something like "u" - "u-oo".

One of the elegant things about Pitman, and something that makes it unusual among writing systems, is its ability to capture a wide range of vowel sounds.

In English, if we want to describe the sound of "a" as in "arm" versus "a" as in "bark", or "oo" as in "book" versus "oo" as in "loonie", the only way to do it is with phrases like "oo as in book". In Pitman, these sounds are clearly represented.

A Deliberate Mistake

Now, actually, the symbols above are slightly wrong. The rules of Pitman say that, when the first vowel in a word is in the first position, the whole word should be raised up above the line, and when it's in third position, it should be sunk down, so it's written through the line. This is an important rule which will be a huge timesaver.

And for now we will blithely ignore it.

The rest of the vowels

There are a few remaining vowel sounds, and once you've got these, you'll have a basic Pitman "alphabet".

First. there's a group of four diphthongs - sounds that have two vowels, two "phthongs".

1. A downward wedge is the sound of "ie", as in the word "eye". It's always written in the first position.

2. The sound of "oy", as in "boy", is written as a sideways-pointing wedge. Actually, it's a straight line sideways, with a diagonal ilne beneath it. Again, it's written in the third position.

3. The sound "ao", as in the word "ow!" is a wedge pointing upwards. It's written in the third position - that is, at the end of the line.

4. Finally, there's a small arch, written in the third position. This represents the sound "yoo" - as in "you" or (depending on your pronunciationj) "Tuesday",

Here are samples, again with the letter T.

Sometimes, these diphthongs may be followed by another vowel sound. For example, the word "tower" breaks down into four four sounds -

T-AO-E-R

As you can see, the "ao" (or ow) sound is followed by another vowel, then an "r". When this happens, you just add a tick to the diphthong sound. The tick means that there is a second vowel of some sort. It doesn't distinguish the type. This is the first Pitman sign we've seen doesn't show an exact sound.

Here are the ticked diphthongs. These symbols are called "triphones". As if you cared.

And finally, there are a couple of symbols which stand for generic double vowels ("diphones"), like the end vowels in "idea", "radio", "obvious", medium.

These sounds are shown as wedge symbols pointed at a 45-degree angle.

One symbol points down and to the left. This means a dot vowel, followed by any other vowel. It's placed in whichever of the three positions the dot would go in.

The other symbol points up and to the right, and means a dash vowel, followed by any other vowel. And again, it's placed wherever the dash vowel would be placed.

Like the "triphone" symbols, these symbols don't say precisely what the vowel sound will be. But these combinations are uncommon enough that it's usually easy to figure it out.. (Although if you want to make the first vowel unambiguous, you could distinguish between a light and heavy wedge.)

Here are the symbols shown next to a T. They're both shown in first position, but these symbols can also occur in second or third position - which in this case would be the middle or bottom of the line.

Here's a test. Can you identify these four words.

They're all using a heavy dot in third position to produce the "ee" sound. The first three words are "me", "see", "bee". The fourth one is the tricky one. It's not "fee", but "eef". The dot is on the left side of the stroke, which means it's before the consonant sound.

The fact that some strokes are written in different directions can also make it tricky to identify some vowels at first. See if you can identify these four words. The strokes are all written downwards, except for the fourth one, "L", which is written upwards.

The words are "paw", "raw", "saw", and... not "awl", or "law", but "eel".

Vowels can also stand alone, floating on or above the line to show their position. Here, for example, are the words "I", "you", "oh", and "oy".

The first one could also be "eye" or "ay", the second one could be "ewe", and the third one could also be "owe". Again, Pitman is phonetic, so if two words sounds the same, they can be written the same way.

The vowels you've seen so far, plus the consonant signs on the previous pages, are all the symbols you need to write any English word. Pitman uses many more symbols than this, but they are almost all duplications of the symbols you've already seen, and are only used to make words shorter or more efficient. So now you're ready to string the consonant and vowel sounds into longer words.

Next... Writing words