"Another outstanding and attractive feature of Dutton Speedwords [Rap Lin Rie] is the fact that it is the first abbreviated writing invention in history which at once transcribes all languages." ---R. J. G. Dutton

Rap Lin Rie is the nickname I have given to Dutton World Speedwords. Dutton World Speedwords was intended to be a shorthand system that could also be used as an international language. And, it turns out that it is the perfect email shorthand system for the 21st Century.

"Contrary to popular legend, Chinese is not the most difficult language in the world. For us, it is simply the most inaccessible. But it is masterable, and the key, of course, is in the grammar."

"Grammar, since the days it usually issued from antique latinized texts and antique latinized teachers, has had a worse reputation than devils and junkies. Chinese grammar is a whiz. It is very different from English grammar, because English is what the linguists call an inflected language. What this means is that the way English shows how a word is functioning, the way English expresses grammatical relationships is: by varying the endings of words."

"Pronouns, for instance. He, his, him. Subject, possessive, object. Depending on how you use the word, you have to vary the form. HE reads. It is HIS book. She told HIM. Latin nouns have ten forms, five cases, singular and plural, and in this respect is the mother of them all. Verbs, for instance: Study, studied, studying. Present, past, progressive. You have to vary the form of the verb for number, time (tense), whether the action flows into the object or back to the subject (voice), and whether the mood is indicative, subjunctive or imperative."

"This does not happen at all in Chinese. There are no forms to learn (only characters). Verbs are not conjugated. Nouns are not declined. Wherever a character appears, however it is used, it appears the same way, without variation. . ." Page 79-80, An Easy Guide to Everyday Chinese, Diane Wolff, C. 1974 by Diane Wolff.

"Finally, Speedwords dispenses with all the usual grammatical rules regarding parts of speech, genders, cases and moods, with the consequent 'agreements' which are such a troublesome feature of ordinary language and of most other international auliliary languages. It [Speedwords] relies on simple rules of word-order as in English and Chinese. There is no distinction in English between the noun 'cold' and the adjective 'cold', nor between the noun 'love' and the verb 'love', and this principle of using the same word-form for different parts of speech is employed throughout in Speedwords. In thousands of years the Chinese have not found it necessary to differentiate between 'beauty', 'beautiful', 'beautifully', and 'beautify', nor between the members of any similar group of words which in most languages present the same mental idea in varying word-forms. The exact meaning is conveyed by word-order and in Speedwords, similarly, word-order decides that bel ne means 'beautiful nature' and ne bel 'natural beauty.' R.J.G. Dutton.

"Thus, whereas the student of every national or international language can only memorise its root-words by constant repetition, every Speedword 'announces' its identity at sight." R.J.G. Dutton.

NOTICE: Further information on the grammar of Speedwords/Rap Lin Rie must be obtained at the following site. This information is now republished, expanded and reprinted and copyrighted. Therefore, that information must be obtained from: Grammar

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