Pernin An

A compact sound-sign for “AN” in the English word “pan.”

Pernin shorthand records speech sounds rather than ordinary spelling, so this glyph represents part of a word outline rather than a whole word. Its “AN” mark joins a short “a” with n; after a long “a,” as in English “same,” the vowel and N signs are written separately.

The sign is a small quarter-circle traced downward from right to left.

A French shorthand grew into several branches

Émile Duployé’s French shorthand appeared in 1860 to record speech quickly with connected strokes. It later branched by language: Pernin adapted it for English, while other versions served German, Spanish and Romanian. Jean-Marie-Raphaël Le Jeune reshaped and expanded Duployan into a writing system for Chinook Jargon, a regional trade language, and other Indigenous languages of interior British Columbia. The Kamloops Wawa, a Chinook Jargon newsletter, printed that script from 1891 to 1923. These are related branches, not meanings of this exact Pernin sign.

Pernin’s method came to the United States in 1877, and its English adaptation was in print by 1882. Sloan-Duployan and Perrault-Duployan are other English branches: they share Duployan roots with Pernin’s system but have their own sign inventories.