Winnie H. Y. Cheung and Wee Lian-hee
Hong Kong Studies. 2018, 1(2): 120-142.
The Kitchen Shorthand (KS) has amused and bemused many Hongkongers but has hitherto not been systematically studied. This paper explains that KS principles are motivated by the imperative of efficiency and include redundancy removal, use of (near-)homophony, extraction of distinctive graphemes, use of convenient idiosyncratic symbols and strategic positioning of information on the writing space. Novel strategies like grapheme extraction and recombination speak to the cognitive properties that must underlie the Chinese scribe who despite possible low literacy may intuit the KS enabled by the sociocultural context of Hong Kong.
