**Dictionary of Characterie**
Core to Characterie is a collection of particle and characterical words which form the foundation of the writing system. This provides a dictionary from the english words to the drawn symbols.
# Particles
Particles are unique symbols assigned to common words, often those that would never otherwise appear in the characterical table (there is no such thing as a synonym or antonym for words like "the" or "of"). This are most often things like pronouns, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, but also some common phrases and a small smattering of religious terms.
     
     
     
     
     
 
# Characterical Words
The characterical words are the backbone of Characterie. Every word you write will be one of either a synonym, antonym, or type of one of these words.
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**Note for Historians**
If you are learning Characterie for the purposes of reading historical texts, be aware that the original text, as it survives today, is not self-consistent. In particular *The Characterie Table* contains duplicated words, missing symbols, and words that appear to have no meaning. Moreover, if compared with *A Table of English Words* in the next section, we see that these two provide different conflicting lists of characterical words.
This work attempts to unify them, matching the *The Characterie Table* as much as is possible while being self consistent, while additionally adding words that were indicated to be characterical from the *Table of English Words* if it did not cause a conflict with any existing term.
Moreover, I have compared this list with the list of words from Peter Bales' *Brachygraphy* ([Bales 1590]("https://characterie.neocities.org/references.md#16thcentury/characterie:anarteofshorte,swifte,andsecretewritingbycharacter(1588)")). As, this system is essentially a duplicate of Characterie with the symbols removed opting instead for annotating letters of the standard latin alphabet, see [Appendix A](./brachygraphy.md.html)).
My process was as follows:
1. Start with a transcription of *The Characterie Table*, but noting obvious errors such as: improperly rendered symbols, gaps where the sequence omits a symbol, and duplicate terms.
2. Look at those words from *A Table of English Words* for which there is no associated characerical word. These are the words which are themselves characterical. Use these, as much as possible, to correct errors identified in the first step. This produces the first potential complete table.
3. Compare these words with the *Table of Brachygraphic Words* for Peter Bales' work. Places where this differs from the constructed list are examined. If any two of the three sources agree, then that word is substituted into our list. In cases where they all differ, preference is given for *The Characterie Table*.
4. Any of the most uncertain terms are examined in ([Segar 1589]("https://characterie.neocities.org/references.md#16thcentury/thedivinepropheciesofthetensibylls(1589)")) to bias towards accepting those solutions that were also used bu contemporary practitioners.
While an imperfect process, this has hopefully led to a more accurate list of words to the intention of Timothy Bright than is available in other surviving texts.
This does offer in interesting possibility for historians attempting to differentiate texts recorded in Characterie from other systems. As Bright's single edition of his manual contains ambiguities and inconsistencies not present in other systems, there are likely unique rare transcription errors that only happen in Characterie, but not in later systems like Brachygraphy. For the purposes on learning the system, I have fixed them. If you are looking for historical analysis, you likely will need to embrace them by referencing the original table.
## A
     
     
     
     
 
## B
     
     
     
     
     
     
   
## C
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
## D
     
     
     
     
     
 
## E
     
     
    
## F
     
     
     
     
     
     
  
## G
     
     
     
     
## H
     
     
     
     
     
 
## I
     
     
 
## L
     
     
     
## M
     
     
     
     
     
## N
     
     
## O
     
     
     
    
## P
     
     
     
     
     
     
 
## R
     
     
     
     
     
## S
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
## T
     
     
     
     
     
## W
     
     
     
     
     
     
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