Could this be shorthand for English? I have no idea what it would say, though.

I believe it’s German and written in Stolze-Schreier’s shorthand system.

Pitman doesn’t have that “e” sign and Gregg has no loops.

But, although I have a overview of the Schreier signs in front of me, I can’t puzzle it out. :/

Actually it’s “Stolze-Schreyer” with “y”, but yet I have no idea, what the text says. ;)

My first reaction was chinook wawa, which is based, I think, on Gregg shorthand. There are still a few users of the script, and there’s been a minor resurgence of interest in recent years, but it hasn’t been in common usage since the early years of the 20th Century. It was mostly used in and around the Kamloops, British Columbia, area of Canada. A newspaper, the Kamloops Wawa, was published for around 2 decades in the script.

Benjamin’s right – the language is German and it’s a form of shorthand, though not Stolze-Schreyer.

According to gee, it’s German shorthand (the official name is “Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift”) and reads “Das ist Stenographie! Kann das jemand lesen?” (This is shorthand! Can anybody read this?).

Damn, how could I forget about the most important shorthand system in Germany, but remember the main system for German in Switzerland? ;-)
By the way, the DEK (Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift) is some kind of mixture of different “extinct” shorthand systems, with major influence of Stolze-Schreyer – this is why I recognized some of the characters although I was looking on the wrong system’s char table… Next time I won’t stick to one language or script only, when I can’t read something.

Hm, looks like Pont and Groote :).

Benjamin is right, that’s DEK, and it reads “Das ist Stenographie ! Kann jemand lesen ?”

Chinook outlines are based on Duployé shorthand, not Gregg.

Happy New Year!