Deseret Alphabet

zil2 · January 23

Anybody else interested in learning the Deseret Alphabet? The reddit sub for it is basically dead, and I think it would be helpful (and motivating) to be able to discuss it with another person. While in a way it looks simple enough, after a little review, I don't think it will be easy.

I downloaded this PDF from DeseretAlphabet.org, as it seems like the most comprehensive tool for learning said alphabet. I don't think one needs to study all of it (unless desired) - the author even says so and tells you which parts you can skip over.

Anywho, if you're interested, let me know and we can make a plan. And if anyone has a better document for learning to write this alphabet, please let me know. I looked for practice sheets - you know, the things they give little children with dashed lines and arrows of how to draw letters - but couldn't find any.

Carborendum · January 23

7 hours ago, zil2 said:

Anybody else interested in learning the Deseret Alphabet? The reddit sub for it is basically dead, and I think it would be helpful (and motivating) to be able to discuss it with another person. While in a way it looks simple enough, after a little review, I don't think it will be easy.

I downloaded this PDF from DeseretAlphabet.org, as it seems like the most comprehensive tool for learning said alphabet. I don't think one needs to study all of it (unless desired) - the author even says so and tells you which parts you can skip over.

Anywho, if you're interested, let me know and we can make a plan. And if anyone has a better document for learning to write this alphabet, please let me know. I looked for practice sheets - you know, the things they give little children with dashed lines and arrows of how to draw letters - but couldn't find any.

I would be interested if we had a font for it.

We learn to read an alphabet so we can communicate with others. Today's world is so dependent on computers that it would be impossible to communicate without a font for it.

No, I'm not using snail mail.

NeuroTypical · January 23

I had an interesting lesson in some quorum growing up. Teacher showed up with a box, and he claimed inside the box was a Book of Mormon written in a language nobody speaks or reads. 3 of us got to go up and look in the box and reach inside. Those 3 then had to make claims about what they saw and defend their claims. None of us believed them, thinking they and the teacher had figured something out ahead of time for some nefarious teacher-teaches-us-the-lesson-in-a-weird-way shennannigans. Then dude taught us about the 3 witnesses and the deseret alphabet.

Cool lesson, not just about church history, but also about how humans work.

zil2 · January 23

@Carborendum, I will be responding to the points in your post out of order.

I haven't started this project yet beyond obtaining the PDF and noting that it says not everything in it is necessary, depending on one's interests.

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

We learn to read an alphabet so we can communicate with others.

I think I didn't do a good job of explaining my intent.

I do not necessarily intend that we communicate with each other (here on the forum or elsewhere) using these characters. I intend to learn the characters such that if I want to, I can read, write, or type the characters. In essence, like a child, I must learn to recognize the symbols of the alphabet and what they represent.

Note that the Deseret Alphabet is not just an alternate set of 26 symbols, like some sort of cypher. There are 38 characters in the alphabet and it is phonetic. Thus, too, to, and two would all be written in the same way in Deseret. There, their, and they're would all be written in the same way. One, won - same. You get the idea.

My intent was to discuss the alphabet and phonetics here on the forum. I've seen some character explanations that leave me unsure what sound the symbol represents (perhaps the PDF is clearer). I figured having folks to discuss this with would allow us to help each other learn the symbols and resolve concerns. For example, the article "a" is pronounced two ways: "uh" (ə) (e.g. "This is a book.") and "ay" or "ey" (ā) (as in "hay" or "hey") - usually when emphasized or before certain sounds. So when writing the article "a" in Deseret, do we write it differently depending on context or always the same way, like we would in English? Given that the alphabet never really took off, I'm not sure there are materials covering stuff like this, hence my desire to discuss it.

Also, some sounds might be hard for someone to distinguish and discussing examples might help clarify. (Phonetics is not as easy as it sounds. :animatedlol: )

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

I would be interested if we had a font for it.

There are fonts for it, and apparently apps to support it on mobile phones (though I'm having a hard time finding evidence of the latter). Many of the posts in the now (all but?) abandoned r/Deseret are written (typed) in the Deseret alphabet. Just for you, I went and got the font off the website I linked and installed it. The 38 characters in the Deseret alphabet are accomplished by mapping some of the characters onto punctuation keys, so you lose some of those (e.g. #, $, %, etc.). I haven't checked the mapping of every character, just some of them to satisfy my suspicion as to how they were managing to get all 38 characters in with only a font (as opposed to an application).

IMO, it would be harder to learn two things at the same time:

1. The symbols and what they represent

2. Where to find the symbol on a keyboard (especially when the keyboard doesn't have them marked)

I figure if I learn #1 first and well, #2 will be easier. And all research shows that learning to write the characters by hand will significantly improve memory and speed the learning process.

Again, my immediate goal is not to communicate with anyone, but to learn the symbols and what they represent, as well as develop the skill to decide what phonetic sounds make up the words I'm using. (I mean, if you think about it, the spelling of many words would differ in the south vs the northeast vs Boston, etc. I'm not sure whoever came up with the brilliant idea of a phonetic alphabet considered different accents... I'm quite certain he didn't consider sounds that aren't part of the English language, or his alphabet would be bigger. )

Carborendum · January 23

5 minutes ago, zil2 said:

(Phonetics is not as easy as it sounds. )

But seriously folks...

I wonder about words like "the". /thuh/ or /thee/

Would you really write it two different ways?

zil2 · January 23

35 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

I wonder about words like "the". /thuh/ or /thee/

Would you really write it two different ways?

Exactly. They have a single character that's used for "the", which doesn't make phonetic sense to me - but I've only just begun - and I have no idea whether there are any materials outlining rules for these situations...

Since I couldn't find any extant online community that appears to be active (unless it's on facebook, but I decline to go back there), I thought I'd see if anyone here was interested in the challenge.

Carborendum · January 23

1 hour ago, zil2 said:

They have a single character that's used for "the"

Whoa! Did I mention that I did that for myself?

When I was about 8 years old I had an event happen where I wanted to start writing in code. I eventually developed my own system when I was about 16. Later I found out that it was essentially what some would call "shorthand."

One characteristic was that I also invented single characters for the most common words (like articles, pronouns, common prepositions, etc.) And it was otherwise completely phonetic.

I'm in.

zil2 · January 23

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

I'm in.

Great! I printed chapters 2, 3, and 5, and appendix 1 so I can work with it on paper. I may not get more done today, but as I fit stuff in, I'll post my thoughts back here. Please do the same. I figure initially, I'll just do some reading - the author of the PDF seems to cover phonetics well and I noticed in passing that he mentioned different pronunciations (apparently there are a couple of characters that are only needed for British pronunciations). Anywho, once I get to anything I feel like discussing, I'll reply here.

Vort · January 23

3 hours ago, zil2 said:

4 hours ago, Carborendum said:

I wonder about words like "the". /thuh/ or /thee/

Would you really write it two different ways?

Exactly. They have a single character that's used for "the"

I believe various shorthands commonly abbreviate "the" to the shorthand mark for "th", something like '. As I recall, many shorthands don't distinguish between voiced and unvoiced th. They may operate on the same principle for other consonant pairs, such as s/z, t/d, p/b, k/g, f/v. Also, m/n/ŋ.

The whole topic of rendering phonemes as handwritten symbols is fascinating. I took some abortive steps toward learning the Deseret alphabet some years or decades back, but I gave up for the following reasons (ranks approximately in order of importance):

No learning buddy
No interested community
Nothing really to read that isn't already available in English and a dozen other languages
The arcane nature of some of the symbols
Getting bored because that's sort of one of my mortal personality characteristics.

I do think your project sounds like great fun. I would quickly have volunteered to participate, but I'm at an interesting phase in my life and am wary of overpromising vs. what I already have on my plate and what I can realistically do. But I will enthusiastically cheer from the sidelines and perhaps dip my toes in the pool, and probably several other metaphor mixes while we're at it.

Edited January 23 by Vort

zil2 · January 23

8 minutes ago, Vort said:

dip my toes in the pool

No, no, no. Dip your fountain pen in the ink bottle!

Vort · January 23

2 minutes ago, zil2 said:

No, no, no. Dip your fountain pen in the ink bottle!

But that's not a metaphor, and I refuse to be rigidly literal.

Carborendum · January 30

On 1/23/2025 at 2:01 PM, Vort said:

But that's not a metaphor, and I refuse to be rigidly literal.

Speaking of metaphors...

On 1/23/2025 at 2:00 PM, zil2 said:

No, no, no. Dip your fountain pen in the ink bottle!

:ninja: :ph34r:

zil2 · January 30

Thanks for the reminder. :unsure: My last trip into the PDF was a bit discouraging. Its claims about what is standard American pronunciation seemed suspicious to me and made me wonder whether dude is correct in the PDF or if the PDF might be incorrect or what... And since I had a busy week ahead, I closed the PDF and forgot about it.

I'll try again later, but not today.

Edited January 30 by zil2

Milluw · February 10

There is a community made for it on Discord called:

Have been in it for a long while without engaging in it, simply due to life being busy. Will say though that the community seems to have come to a still for the most part, but there are resources to find and perhaps some users willing to learn with anyone who seriously wants to learn too.

In the meantime here are some resources that might be of interest(Credit to the owner of that server for gathering them):

BOM, Deseret Alphabet

Phonetify (An add-on for chrome that will translate all English text to a Phonetic Alphabet of choice, which includes Deseret!)

Dechifro (Turns any web pages into Deseret and translates from English to Deseret)

Deseret Keyboard

Deseret Keyboard Online

Keyboard for Mac OS and Windows

Deseret Keyboard for Linux

Books in the Deseret Alphabet

Deseret Comics

A Complete Guide to Reading and Writing the Deseret Alphabet