Talk:Deseret alphabet

Untitled
Is there anyone who is able to replace the HTML alphabet table with a graphic version instead? -- Stephen Gilbert 20:39 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)


 * Let's add this, when someone does it, as a link rather than inline. It's kinder on slow modems.  --Spikey 18:34, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * It would be helpful to include a graphical table for those who can't view Unicode, but the HTML table is also a useful reference. I think we should have both. I'll see about making that table, though. --WurdBendur 03:07, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Could someone fix my awful attempt at transliterating the first three words of the illustration? I think I've got the right phonemes, but I can't make out the actual English words (excempt for 'thee' -> 'the'). --Spikey 18:34, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

My first published paper was in regard to the Deseret Alphabet, and I have copies of each of the books published in the Deseret Alphabet. If you are from New England the phonemes make much more sense as to how the symbols sound - especially if you speak the traditional English dialect spoken in Toronto or Vermont/New Hampshire, Boston, or Upstate New York. I've made the translation of the first few words and incorporated them into the entry. -Visorstuff 00:06, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Phonemic vs. Phonetic
Why the change back? If you'd read the phoneme article, you'd see that it's the right word. Phonetics is too specific and includes distinctions that aren't necessary and thus not phonemic. Is there an article on the contrast between these concepts? --WurdBendur 01:14, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
 * Alright, if you're going to be so persistent in using the wrong word, go ahead. I've fixed the link format for you, as well. --WurdBendur 01:41, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Phonemes are the sounds that make up a word. Phonetics are how the sounds make up the word. When you look at a Phonetic alphabet (the English Alphabet is not one) each letter has a specific sound. When you look at a phoenemics, such as the sounds used in English, the change of a sound can alter the word. Make sense? A Phoneme is "the smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning, as the [sound] m of mat and the [sound] b of bat in English." Phonetic is "representing the sounds of speech with a set of distinct symbols, each designating a single sound: phonetic spelling"

Thus the Deseret Alphabet is an alternative spelling to English - different characters, NOT different sounds. The sound does not change, but rather the letters. To me this is a clear difference. It is not the wrong word at all. -Visorstuff 16:36, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Now you're only contradicting yourself. I admit, you have correctly defined the word phoneme. And I'd like to point out that any alphabet in which letters represent phonemes is, indeed, phonemic.  A phonetic alphabet, like the IPA writes phones, which are not all distinguished as phonemes and not important to meaning.  Deseret does not do this.  You seem to believe that there is a one-to-one correspondence between Deseret letters and Roman ones--there is not.  Rather, Deseret letters represent one phoneme, though sometimes more than one phone (which are the realm of the phonetic, not phonemic).  Granted, some of the spellings I've seen in Deseret are not perfectly phonemic, but they certainly aren't phonetic.
 * And if you'll allow me to quote from the phone article, "In phonetics and phonology, a phone is a speech sound considered as a physical event without regard to its place in the sound system of a language [this is what is meant by phonetic -WurdBendur]. Compare with phoneme, a set of phones that carry the same meaning [in that they are treated as the same sound and can thus contrast not with each other, but only with other phonemes]." --WurdBendur 18:34, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

First of all, I don't see a contridiction - second "I" didn't define the terms - that is taken from a dictionary. Rather than quote from Wikipedia, try a dictionary - this is one of the perceived "credibility" problems Jimbo and others have been discussing - when people mis-define details causing a drop in credibility. But this is another point for discussion elsewhere...

Simply put, a Phoneme is the sound. Phonetics are the symbols of the sound (if symbols are not used for multiple sounds). Words are made of phonemes, but many alphabets are represented phonetically (english use of the alphabet is not one)

I know that the Deseret and English alphabets don't match one-to one as you suggest I believe above - and having done extensive research on the alphabet, having access to primary sources, and having been academically published on the topic, I think I have a good understanding of its history and how the alphabet works - even when it had 43 letters, it was an alternative to the Latin or Romanic alphabet currently employed in most English-writing countries. I agree that every letter represents a sound or a phoneme. However, a Phonetic alphabet is an alphabet whose symbols represent one distinct sound (hence the Romanic/Latin characters used by Enlish are not phonetic, but Spanish' use of the letters are).

You should re-read the IPA article you suggested I read above. "a phonetic alphabet...accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes)"

You mention - "Granted, some of the spellings I've seen in Deseret are not perfectly phonemic, but they certainly aren't phonetic." If you live in the Northeastern United States, the Deseret Alphabet would seem much more "perfect" as you can hear the accent (the use of phonemes) they used to create the phonetic alphabet. Each carachter represents one sound or phoneme (which constitutes a phonetic representation of speech). It is the right word. -Visorstuff 19:11, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

BTW - it is interesting to note how peoples use of Phonemes change and deteriorate within a language over time. This is one reason why English's use of the Latin alphabet is no longer phonetic (and why most say the "e" at the end of Cake is silent, when indeed it is often spoken, but only as a accented emphasis (KAK-uh), and why many people in the western US say mau'un instead of mountain. Gosh, I miss studying sounds that humans make and how languages have changed over time. But again, this is probably anothe point for another place. -Visorstuff 19:19, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * You assume I don't know anything about this. I've done quite a lot of research outside of Wikipedia; i just thought an internal page would be easier incase you wanted to see it for yourself.  But where are you getting that phonetics are symbols?  Phonetics is the study of speech sounds, and a phonetic alphabet records those sounds--specifically the sounds that are spoken, not necessarily as they're understood.    If you're writing phonemes, that's phonemic.  What's so confusing about that?  But perhaps this issue should be brought to another talk page for verification.  It's looking like we could probably throw examples around here endlessly and never agree.  --WurdBendur 22:47, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

I don't assume anything about you, except you are quick to respond. I do understand where you are coming from, but I don't agree with your conclusion. I agree that we should let others decide this matter - let's see if we can get others to weigh in. I do appreciate the dialogue, but I've had this discussion with linguist professors and historians who've pointed me to use the words "phonetic alphabet." In any case, the board of regents and the deseret news articles introducing the alphabet used the words "phonetic." I'll post a request for comment at WikiProject_Latter_Day_Saint_movement for other Latter Day Saint editors familiar with the alphabet to comment on. -Visorstuff 01:10, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * "I don't assume anything about you, except you are quick to respond."
 * Less an assumption than an observation, I would say. :) Anyway, I do respect your authority--a glimpse at your user page reveals your experience with LDS--and you have an air of credibility that makes it hard to disagree with you.  I'm willing to accept that you may be right, though I don't believe you are.  But I fail to see how LDS relates to linguistics.  I've mentioned this issue at the talk page for WikiProject_Phonetics for verification.
 * Thanks for being patient with me and willing to seek another point-of-view. --WurdBendur 14:25, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry if the LDSM project seems like a stretch - but the DA is so intertwined into the administration of Brigham Young as Church President (much more than people realize), that it seemed a logical place to start - plus I was unaware of WikiProject Phonetics (I'll definitely check it out), and I believe that would be the other logical place to post the comment. Very good. I appreciate your patience. We'll get it figured out. -Visorstuff 15:39, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hi. Tom Haws here. You guys are doing a good job of discussing this civilly, though I agree you aren't making progress. I do believe that whatever the outcome of the discussion, we probably ought to state that the alphabet "was intended to be phonetic". In fact, we might say for the intro until we can come to better agreement, "The Deseret alphabet was developed as a phonetic alphabet in the mid-19th century by the board of regents of the University of Deseret" That embodies our non-bias policy. Tom Haws 19:16, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, to say that it "was developed as a phonetic alphabet" still favors the one word over the other. Perhaps a direct quote could move this favor away from us Wikipedians and onto, say, someone involved in the making of the alphabet like Bringam Young--not to offend, but only considering that the usage might have been different.  I do recall the word phonetic being used in such a quote I read somewhere.
 * In any case, I've been thinking of a way around this entirely. We both acknowledge phonemes, correct?  Rather than tacking on one word or another as in "phonetic alphabet" or "phonemic alphabet", isn't there a way we can split these up?  We could simply state that it's an alphabet in which each letter represents a phoneme, or a unique sound, or whatever we can agree on.  Where we can't come to an agreement on a specific word, a paraphrase may be in order. --WurdBendur 23:47, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Let's get a few things straight
Simply put, that is not correct. Neither are these:
 * *Simply put, a Phoneme is the sound. Phonetics are the symbols of the sound (if symbols are not used for multiple sounds). Words are made of phonemes, but many alphabets are represented phonetically (english use of the alphabet is not one)
 * *I admit, you have correctly defined the word phoneme.
 * *it is interesting to note how peoples use of Phonemes change and deteriorate within a language over time. This is one reason why English's use of the Latin alphabet is no longer phonetic (and why most say the "e" at the end of Cake is silent, when indeed it is often spoken, but only as a accented emphasis (KAK-uh), and why many people in the western US say mau'un instead of mountain.

"You could look it up."


 * phoneme
 * [A] phoneme is generally regarded as an abstraction of a set (or equivalence class) of speech sounds (phones) which are perceived as equivalent to each other in a given language. For example, in English, the k sounds in the words kit and skill are not identical (as described below), but they are distributional variants of a single phoneme /k/. Different speech sounds that are realizations of the same phoneme are known as allophones. Allophonic variation may be conditioned, in which case a certain phoneme is realized as a certain allophone in particular phonological environments, or it may be free in which case it may vary randomly. In this way, phonemes are often considered to constitute an abstract underlying representation for segments of words, while speech sounds make up the corresponding phonetic realization, or surface form.


 * phone
 * In phonetics and linguistics, a phone is any distinct speech sound or gesture, regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words. In contrast, a phoneme is a speech sound that, in a given language, if it were swapped with another phoneme, would change the meaning of the word. Phones are absolute, not specific to any language, but phonemes can be discussed only in reference to specific languages.

--Thnidu, Ph.D. Linguistics (talk) 22:10, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Cherokee
Why is the Cherokee syllabary mentioned here? It's not an attempt to give English a new alphabet like Shavian and Pitman Shorthand. It's not even an alphabet, strictly speaking. They weren't even developed at the same time, Pitman was made in the 1830s and Deseret and Shavian in the 50s. Cherokee syllabary was introduced in 1819. --Tydaj 14:03, 20 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Because the Cherokee alphabet was an 19th century alphabet "experiment." Between 1750 and 1900, dozens of new writing systems and or alphabets, etc. were invented, starting with Ben Franklin, culminating in Braille and ASL. Widespread literacy in the United States contributed to this, which seems to be very concentrated effort focused on writing in the history of mankind. -Visorstuff 00:32, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * It was not a 19th century alphabet "experiment" intended for the English language, as the text explicitly states. It was designed for the Cherokee language. (And if you really want to be picky, it's not an alphabet, but a syllabary.) I've removed it. EldKatt (Talk) 18:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps we are missing each other's point. The point is that there are more new writing/communication methods developed between 1750 and 1900 than at any other time period in recorded history. The examples originally listed are some. That was the intent of the inclusion. -Visorstuff 22:27, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * They both look remarkably similar at first glance. Is it possible that the developers of the Deseret alphabet were influenced by Sequoyah's syllabary? --Krsont 16:39, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


 * ASL is not an alphabet or a writing system, and it was not invented. It is a language, not an invention, and it developed (and continues to develop) — naturally, as all living languages do — in communities of Deaf people. Please see the article. --Thnidu (talk) 07:21, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Graphics
Aside from the unicode version of the letters we need "images" of them. basicaly a screen cap of the working version of the table. Just get me the screen cap and Ill take care of the rest -- Cool CatTalk 23:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Too right. I can't see ANY of these "unicode" characters. --MacRusgail 04:21, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't see them either and I have several Deseret fonts installed. Curious. 66.191.19.68 (talk) 18:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * They're in an upper band and are not very widely supported at all. They're legal but most implementations do not bother to implement them.  It's lonely above U+FFFF.  Xihr  20:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the information. So this is something at the OS level?  I can't speak for the other posters, but I'm running WindowsXP Pro on this particular box.  Haven't tried it on the Sun machine yet. 66.191.19.68 (talk) 20:35, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * You'll need a Unicode system and font that supports it. Very few do.  Xihr  00:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * What type of Unicode system is needed? I too have a number of Deseret fonts installed on this PC, but they don't show in the Wiki article.  They do show in other apps (e.g. Word, OpenOffice, Acrobat, etc.). Surv1v4l1st (Talk 20:49, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

(margin reset) Running WV and Ff 3.6.3, I followed the Deseret Fonts link in the article, and downloaded the Huneybee font. It shows as available, but doesn't display the characters in the tables. Then I tried the MPH 2B Damase font from Mark Williamson. Now I see all but four of the characters in the article.--LCE(LCE talk contribs) 11:16, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

IPA???
Where are the equivalents to the International Phonetic Alphabet? We have them for about every other writing system on Wikipedia. I can try to add some of the IPA letters to the table, the description of the letters is somewhat ambiguous (i.e. is "Wu" like wood (wʊ), what (wʌ), or woot (wu)?).-- The  i  kiro  id  ( talk/parler/hablar/paroli/说/話 ) 03:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

The language sounds are the same as 19th-century new england phonetics - hense the sound for "the" was an enongated "th" sound, Wu for example would be a short "W" sound. more of a Wh or a Hw shound (the "wa" in "was" is a good example. only 38 of the 44 sounds are represented in the alphabet. Its been too long since I really looked at the IPA - and this would be a good addition to the article. -Visorstuff 16:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * enongated? Not a word. elongated? Not correct. Voiced.
 * more of a Wh or a Hw shound (the "wa" in "was" is a good example. No way. The /w/ in "was" is not usually whispered, which is what "Wh" and "Hw" represent.
 * --Thnidu, PhD, Linguistics (talk) 22:25, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

"The alphabet continues to be used, however, by a micronation[4] called the Republic of Molossia found near Dayton, Nevada."
Publishing this puerile disinformational doggerel is an act of vandalism.

Wikipedia is meant to inform, not deceive or engage in pre-pubescent jokery.

I'll delete it. DON'T revert it back or you're intentionally breaking Wikipedia rules, good God!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mare Nostrum (talk • contribs) 10:16, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikia link
WP:ELNO:12 specifically states "Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors. Mirrors or forks of Wikipedia should not be linked." Wikia certainly qualifies as stable, it's has a huge number of editors, and is not a mirror or fork of WP. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 16:48, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

"Joseph Smith Jun" and kindred
A number of references on this page list "Joseph Smith Jun" or "Jun Joseph Smith", with or without a comma, as author. These do not refer to, say, a Korean Mormon: "Jun" was an abbreviation for "junior". See, for example, Amazon's listing of The Wentworth Letter and zoom in on the cover, or just look here. I'm changing all of them to "Joseph Smith", as he's most commonly known. Thnidu (talk) 01:24, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this and your other edits. I obviously was relying too heavily on the Visual Editor's automatic citation generation. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 02:07, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh good, you just saved me the trouble of describing them on your Talk page. ;-) I tried to comment on the DYK Nom subpage, but I couldn't: when I tapped EDIT, the wheel just spun and spun and I never got anywhere.
 * « Many examples here on Wikipedia for language articles are unsourced.
 * > I agree about this point, but don't take this argument too far. See Other stuff exists. (I apologize if you're already familiar with that. A year isn't nearly enough time to become familiar with all the policies, principles, essays, and such... and ten years isn't either.)

Partial reversion of deletion: I have undone  and removed the non-English portions. 's wikiname is in Esperanto, which they speak natively but not fluently, and I speak fluently but not natively. I used that language to make a comment on the name, which I admit was really out of place here (their talk page would have been suitable), and they replied in kind. I have removed those comments. What remains is my explanation of a significant set of edits on some refs on the page, and Psiĥedelisto's and my discussion of them. --Thnidu (talk) 02:01, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Color sample description
The cells for the last two letters in the table in section Alphabet have a  gray background. There is also a  color sample box in the last row of the table, followed by the text "Not part of original alphabet; see § Versions below", with a link to section "Versions".

's  adds a parameter " " to the color sample box, with the edit summary "add description of  for screen readers".

Issues:
 * 1) The documentation for Color sample (which is all inline, not in a subfile) mentions only one parameter: the color, specified by name or hex RGB value, either manually input or generated by another template— the example used is Independent (politician)/meta/color, which produces  . There is no "Description" parameter, which I think means that the edit will have no effect and won't help screenreader users at all.
 * 2) Even if it does work, or if there is another way to add a screen-readable description to the box, it won't help at all without a corresponding description in the two cells that already have the same gray background.
 * 3) In lieu of such an audible connection, I have applied an old-fashioned solution: I've inserted a link-anchored asterisk before the text of the note and added an asterisk linked to that just after the name of the letter in each of the two affected cells.

I'm putting a mention and pointer to this talk section onto.

Please me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 06:37, 31 January 2017 (UTC)


 * You just accidentally pinged everyone who is mentioned on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility, by transcluding that page instead of linking to it :) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 06:28, 31 January 2017 (UTC)


 * OWWW! I'm sorry! I realized my mistake and fixed it, then saw your note in the edit conflict warning. (Eepp, so embarrassed!). --Thnidu (talk) 06:32, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Although the parameter is undocumented, it totally works. Hover over this to see: More info on Talk:Dust Bowl Psiĥedelisto (talk) 08:18, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Psiĥedelisto got here just before me, but it was fortunate that I was pinged here because I was involved in that discussion too. I added the description parameter to the documentation, but the asterisk is probably also a good idea per the relevant section of the accessibility guideline, so we all win. Screen readers can detect colour, but generally only if the user asks them for the colour of text at a particular location. Graham 87 08:31, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ping, :D
 * I just went to Template:Color sample/doc to update the documentation, but beat me to it. I've expanded that a little with a note about how it works as a tooltip as well. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 13:42, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Converters, etc.
About your, where your summary was
 * →‎ Converter: Remove. Sorry Thnidu, this really seems like cruft to me. I don't understand why Wikipedia should document a third party converter. Why this one over 2deseret? We should explain the alphabet, not document third party software.

Yes, you're basically right. I went into far too much detail there. I still think, though, that we should at least mention the conversion programs.

But in the same edit I also corrected a number of reference titles, unrelated to the converters, and you reverted those corrections as well. I am going to restore my corrections. Here are my reasons, item by item:
 * http://www.deseretalphabet.org/ : The page's HTML title is capitalized: "Deseret Alphabet Portal". The page also uses name-case when referring to the alphabet itself, not as part of the name of the page or anything else:
 * Four books were published in the late 1860s using the Deseret Alphabet ...
 * The Deseret Alphabet came about
 * the Deseret Alphabet never gained wide acceptance ...
 * The Deseret Alphabet is now used mostly by hobbyists and studied by historians ...
 * the 1869 Deseret Alphabet edition of the Book of Mormon ...
 * The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Perl of Great Price (Triple Combination) in the Deseret Alphabet ...
 * A lot of us that are interested in the Deseret Alphabet ...
 * http://copper.chem.ucla.edu/~jericks/index.html : Likewise, this is the website's name:
 * Joshua Erickson's Deseret Alphabet Pages
 * http://2deseret.com/ Page is named Deseret Alphabet Translator. I agree, though, that it needs a description. Since it's bidirectional, how about
 * Converts standard orthography to Deseret alphabet and vice versa
 * https://zaphod.neocities.org/deseretipa.html also needs a description. Even with proper spaces inserted, the URL is not too clear.
 * Converts Deseret input to International Phonetic Alphabet

Shavian
The introductory section says (end of 2nd paragraph)
 * Similar experiments were not uncommon during the period, the most well-known of which is the Shavian alphabet.

A century apart is hardly "the same period": vs. I'm changing it to
 * The Deseret alphabet ... is a phonemic English-language spelling reform developed between 1847 and 1854...
 * All of his [= Shaw's] reform was made clear in Shaw's will of June 1950, in which provision was made for (Isaac) James Pitman, with a grant in aid from the Public Trustee, to establish a Shaw Alphabet. (Shavian alphabet)
 * Similar experiments have not been uncommon...

--Thnidu (talk) 18:48, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, no problem, all of these changes are fine by me. Psiĥedelisto (talk) 06:05, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:23, 9 September 2021 (UTC)
 * 1860 Utah $10 gold piece.jpeg

Pronunciation of the word Deseret
The Deseret word 𐐔𐐯𐑅𐐨𐑉𐐯𐐻 would be pronounced /dɛsˈiːrɛt/, according to the pronunciation keys shown in the primers. I'm adding that as the original pronunciation. ABehrens (talk) 22:26, 27 November 2022 (UTC)


 * The difference between z and s aside, this seem unlikely. Note that the Deseret alphabet doesn't denote stress or vowel reduction in any way, you pulled that information out of thin air, not from the spelling (or do you actually have a source for it?). That it uses 𐐨 is in no way an indication that it needs to have there and  or  seems more plausible. – MwGamera (talk) 21:10, 28 November 2022 (UTC)