Technical note: I've been concerned about the readability of Deseret Alphabet given the nature of the characters all being the same height with very few "hooks" that can be used by the eye to quickly discern characters.
With Roman characters we have many lifts and drops (for example the tails in d and p in the last word) that help us quickly discern the word. Imagine if the word drop were written as 
such that the tail on "p" were removed and the lift on "d" were replaced with a swirl. This makes the letters more uniform in height and shape but at the same time tends to reduce the readability a bit.
such that the tail on "p" were removed and the lift on "d" were replaced with a swirl. This makes the letters more uniform in height and shape but at the same time tends to reduce the readability a bit.To counter this effect, I've written the quote above using different heights of letters for vowels versus consonants, and I actually quite like the result. Please feel free to comment.
I've gotta say, I'm very impressed. Are you "fluent" in writing the Deseret Alphabet? I teach Utah history and think I'd like to introduce this to my students. I'd suggest you submit it to the website, MakeUtahHistoryFun.com for teachers across the state to use. You can e-mail this idea to suggestions@makeutahhistoryfun.com
ReplyDeleteHI Lacee. Thanks for the note. I suppose I'm as fluent as anyone - which probably isn't saying a whole lot since there really aren't that many people interested in Deseret Alphabet, but in any case, I'm sure that the Utah history kids would get a kick out of learning this stuff. Doesn't every kid try to create a secret language at some point? I'll check out the web link you sent... - Dan
ReplyDeleteI think you're on to something here that makes the difference in people staying long enough with the Deseret Alphabet that they might actually be able to pick it up, use it, and become fluent in reading AND writing it. Nicely done! I'd be anxious to hear how it is used in the MakeUtahHistoryFun.com group and their reactions to it. You can find the latter half of 1859 entries in the Church Historian's Journal online at LDS.org entered partially or completely in D.A. June 22 is a fascinating one because of the regular writing as the last line of the page announcing the plague of crickets.
ReplyDeleteAt least one leaflet with some early variant of the Deseret alphabet used letters of non-uniform height. I think it just made the letters for short vowels smaller, but the result has similar feel to your example: https://archive.org/details/deseretalphabet03unse/page/n1/mode/2up
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