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Deseret alphabet

The Deseret alphabet (Deseret: or ) is a phonemic English-language spelling reform developed between 1847 and 1854 by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the leadership of Brigham Young, the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). George D. Watt is reported to have been the most actively involved in the development of the script's novel characters,  which were used to replace those of Isaac Pitman's English phonotypic alphabet. He was also the "New Alphabet's" first serious user. The script gets its name from the word deseret, a hapax legomenon in the Book of Mormon, which is said to mean "honeybee" in the only verse it is used in.

The Deseret alphabet was an outgrowth of the idealism and utopianism of Young and the early LDS Church. Young and the Mormon pioneers believed "all aspects of life" were in need of reform for the imminent millennium, and the Deseret alphabet was just one of many ways in which they sought to bring about a complete "transformation in society,"  in anticipation of the Second Coming of Jesus. Young wrote of the reform that "it would represent every sound used in the construction of any known language; and, in fact, a step and partial return to a pure language which has been promised unto us in the latter days", which meant the pure Adamic language spoken before the Tower of Babel.

In public statements, Young claimed the alphabet would replace the traditional Latin alphabet with an alternative, more phonetically accurate alphabet for the English language. This would offer immigrants an opportunity to learn to read and write English, the orthography of which, he said, is often less phonetically consistent than those of many other languages. Young also proposed teaching the alphabet in the school system, stating "It will be the means of introducing uniformity in our orthography, and the years that are now required to learn to read and spell can be devoted to other studies."

Between 1854 and 1869, the alphabet was used in scriptural newspaper passages, selected church records, a few diaries, and some correspondence. Occasional street signs and posters used the new letters. In 1860 a $5 gold coin was embossed 𐐐𐐬𐑊𐐨𐑌𐐮𐑅 𐐻𐐭 𐑄 𐐢𐐫𐑉𐐼 (Holiness to the Lord). In 1868-9, after much difficulty creating suitable fonts, four books were printed: two school primers, the full Book of Mormon, and a first portion of it, intended as a third school reader.

Despite repeated and costly promotion by the early LDS Church, the alphabet never enjoyed widespread use, and it has been regarded by historians as a failure. However, in recent years, aided by digital typography, the Deseret alphabet has been revived as a cultural heirloom.

Similar neographies have been attempted, the most well-known of which for English is the Shavian alphabet.

Creation (1847–1854)
The Deseret alphabet was a project of the Mormon pioneers, a group of early followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) who, motivated by revelations of a unique premillennial eschatology, had set about building a unique theocracy in the Utah desert, which was then still claimed by Mexico, after the death of the church's founder, the prophet Joseph Smith. They were to build a "city of Zion" where converts would gather in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ. As part of that Gathering, in 1848, Church leaders urged converts in Europe to "emigrate as speedily as possible" to the Great Basin. There, in the "Kingdom of God," under fused theo-democratic leadership, they would be safe from the fall of the apostate world of so-called "Babylon."

March 6, 1849, Church authorities organized the "free and independent government" called the State of Deseret, while retaining the Council of Fifty. In that historical context, which has been called "The Forgotten Kingdom," there was a "compete identity of religious and temporal purpose throughout the history of the Alphabet." This theo-linguistic fusion has been noted by multiple historians.

The "New Alphabet" was intended to correct "the corruptions and perversions of language which was originally pure", and to meet the urgent need for a language to "answer the demands of a constant intercommunication between several thousand languages". One "fitted to meet the great emergency of the great gathering and great work of teaching the law of the Lord to all people." This reformation of English orthography was a first step to the ultimate restoration of Adamic language for use in the anticipated millennial dispensation of the fulness of times.

The Deseret Typographical Association called the alphabet "a forerunner in that series of developments which shall prepare mankind for the reception of pure language". Brigham Young, Church President and Prophet, the "driving force" for the reform, looked forward to the time "when a man is full of light of eternity", and stated, "I shall yet see the time that I can converse with this people without opening my mouth."

The Deseret alphabet was developed primarily by a committee made up of the board of regents of the University of Deseret, members of which included LDS Church leaders Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, Heber C. Kimball, and several of the other Apostles. According to Brigham Young University professor Richard G. Moore, most scholars believe that George D. Watt's contribution to the actual form the alphabet took, its unique glyphs, was the greatest; he furthermore "plant[ed] the idea of spelling reform in Brigham Young's mind" through a phonography class he gave after the death of Joseph Smith which Young attended. William W. Phelps helped "work out the letters" along with Pratt. Before they decided on the Deseret alphabet, the attention of the board of regents was mostly focused on Pitman style alphabets, and in April 1847 Brigham Young nearly purchased 200 lb of lead type to print books using Pitman's orthography. The University of Deseret was incorporated on 28 February 1850; less than three weeks later, on 20 March, the new board of regents began to discuss spelling reform.

On 29 November 1853, the committee was ready to approve a slightly modified version of the Pitman orthography, when Apostle Willard Richards, Second Counselor to Young, who had been deathly ill and missed the debate before the vote, saw the proposed alphabet, which spelled the word "phonetic" as "fɷnetic". Richards was quick to condemn it, saying to the committee: "We want a new kind of alphabet...those characters...seem like putting new wine into old bottles...I am inclined to think...we shall...throw away all characters that bear much resemblance to the English characters, and introduce an alphabet that is original...an alphabet entirely different from any alphabet in use."

These words persuaded Brigham Young and the rest of the committee, and Watt then endeavored to create an original alphabet. Less than two months later, on 19 January 1854, the board of regents finally approved the first 38-letter Deseret alphabet. One legacy of Pitman's orthography survived, though: the idea that one letter should equal one sound.

Use by the Mormon pioneers (1854–1869)
Upon the alphabet's acceptance, its first user was its principal architect, George D. Watt, who began writing the meeting minutes of the early Bishops in a cursive form of it in 1854. Almost immediately after its publication, church members began experimenting with it, and by 1855 travel writers Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley published a chart of the new alphabet which differed heavily from the 1854 version. Some early Mormons, such as Thales Hastings Haskell, began writing their personal journals in the new alphabet. Remy further reported that during his time in Salt Lake City, he saw signs on the street and above shops using the new alphabet.

After its approval by the board of regents, Brigham Young testified before the Utah territorial legislature that the new alphabet should "be thoroughly and extensively taught in all the schools". Some teaching in Utah schools did take place: John B. Milner taught the alphabet in Provo, Lehi, American Fork, and Pleasant Grove, while evening classes were taught in Salt Lake City and Farmington.

After several months' practice writing with the new alphabet, Watt wrote to Brigham Young that he was unhappy with it, and proposed a complete overhaul, which was never followed up on.

Word of the new alphabet soon spread outside Utah, and most press reports in non-Mormon papers were critical. Other writers, however, acquainted with other phonotypic and stenographic alphabets, ranged from neutral descriptions of the new alphabet to praise.

Until this point, all the printed material (mostly just charts of the alphabet and its standard orthography equivalents) had been produced with large wooden type, which was not suitable for printing at small sizes. Because the alphabet was wholly unique, no font existed, so in 1857 the board of regents appointed Erastus Snow to procure metal type from St. Louis-based font foundry Ladew & Peer. However, in May 1857 the Utah War began, and Snow left St. Louis to support the Mormon pioneers. During the war, Ladew & Peer kept working on the type, and the punches and matrices were delivered in the winter of 1858. The first use of the new type was to make a business card for George A. Smith, an early Mormon historian. In 1859, with the new type in hand, the Deseret News began printing with it. It would print one piece per issue in the new alphabet, usually a quotation from The Book of Mormon or the New Testament. However, this only lasted for one year, after which the practice stopped; it would start again in May 1864 and stop permanently at the end of that year. Benn Pitman, the brother of Isaac Pitman, was also interested in spelling reform, and by 1864 had published his own orthography, which the board of regents considered adopting. However, they ultimately decided not to and used the opportunity to re-affirm their commitment to the Deseret alphabet.

Brigham Young blamed the failure of this first attempt at reform on the ugliness of the type developed by Ladew & Peer, and so he commissioned Russell's American Steam Printing House, a New York City based font foundry, to design more pleasing type. The result was the Bodoni-esque font (below) that was used to print all of the books in this period. In an 1868 article, the Deseret News wrote that "the characters, to a person unaccustomed to them, may look strange, [but] to the eye to which they are familiar they are beautiful."

At least four books were published in the new alphabet, all transcribed by Orson Pratt and all using the Russell's House font: The First Deseret Alphabet Reader (1868), The Second Deseret Alphabet Reader (1868), The Book of Mormon (1869), and a Book of Mormon excerpt called First Nephi–Omni (1869).

Considerable non-printed material in the Deseret alphabet was made, including a replica headstone in Cedar City, Utah, some coinage, letters, diaries, and meeting minutes. One of the more curious items found in the Deseret alphabet is an English-Hopi dictionary prepared by two Mormon missionaries. The handwritten document sat in the LDS Church Archives, largely ignored until 2014 when writing system researcher and computer scientist Kenneth R. Beesley re-discovered it and transcribed it into standard written English.

Decline (1869–1877)
Despite years of heavy promotion, the Deseret alphabet was never widely adopted. This reluctance was partly due to prohibitive costs; the project had already cost the early church $20,000, with $6,000 going to Pratt as remuneration for his transcription effort and most of the rest going to cutting metal type featuring the new alphabet and printing costs. In 1859, Orson Pratt estimated that the cost of supplying all Utah Territory schoolchildren with suitable textbooks would be over $5,000,000. According to Beesley, many have written that interest in the Deseret alphabet died with Brigham Young. This, however, is not true; the alphabet was already regarded as a failure during Young's time. Only 500 copies of the full Book of Mormon translated into the Deseret alphabet sold for $2 each, and even Young realized that the venture was too expensive and even the most devout Mormons could not be convinced to purchase and study the Deseret edition books over the books in the traditional orthography. In the winter of 1870, just one year after their publication, advertisements for the Deseret alphabet books were quietly removed from the Deseret News.

Contemporary writers noted that thousands of copies of the 15¢ and 20¢ Deseret primers went unsold, and historian Roby Wentz speculated that the LDS Church at that time had a "cache" of the primers in mint condition, which it was slowly selling off; according to him, one such primer sold for $250 in 1978.

The Mormons had planned to use the profits from sale of the earlier books to fund printing of more books, and in anticipation Orson Pratt had already transcribed the complete Bible, Doctrine and Covenants, and John Jaques's Catechism for Children. Pratt had also prepared an apparent sequel to the primers, the Deseret Phonetic Speller. After the sales failure, however, none of these books were ever published and were thought lost until being rediscovered in a storage area of the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City in May 1967.

Ralph Vigoda, a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, has speculated that the completion of the Transcontinental railroad may have contributed to the alphabet's downfall: non-Mormons, not loyal to Brigham Young, became a large part of the city, and without the religious motivation it would be difficult indeed to get them to learn a new alphabet. In a retrospective piece, historian A. J. Simmonds claims that the new railroad doomed the alphabet. According to him, easy access to "the whole literature of the English speaking world" rendered the alphabet useless.

In July 1877, Young tried one more time at a spelling reform, ordering lead type designed for the orthography of Benn Pitman (Isaac's brother) with the intention of printing an edition of the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants using it. Most of the type had arrived by August, but with Young's death, the translation was never undertaken and the type never used. Young's death thus marked the end of the Mormon experimentation with English spelling reforms.

Rediscovery in the computer era

Modern digital typography has reduced the costs of typesetting substantially, especially for small print runs. Freely licensed Deseret alphabet fonts can be used at no additional cost.

Film director Trent Harris used the Deseret alphabet in his 1994 satire of Mormon theology, Plan 10 from Outer Space, where it features as an alien language used on a mysterious "Plaque of Kolob".

During the 1996 Utah Centennial celebration, an activity book for children was distributed, within which one of the activities was for a child to write their own name in the alphabet. The book says that a child who does this will be "the first kid in 100 years to write [their] name in the Deseret alphabet!"

Also in 1996, Buffalo River Press published a reprint of the Deseret First Book, of which only 10,000 were originally printed. The entire Book of Mormon in the Deseret alphabet has been likewise reprinted, as only 500 copies from the original print run exist, and they can sell on eBay for ≈$7,500 (as of 2004). In 1997, John Jenkins uploaded a free three part PDF of the so-called "triple combination", that is, a combined Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price.

John Jenkins has gone on to publish many classic pieces of English literature in the Deseret alphabet, such as Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Owing to the character set's inclusion in Unicode, most of the original books and many of the original manuscripts have been transcribed into plain text, and, when this is not possible due to discrepancies between the Unicode reference glyphs and the documents, LaTeX.

Fonts
The first digital font for the Deseret alphabet, called "Deseret", was designed by Greg Kearney as part of work he was doing for the LDS Church History Department in 1991; the font was used in an exhibit that year. In August 1995, a cleaned up, digitized version of the font in use in the Deseret Second Book was created by Salt Lake City graphic designer Edward Bateman, who made the font in Fontographer while working on Plan 10 from Outer Space.

Kenneth R. Beesley created a Metafont (and thus, LaTeX-compatible) font called in 2002.

All computers running Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system or newer can display the entire Deseret alphabet Unicode range as the glyphs are included in the Segoe UI Symbol font.

Besides maintaining a Deseret input method for Windows, Joshua Erickson, a UCLA alumnus, also maintains a large collection of freeware Unicode fonts for the alphabet, which he collectively terms the "Bee Fonts."

There also exist free software fonts for the Deseret alphabet. Google, through its Noto Sans project, the aim of which is "to support all languages with a harmonious look and feel", has also released a Deseret font under the name "Noto Sans Deseret". George Douros maintains a public domain font called "Analecta" as part of his Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts project, which supports the Coptic, Gothic, and Deseret scripts. Deseret glyphs are also available in the popular pan-Unicode fonts Code2001 and Everson Mono (as of version 5.1.5).

Alphabet
Although the Deseret alphabet has letter case, usually the only difference between the minuscule and majuscule forms is that the majuscule forms are larger.

A degree of free spelling is allowed to accommodate dialectal differences in English. For example, in the Deseret edition of The Book of Mormon, the word "wherefore" is written as 𐐸𐐶𐐯𐑉𐑁𐐬𐑉, which means that the translator of the book did not exhibit the wine–whine merger. Those who do exhibit the merger might instead prefer the spelling 𐐶𐐯𐑉𐑁𐐬𐑉 to match the pronunciation, or, depending on dialect, perhaps 𐐶𐐯𐑉𐑁𐐫𐑉.

The alphabet was designed to be able to write all of the vowels used in the dialect spoken in 19th century Utah. The vowel inventory has also been attributed to the fact that, unlike other American pioneers, the Mormon pioneers were from New England as opposed to the American South. As such, many of the vowels in the Deseret alphabet have since merged in the modern era: they are no longer distinguished in some dialects of English, particularly dialects of US English, though are still present in others, such as many varieties of British English.

Speakers who exhibit the father–bother merger no longer distinguish ( 𐐪 ) and  ( 𐐱 ), and so both "father" and "bother" would be written with 𐐪 : as 𐑁𐐪𐑄𐐲𐑉 and 𐐺𐐪𐑄𐐲𐑉 as opposed to 𐑁𐐪𐑄𐐲𐑉 and 𐐺𐐱𐑄𐐲𐑉. For those with the cot–caught merger, ( 𐐫 ) and  ( 𐐱 ) are no longer distinguished: both "cot" and "caught" are thus written by them as 𐐿𐐱𐐻  in the case of North American English, and as 𐐿𐐫𐐻  in the case of Scottish English. For those exhibiting both mergers, both would be written 𐐿𐐪𐐻.

Versions
There have been several published versions of the alphabet. Most versions (including the versions used in The Deseret First Book, The Deseret Second Book, The Deseret News and The Book of Mormon) had only 38 letters, but some versions contained two ligatures, 𐐧 (ew) and 𐐦 (oi). In place of 𐐮𐐭 or 𐐷𐐭, 𐑏 was to be used; in place of 𐐱𐐮 , 𐑎.

In the 23 February 1859 edition of the Deseret News, the editors announced their approval of the two new letters and eventual intention to use them in the newsletter. However, due to the hot metal typesetting technology in use at the time, casting the new letters for use would have been a considerable expense, so it was never realized.

Representation of
The Deseret alphabet does not have a distinct symbol for the mid central vowel ([], "schwa"). The lack of a schwa has been cited as the biggest "phonological flaw" in the alphabet.

Because of the lack of a schwa, the author must write the sound that would be used if the word was stressed. For example, the word enough is commonly pronounced, but when it is stressed (as in a declaration of irritation) it is pronounced. The Deseret spelling of the word, 𐐨𐑌𐐲𐑁, reflects that stressed pronunciation. If [] does not have an inherent stressed value in a word, as is often the case before, then it is written as 𐐲.

Marion J. Shelton, an early Mormon missionary, proposed the addition of a new glyph to represent the schwa, a simple vertical line of the same height as other Deseret characters with a similar appearance to the Turkish dotless i (ı). The addition of this glyph did not catch on among his contemporaries, however, and no document outside of ones penned by Shelton makes use of it. Shelton used the new glyph in an 1860 letter to Brigham Young reporting on a recently completed mission to the Paiute people.

Syllabic values
Each letter in the Deseret alphabet has a name, and when a letter is written on its own it has the value of that name. This allows some short words to be written with a single letter, and is called a letter's "syllabic value". The most common word in English, the, is written simply 𐑄, as the letter's name is and that is the stressed pronunciation of the word. The consonants with syllabic values are 𐐶 (woo), 𐐷 (yee), 𐐸 (ha), 𐐹 (pee), 𐐺 (be/bee), 𐐻 (tee/tea), 𐐽 (qi), 𐐾 (gee), 𐑀 (gay), and 𐑄 (the/thee).

Syllabic values do not apply within words, although this was formerly the case. In early documents, Watt writes "people" as 𐐹𐐹𐑊 with the expectation that readers will interpret the first 𐐹 as, but the second 𐐹 as. This contextual value switching was soon done away with, so in later documents, while "bee" is written 𐐺, "bees" is written 𐐺𐐨𐑆.

In 40-letter versions of the alphabet which include the letter 𐐧 (ew) which represents, the letter 𐐧 when standing alone can be used to represent the word "you".

Examples
The first lesson in the Deseret First Book reads simply:
 * Deseret Second Book Juvenile Hymn page 23.jpg from the Deseret Second Book, printed in 1868. The first line of the hymn reads "I'll serve the Lord while I am young" ( 𐐌'𐑊 𐑅𐐲𐑉𐑂 𐑄 𐐢𐐫𐑉𐐼 𐐸𐐶𐐴𐑊 𐐌 𐐰𐑋 𐐷𐐲𐑍 ), and is pronounced as .]]– Hello, how are you? – I'm doing great, thanks! – It was nice seeing you, but I've got to run! Take care!
 * – 𐐐𐐯𐑊𐐬, 𐐸𐐵 𐐪𐑉 𐑏? – 𐐌'𐑋 𐐼𐐭𐐮𐑍 𐑀𐑉𐐩𐐻, 𐑃𐐰𐑍𐐿𐑅! – 𐐆𐐻 𐐶𐐲𐑆 𐑌𐐴𐑅 𐑅𐐨𐐨𐑍 𐑏, 𐐺𐐲𐐻 𐐌'𐑂 𐑀𐐪𐐻 𐐻𐐭 𐑉𐐲𐑌! 𐐓𐐩𐐿 𐐿𐐩𐑉!
 * Oil floats on water, but mercury sinks below both. This is due to their relative densities.
 * 𐐦𐑊 𐑁𐑊𐐬𐐻𐑅 𐐪𐑌 𐐶𐐫𐐻𐐲𐑉, 𐐺𐐲𐐻 𐑋𐐲𐑉𐐿𐐷𐐲𐑉𐐨 𐑅𐐮𐑍𐐿𐑅 𐐺𐐮𐑊𐐬 𐐺𐐬𐑃. 𐐜𐐮𐑅 𐐮𐑆 𐐼𐐭 𐐻𐐭 𐑄𐐯𐑉 𐑉𐐯𐑊𐐲𐐻𐐮𐑂 𐐼𐐯𐑌𐑅𐐮𐐻𐐨𐑆.

In the Deseret Second Book, there is a version of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on page 19:

Handwriting
There were two main handwritten forms of the Deseret alphabet: a cursive version and a printed version. Over the lifetime of the alphabet, the cursive form fell out of favor among most users of the alphabet and by 1856 no more cursive documents exist. Its impact on the glyphs can however still be plainly seen in the loops of certain characters such as 𐑅, 𐑀 and 𐐼. The earliest surviving versions of the Deseret alphabet, from 1853 (one year before its January 1854 approval), have printed and cursive forms side-by-side, suggesting that a cursive form was part of the plan from the very beginning.

Cursive
The cursive form of the Deseret alphabet was mainly used by two people: George D. Watt, and James Henry Martineau. Watt, a stenographer, recorded several bishops meetings and wrote other personal documents in this cursive style. A chart of the cursive form appears below. The blue glyphs represent how to write each character, while the top row of printed glyphs shows the corresponding Unicode reference glyph.

The cursive style has many unorthodox characteristics uncommon to alphabetic writing systems. Vowels can be dropped if the writer is in a hurry and feels the word is obvious as in an abjad, letters can be written above or below the base line depending on what precedes them, and 𐐮 is placed on letters after they are already written as in an abugida. Furthermore, unlike the typeset alphabet, the cursive alphabet has no letter case. These characteristics could have arisen because Watt was a local expert in Pitman shorthand, which is written in a similar way.

The table below shows some examples of how the cursive form is written. Dropped vowels are marked in parentheses.

Block letters
George D. Watt found his own alphabet cumbersome to write and abandoned it. As he wrote to Brigham Young on 21 August 1854: "Dear Bro. I herein submit for your examination the result of much thought and extensive practice on the new alphabet since the Board of Regents last met. I candidly confess that I never did like the present construction of the alphabet. I was not left as free as I could have wished to be in the construction of it. [...] I am now thoroughly convinced that it is not the most expeditious method of writing and printing, but on the contrary it retards the hand in its onward course." His new alphabet closely resembled an 1853 publication of Isaac Pitman, containing only 33 letters. However, at this point, Young was still enamored with the original Deseret alphabet, and so he rejected the proposal and Watt continued to publicly promote the alphabet as part of his job despite his reservations. After 1855, no more cursive documents appear, and all surviving journals are written in block letters. Marion J. Shelton, an early Mormon missionary who wrote a dictionary of the Hopi language in the alphabet, was a "typical" 40-letter Deseret writer, and his style of writing is shown below.

Design criticism
The Deseret alphabet was purposely designed so as to not have ascenders and descenders. This was envisioned as a practical benefit for the alphabet in an era of metal type: after many uses, the edges of type sorts become dull, and narrow ascenders and descenders are most prone to this effect.

While well intentioned, this lack has been described as a "catastrophic" mistake that makes type look "monotonous" and makes all words look alike. Some have joked that this aesthetic quality could cause the new alphabet to be mistaken from afar for a Turkish tax list.

The Mormon pioneers were apparently aware of the problems caused by its monotony: "President Young has decided that [the letters] are not so well adapted for the purpose designed as it was hoped they would be. There being no shanks (ascenders or descenders) to the letters, all being very even, they are trying to the eye, because of their uniformity." Other criticism of the design was harsher still. In an 18 December 1857 editorial in the Boston Globe, the alphabet was described as being "so arranged and named as to cause the greatest possible annoyance to outsiders" and the design of the letters as "incomprehensible as [...] the hieroglyphics of the [...] Egyptians." On 4 March 1872, The New York Times called the alphabet "rude, awkward and cumbersome".

Some modern computer fonts and printed books have attempted to correct this perceived fault: in the books in John Jenkins' Deseret Alphabet Classics series, the font used adds a descender to 𐑉 and 𐐻 and an ascender to 𐐼 and 𐑇 among other tweaks.

Other motives
Officially, the Deseret alphabet was created to simplify the spelling of English words for the benefit of children and English as a second language learners. Some of the alphabet's contemporaries, however, posited an alternative motivation for its development: increasing the isolation of the early Mormons.

To keep outsiders from reading Mormon secrets (largely dismissed)
The charge that the Deseret alphabet's main purpose was to keep outsiders ("gentiles" in LDS terminology) in the dark was brought almost immediately, as evidenced by the following 1858 Lyttelton Times reprint of an unnamed "New York newspaper": ".—The new 'Deseret Alphabet' is completed, and a fount of pica type has been cast in St. Louis. Specimens of the type are published in the St. Louis papers, but they are unproducible in types that common people use [...] The ukases of Brother Brigham will hereafter be a sealed letter, literally, to Gentile eyes." Having obtained a copy of the Deseret News in 1859, the Richmond Dispatch disparaged it on April 25, writing "The Deseret News is filled with a lot of hieroglyphs. It seems to be [an alphabet] which the Mormons alone are to be taught."

Modern historians, however, doubt the veracity of this theory. For one thing, notes Kenneth R. Beesley, the Deseret News and every book published in the alphabet prominently features the key to the alphabet, and anyone without a key could have gotten a copy of A Journey to Great-Salt-Lake City, or traveled to Salt Lake City themselves and bought one. Contemporary scholars Richard F. Burton and Jules Remy also dismissed the secrecy argument, in 1860 and 1855 respectively.

To keep Mormons from reading outside literature
With the impending completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, the Mormon pioneers would have easy, cheap access to publications from the east, including yellowbacks, penny dreadfuls, pulp magazines, and other often scandalous or dirty publications that were rising to prominence in the 19th century. Indeed, in an article about the benefits of the alphabet, the Deseret News proudly wrote: "If our community were situated as others are, it might be Quixotic to attempt the introduction of this reform among us with the hope of carrying it into practical operation. But our position is unique, we are united. [...] Some have an idea that if a child be educated in the system of spelling and writing by sound it will be a detriment to it in learning the present system. [...] If they could find no better reading than much of the miserable trash that now obtains extensive circulation, it would be better if they never learned to read the present orthography. In such a case ignorance would be blissful. [...] The greatest evils which now flourish and under which Christendom groans are directly traceable to the licentiousness of the press." In another article, the Deseret News cited an example of the kind of literature Mormons would benefit from not being able to read: The Police Gazette. Historians A. J. Simmonds and Roby Wentz contend that while this may have been a tertiary goal of the alphabet, a sort of "happy accident", the main purpose of it was simple orthographic reform. Simmonds notes that the teaching of English to foreigners was not a mere hypothetical to mask isolationist tendencies: 35% of the Utah Territory's population at the time was Scandinavian, with German, Italian and Welsh speaking people also making up a considerable percentage of inhabitants; therefore, communication between the recently baptized and the community was a real problem.

Encodings

The Deseret alphabet (U+10400–U+1044F) was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2001 with the release of version 3.1, after a request by John H. Jenkins of Apple, making it one of the first scripts to be added outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane. The letters 𐐧 (ew) and 𐐦 (oi) were added to the Unicode Standard in April 2003 with the release of version 4.0.

According to Kenneth R. Beesley, who submitted the proposal to expand the encoding, "Unicode fonts based on the current heterogeneous collection of glyphs will be useless for any practical typesetting of 40-letter Deseret Alphabet documents." This is because the Unicode Consortium chose to use glyphs from 1855 as the reference glyphs, while by 1859 those glyphs were already outmoded and replaced with newer glyphs. Beesley thus recommends using LaTeX along with his Metafont font to typeset Deseret text, but fonts which use the alternate glyphs for the two codepoints in question would also work for transcription of 40-letter Deseret texts written during and after 1859.

On 25 February 2016, the Library of Congress approved an ALA-LC romanization for the Deseret alphabet. The table can be used to display approximations of titles in non-Latin scripts using the Latin alphabet for use in library catalogs that do not support non-Latin alphabets.

title: Deseret alphabet


text:
Danish

Danish may refer to:
 * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark

People

 * A Danish person, also called a "Dane", can be a national or citizen of Denmark (see Demographics of Denmark)
 * Culture of Denmark
 * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ancestral or ethnic identity
 * A member of the Danes, a Germanic tribe
 * Danish (name), a male given name and surname

Language

 * Danish language, a North Germanic language used mostly in Denmark and Northern Germany
 * Danish tongue or Old Norse, the parent language of all North Germanic languages

Food

 * Danish cuisine
 * Danish pastry, often simply called a "Danish"

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Danish


text:
Danish language

Danish (, ; dansk, dansk sprog ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina.

Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Norse dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Norwegian Bokmål are classified as West Norse along with Faroese and Icelandic. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as "mainland (or continental) Scandinavian", while Icelandic and Faroese are classified as "insular Scandinavian". Although the written languages are compatible, spoken Danish is distinctly different from Norwegian and Swedish and thus the degree of mutual intelligibility with either is variable between regions and speakers.

Until the 16th century, Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Southern Jutland and Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions. With the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of the printing press, a standard language was developed which was based on the educated dialect of Copenhagen and Malmö. It spread through use in the education system and administration, though German and Latin continued to be the most important written languages well into the 17th century. Following the loss of territory to Germany and Sweden, a nationalist movement adopted the language as a token of Danish identity, and the language experienced a strong surge in use and popularity, with major works of literature produced in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, traditional Danish dialects have all but disappeared, though regional variants of the standard language exist. The main differences in language are between generations, with youth language being particularly innovative.

Danish has a very large vowel inventory consisting of 27 phonemically distinctive vowels, and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon stød, a kind of laryngeal phonation type. Due to the many pronunciation differences that set Danish apart from its neighboring languages, particularly the vowels, difficult prosody and "weakly" pronounced consonants, it is sometimes considered to be a "difficult language to learn, acquire and understand", and some evidence shows that children are slower to acquire the phonological distinctions of Danish compared to other languages. The grammar is moderately inflective with strong (irregular) and weak (regular) conjugations and inflections. Nouns, adjectives, and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender. Like English, Danish only has remnants of a former case system, particularly in the pronouns. Unlike English, it has lost all person marking on verbs. Its word order is V2, with the finite verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence.

Classification
Danish is a Germanic language of the North Germanic branch. Other names for this group are the Nordic or Scandinavian languages. Along with Swedish, Danish descends from the Eastern dialects of the Old Norse language; Danish and Swedish are also classified as East Scandinavian or East Nordic languages.

Scandinavian languages are often considered a dialect continuum, where no sharp dividing lines are seen between the different vernacular languages.

Like Norwegian and Swedish, Danish was significantly influenced by Low German in the Middle Ages, and has been influenced by English since the turn of the 20th century.

Danish itself can be divided into three main dialect areas: Jutlandic (West Danish), Insular Danish (including the standard variety), and East Danish (including Bornholmian and Scanian). Under the view that Scandinavian is a dialect continuum, East Danish can be considered intermediary between Danish and Swedish, while Scanian can be considered a Swedified East Danish dialect, and Bornholmian is its closest relative.

Vocabulary
Approximately 2,000 uncompounded Danish words are derived from Old Norse and ultimately from Proto Indo-European. Of these 2,000, 1,200 are nouns, 500 are verbs and 180 are adjectives. Danish has also absorbed many loanwords, most of which were borrowed from Low German of the Late Middle Ages. Out of the 500 most frequently used Danish words, 100 are loans from Middle Low German; this is because Low German was the second official language of Denmark–Norway. In the 17th and 18th centuries, standard German and French superseded Low German influence, and in the 20th century, English became the main supplier of loanwords, especially after World War II. Although many old Nordic words remain, some were replaced with borrowed synonyms, for example æde (to eat) was mostly supplanted by the Low German spise. As well as loanwords, new words can be freely formed by compounding existing words. In standard texts of contemporary Danish, Middle Low German loans account for about 16–17% of the vocabulary, Graeco-Latin loans 4–8%, French 2–4% and English about 1%.

Danish and English are both Germanic languages. Danish is a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse, and English is a West Germanic language descended from Old English. Old Norse exerted a strong influence on Old English in the early medieval period.

The shared Germanic heritage of Danish and English is demonstrated with many common words that are very similar in the two languages. For example, when written, commonly used Danish verbs, nouns, and prepositions such as have, over, under, for, give, flag, salt, and arm are easily recognizable to English speakers. Similarly, some other words are almost identical to their Scots equivalents, e.g., kirke (Scots kirk, i.e., 'church') or barn (Scots bairn, i.e. 'child'). In addition, the word by, meaning "village" or "town", occurs in many English place-names, such as Whitby and Selby, as remnants of the Viking occupation. During the latter period, English adopted "are", the third person plural form of the verb "to be", as well as the personal pronouns "they", "them" and "their" from contemporary Old Norse.

Mutual intelligibility
Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish. A proficient speaker of any of the three languages can often understand the others fairly well, though studies have shown that the mutual intelligibility is asymmetric: Norwegian speakers generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each other. Concomitantly, Swedes and Danes understand Norwegian better than they understand each other's languages.

Norwegian occupies the middle position in terms of intelligibility because of its shared border with Sweden, resulting in a similarity in pronunciation, combined with the long tradition of having Danish as a written language, which has led to similarities in vocabulary. Among younger Danes, Copenhageners are worse at understanding Swedish than Danes from the provinces. In general, younger Danes are not as good at understanding the neighboring languages as the young in Norway and Sweden.

History
The Danish philologist Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen divided the history of Danish into a period from 800 AD to 1525 to be "Old Danish", which he subdivided into "Runic Danish" (800–1100), Early Middle Danish (1100–1350) and Late Middle Danish (1350–1525).

Runic Danish
By the eighth century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse. This language was generally called the "Danish tongue" (Dǫnsk tunga), or "Norse language" (Norrœnt mál). Norse was written in the runic alphabet, first with the elder futhark and from the 9th century with the younger futhark.

From the seventh century, the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, resulting in the appearance of two dialect areas, Old West Norse (Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). Most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway. A change that separated Old East Norse (Runic Swedish/Danish) from Old West Norse was the change of the diphthong æi (Old West Norse ei) to the monophthong e, as in stæin to sten. This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin. Also, a change of au as in dauðr into ø as in døðr occurred. This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from tauþr into tuþr. Moreover, the øy (Old West Norse ey) diphthong changed into ø, as well, as in the Old Norse word for "island". This monophthongization started in Jutland and spread eastward, having spread throughout Denmark and most of Sweden by 1100.

Through Danish conquest, Old East Norse was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England. Many words derived from Norse, such as "gate" for street, still survive in Yorkshire, the East Midlands and East Anglia, and parts of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings. The city of York was once the Viking settlement of Jorvik. Several other English words derive from Old East Norse, for example "knife", "husband" , and "egg". The suffix "-by" for 'town' is common in place names in Yorkshire and the east Midlands, for example Selby, Whitby, Derby, and Grimsby. The word "dale" meaning valley is common in Yorkshire and Derbyshire placenames.

Old and Middle dialects
In the medieval period, Danish emerged as a separate language from Swedish. The main written language was Latin, and the few Danish-language texts preserved from this period are written in the Latin alphabet, although the runic alphabet seems to have lingered in popular usage in some areas. The main text types written in this period are laws, which were formulated in the vernacular language to be accessible also to those who were not Latinate. The Jutlandic Law and Scanian Law were written in vernacular Danish in the early 13th century. Beginning in 1350, Danish began to be used as a language of administration, and new types of literature began to be written in the language, such as royal letters and testaments. The orthography in this period was not standardized nor was the spoken language, and the regional laws demonstrate the dialectal differences between the regions in which they were written.

Throughout this period, Danish was in contact with Low German, and many Low German loan words were introduced in this period. With the Protestant Reformation in 1536, Danish also became the language of religion, which sparked a new interest in using Danish as a literary language. Also in this period, Danish began to take on the linguistic traits that differentiate it from Swedish and Norwegian, such as the stød, the voicing of many stop consonants, and the weakening of many final vowels to /e/.

The first printed book in Danish dates from 1495, the Rimkrøniken (Rhyming Chronicle), a history book told in rhymed verses. The first complete translation of the Bible in Danish, the Bible of Christian II translated by Christiern Pedersen, was published in 1550. Pedersen's orthographic choices set the de facto standard for subsequent writing in Danish. From around 1500, several printing presses were in operation in Denmark publishing in Danish and other languages. In the period after 1550, presses in Copenhagen dominated the publication of material in the Danish language.

Early Modern
Following the first Bible translation, the development of Danish as a written language, as a language of religion, administration, and public discourse accelerated. In the second half of the 17th century, grammarians elaborated grammars of Danish, first among them Rasmus Bartholin's 1657 Latin grammar De studio lingvæ danicæ; then Laurids Olufsen Kock's 1660 grammar of the Zealand dialect Introductio ad lingvam Danicam puta selandicam; and in 1685 the first Danish grammar written in Danish, Den Danske Sprog-Kunst ("The Art of the Danish Language") by Peder Syv. Major authors from this period are Thomas Kingo, poet and psalmist, and Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, whose novel Jammersminde (Remembered Woes) is considered a literary masterpiece by scholars. Orthography was still not standardized and the principles for doing so were vigorously discussed among Danish philologists. The grammar of Jens Pedersen Høysgaard was the first to give a detailed analysis of Danish phonology and prosody, including a description of the stød. In this period, scholars were also discussing whether it was best to "write as one speaks" or to "speak as one writes", including whether archaic grammatical forms that had fallen out of use in the vernacular, such as the plural form of verbs, should be conserved in writing (i.e. han er "he is" vs. de ere "they are").

The East Danish provinces were lost to Sweden after the Second Treaty of Brömsebro (1645) after which they were gradually Swedified; just as Norway was politically severed from Denmark, beginning also a gradual end of Danish influence on Norwegian (influence through the shared written standard language remained). With the introduction of absolutism in 1660, the Danish state was further integrated, and the language of the Danish chancellery, a Zealandic variety with German and French influence, became the de facto official standard language, especially in writing—this was the original so-called rigsdansk ("Danish of the Realm"). Also, beginning in the mid-18th century, the skarre-R, the uvular R sound, began spreading through Denmark, likely through influence from Parisian French and German. It affected all of the areas where Danish had been influential, including all of Denmark, Southern Sweden, and coastal southern Norway.

In the 18th century, Danish philology was advanced by Rasmus Rask, who pioneered the disciplines of comparative and historical linguistics, and wrote the first English-language grammar of Danish. Literary Danish continued to develop with the works of Ludvig Holberg, whose plays and historical and scientific works laid the foundation for the Danish literary canon. With the Danish colonization of Greenland by Hans Egede, Danish became the administrative and religious language there, while Iceland and the Faroe Islands had the status of Danish colonies with Danish as an official language until the mid-20th century.

Standardized national language
Following the loss of Schleswig to Germany, a sharp influx of German speakers moved into the area, eventually outnumbering the Danish speakers. The political loss of territory sparked a period of intense nationalism in Denmark, coinciding with the so-called "Golden Age" of Danish culture. Authors such as N.F.S. Grundtvig emphasized the role of language in creating national belonging. Some of the most cherished Danish-language authors of this period are existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and prolific fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen. The influence of popular literary role models, together with increased requirements of education did much to strengthen the Danish language, and also started a period of homogenization, whereby the Copenhagen standard language gradually displaced the regional vernacular languages. Throughout the 19th century, Danes emigrated, establishing small expatriate communities in the Americas, particularly in the United States, Canada, and Argentina, where memory and some use of Danish remains today.

After the Schleswig referendum in 1920, a number of Danes remained as a minority within German territories. After the occupation of Denmark by Germany in World War II, the 1948 orthography reform dropped the German-influenced rule of capitalizing nouns, and introduced the letter. Three 20th-century Danish authors have become Nobel Prize laureates in Literature: Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (joint recipients in 1917) and Johannes V. Jensen (awarded 1944).

With the exclusive use of rigsdansk, the High Copenhagen Standard, in national broadcasting, the traditional dialects came under increased pressure. In the 20th century, they have all but disappeared, and the standard language has extended throughout the country. Minor regional pronunciation variation of the standard language, sometimes called regionssprog ("regional languages") remain, and are in some cases vital. Today, the major varieties of Standard Danish are High Copenhagen Standard, associated with elderly, well to-do, and well educated people of the capital, and low Copenhagen speech traditionally associated with the working class, but today adopted as the prestige variety of the younger generations. Also, in the 21st century, the influence of immigration has had linguistic consequences, such as the emergence of a so-called multiethnolect in the urban areas, an immigrant Danish variety (also known as Perkerdansk), combining elements of different immigrant languages such as Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish, as well as English and Danish.

Danish Realm
Within the Danish Realm, Danish is the national language of Denmark and one of two official languages of the Faroe Islands (alongside Faroese). There is a Faroese variant of Danish known as Gøtudanskt. Until 2009, Danish was also one of two official languages of Greenland (alongside Greenlandic). Danish now acts as a lingua franca in Greenland, with a large percentage of native Greenlanders able to speak Danish as a second language (it was introduced into the education system as a compulsory language in 1928). About 10% of the population speaks Danish as their first language, due to immigration.

Iceland was a territory ruled by Denmark–Norway, one of whose official languages was Danish. Though Danish ceased to be an official language in Iceland in 1944, it is still widely used and is a mandatory subject in school, taught as a second foreign language after English.

No law stipulates an official language for Denmark, making Danish the de facto official language only. The Code of Civil Procedure does, however, lay down Danish as the language of the courts. Since 1997, public authorities have been obliged to follow the official spelling system laid out in the Orthography Law. In the 21st century, discussions have been held with a view to create a law that would make Danish the official language of Denmark.

Surrounding countries
In addition, a noticeable community of Danish speakers is in Southern Schleswig, the portion of Germany bordering Denmark, and a variant of Standard Danish, Southern Schleswig Danish, is spoken in the area. Since 2015, Schleswig-Holstein has officially recognized Danish as a regional language, just as German is north of the border. Furthermore, Danish is one of the official languages of the European Union and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. Under the Nordic Language Convention, Danish-speaking citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs.

The more widespread of the two varieties of written Norwegian, Bokmål, is very close to Danish, because standard Danish was used as the de facto administrative language until 1814 and one of the official languages of Denmark–Norway. Bokmål is based on Danish, unlike the other variety of Norwegian, Nynorsk, which is based on the Norwegian dialects, with Old Norwegian as an important reference point. Also North Frisian and Gutnish (Gutamål) were influenced by Danish.

Other locations
There are also Danish emigrant communities in other places of the world who still use the language in some form. In the Americas, Danish-speaking communities can be found in the US, Canada, Argentina and Brazil.

Dialects
Standard Danish (rigsdansk) is the language based on dialects spoken in and around the capital, Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish and Norwegian, Danish does not have more than one regional speech norm. More than 25% of all Danish speakers live in the metropolitan area of the capital, and most government agencies, institutions, and major businesses keep their main offices in Copenhagen, which has resulted in a very homogeneous national speech norm.

Danish dialects can be divided into the traditional dialects, which differ from modern Standard Danish in both phonology and grammar, and the Danish accents or regional languages, which are local varieties of the Standard language distinguished mostly by pronunciation and local vocabulary colored by traditional dialects. Traditional dialects are now mostly extinct in Denmark, with only the oldest generations still speaking them.

Danish traditional dialects are divided into three main dialect areas:
 * Insular Danish (ømål), including dialects of the Danish islands of Zealand, Funen, Lolland, Falster, and Møn
 * Jutlandic (jysk), further divided in North, East, West, and South Jutlandic
 * East Danish (østdansk), including dialects of Bornholm (bornholmsk), Scania, Halland and Blekinge

Jutlandic is further divided into Southern Jutlandic and Northern Jutlandic, with Northern Jutlandic subdivided into North Jutlandic and West Jutlandic. Insular Danish is divided into Zealand, Funen, Møn, and Lolland-Falster dialect areas―each with additional internal variation. Bornholmian is the only Eastern Danish dialect spoken in Denmark. Since the Swedish conquest of the Eastern Danish provinces Skåne, Halland and Blekinge in 1645/1658, the Eastern Danish dialects there have come under heavy Swedish influence. Many residents now speak regional variants of Standard Swedish. However, many researchers still consider the dialects in Scania, Halland (hallandsk) and Blekinge (blekingsk) as part of the East Danish dialect group. The Swedish National Encyclopedia from 1995 classifies Scanian as an Eastern Danish dialect with South Swedish elements.

Traditional dialects differ in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary from standard Danish. Phonologically, one of the most diagnostic differences is the presence or absence of stød. Four main regional variants for the realization of stød are known: In Southeastern Jutlandic, Southernmost Funen, Southern Langeland, and Ærø, no stød is used, but instead a pitch accent (like in Norwegian, Swedish and Gutnish). South of a line (stødgrænsen, 'the stød border') going through central South Jutland, crossing Southern Funen and central Langeland and north of Lolland-Falster, Møn, Southern Zealand and Bornholm neither stød nor pitch accent exists. Most of Jutland and on Zealand use stød, and in Zealandic traditional dialects and regional language, stød occurs more often than in the standard language. In Zealand, the stød line divides Southern Zealand (without stød), an area which used to be directly under the Crown, from the rest of the Island that used to be the property of various noble estates.

Grammatically, a dialectally significant feature is the number of grammatical genders. Standard Danish has two genders and the definite form of nouns is formed by the use of suffixes, while Western Jutlandic has only one gender and the definite form of nouns uses an article before the noun itself, in the same fashion as West Germanic languages. The Bornholmian dialect has maintained to this day many archaic features, such as a distinction between three grammatical genders. Insular Danish traditional dialects also conserved three grammatical genders. By 1900, Zealand insular dialects had been reduced to two genders under influence from the standard language, but other Insular varieties, such as Funen dialect had not. Besides using three genders, the old Insular or Funen dialect, could also use personal pronouns (like he and she) in certain cases, particularly referring to animals. A classic example in traditional Funen dialect is the sentence: "Katti, han får unger", literally The cat, he is having kittens, because cat is a masculine noun, thus is referred to as han (he), even if it is a female cat.

Phonology

The sound system of Danish is unusual, particularly in its large vowel inventory and in the unusual prosody. In informal or rapid speech, the language is prone to considerable reduction of unstressed syllables, creating many vowel-less syllables with syllabic consonants, as well as reduction of final consonants. Furthermore, the language's prosody does not include many clues about the sentence structure, unlike many other languages, making it relatively more difficult to perceive the different sounds of the speech flow. These factors taken together make Danish pronunciation difficult to master for learners, and research shows Danish children take slightly longer in learning to segment speech in early childhood.

Vowels
Although somewhat depending on analysis, most modern variants of Danish distinguish 12 long vowels, 13 short vowels, and two central vowels, and, which only occur in unstressed syllables. This gives a total of 27 different vowel phonemes – a very large number among the world's languages. At least 19 different diphthongs also occur, all with a short first vowel and the second segment being either, , or. The table below shows the approximate distribution of the vowels as given by in Modern Standard Danish, with the symbols used in IPA/Danish. Questions of analysis may give a slightly different inventory, for example based on whether r-colored vowels are considered distinct phonemes. gives 25 "full vowels", not counting the two unstressed "schwa" vowels.

Consonants
The consonant inventory is comparatively simple. distinguishes 17 non-syllabic consonant phonemes in Danish.

Many of these phonemes have quite different allophones in onset and coda where intervocalic consonants followed by a full vowel are treated as in onset, otherwise as in coda. Phonetically there is no voicing distinction among the stops, rather the distinction is one of aspiration. are aspirated in onset realized as, but not in coda. The pronunciation of t,, is in between a simple aspirated and a fully affricated  (as has happened in German with the second High German consonant shift from t to z). There is dialectal variation, and some Jutlandic dialects may be less affricated than other varieties, with Northern and Western Jutlandic traditional dialects having an almost unaspirated dry t.

is pronounced as a in syllable coda, so e.g.  (grave) is pronounced.

often have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as approximants. Danish differs from the English sound that is conventionally transcribed with the same IPA symbol, in that it is not a dental fricative but an alveolar approximant which is frequently heard as  by second language learners.

The sound is found for example in the word /sjovˀ/ "fun" pronounced  and  "marijuana" pronounced. Some analyses have posited it as a phoneme, but since it occurs only after or  and  does not occur after these phonemes, it can be analyzed as an allophone of, which is devoiced after voiceless alveolar frication. This makes it unnecessary to postulate a -phoneme in Danish. Jutlandic dialects often lack the sound and pronounce the sj cluster as  or.

In onset is realized as a uvular-pharyngeal approximant,, but in coda it is either realized as a non-syllabic low central vowel,  or simply coalesces with the preceding vowel. The phenomenon is comparable to the r in German or in non-rhotic pronunciations of English. The Danish realization of as guttural – the so-called skarre-r – distinguishes the language from those varieties of Norwegian and Swedish that use trilled. Only very few, middle-aged or elderly, speakers of Jutlandic retain a frontal which is then usually realised as a flapped  or approximant.

Prosody
Danish is characterized by a prosodic feature called stød (lit. "thrust"). This is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice. Some sources have described it as a glottal stop, but this is a very infrequent realization, and today phoneticians consider it a phonation type or a prosodic phenomenon. The occurrence is also dependent on stress, and some varieties also realize it primarily as a tone. The stød has phonemic status, since it serves as the sole distinguishing feature of words with different meanings in minimal pairs such as bønder ("peasants") with stød, versus bønner ("beans") without stød. The distribution of stød in the vocabulary is related to the distribution of the common Scandinavian pitch accents found in most dialects of Norwegian and Swedish.

Stress is phonemic and distinguishes words such as billigst "cheapest" and bilist  "car driver".

Intonation reflects the stress group, sentence type and prosodic phrase. In Copenhagen Standard Danish, the pitch pattern reaches its lowest peak within the stress group on the stressed syllable followed by its highest peak on the following unstressed syllable, after which it declines gradually until the next stress group. In interaction, pitch can mark e.g. the end of a story and turn-taking.

Grammar
Similarly to the case of English, modern Danish grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, a fairly fixed SVO word order and a complex syntax. Some traits typical of Germanic languages persist in Danish, such as the distinction between irregularly inflected strong stems inflected through ablaut or umlaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairs tager/tog ("takes/took") and fod/fødder ("foot/feet")) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such as elsker/elskede "love/loved", bil/biler "car/cars"). Vestiges of the Germanic case and gender system are found in the pronoun system. Typical for an Indo-European language, Danish follows accusative morphosyntactic alignment. Danish distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns, numerals, adjectives, adverbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and onomatopoeia.

Nouns
Nouns are inflected for number (singular vs. plural) and definiteness, and are classified into two grammatical genders. Only pronouns inflect for case, and the previous genitive case has become an enclitic. A distinctive feature of the Nordic languages, including Danish, is that the definite articles, which also mark noun gender, have developed into suffixes. Typical of Germanic languages plurals are either irregular or "strong" stems inflected through umlaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem) (e.g. fod/fødder "foot/feet", mand/mænd "man/men") or "weak" stems inflected through affixation (e.g. skib/skibe "ship/ships", kvinde/kvinder "woman/women").

Gender
Standard Danish has two nominal genders: common and neuter; the common gender arose as the historical feminine and masculine genders conflated into a single category. Some traditional dialects retain a three-way gender distinction, between masculine, feminine and neuter, and some dialects of Jutland have a masculine/feminine contrast. While the majority of Danish nouns (ca. 75%) have the common gender, and neuter is often used for inanimate objects, the genders of nouns are not generally predictable and must in most cases be memorized. The gender of a noun determines the form of adjectives that modify it, and the form of the definite suffixes.

Definiteness
Definiteness is marked by two mutually exclusive articles: either a postposed enclitic or a preposed article which is the obligatory way to mark definiteness when nouns are modified by an adjective. Neuter nouns take the clitic -et, and common gender nouns take -en. Indefinite nouns take the articles en (common gender) or et (neuter). Hence, the common gender noun en mand "a man" (indefinite) has the definite form manden "the man", whereas the neuter noun et hus "a house" (indefinite) has the definite form, "the house" (definite) huset.

Indefinite:
 * Jeg så et hus: "I saw a house"

Definite with enclitic article:
 * Jeg så huset: "I saw the house"

Definite with preposed demonstrative article:
 * Jeg så det store hus: "I saw the big house"

The plural definite ending is -(e)ne (e.g. drenge "boys > drengene "the boys" and piger "girls" > pigerne "the girls"), and nouns ending in -ere lose the last -e before adding the -ne suffix (e.g. danskere "Danes" > danskerne "the Danes"). When the noun is modified by an adjective, the definiteness is marked by the definite article den (common) or det (neuter) and the definite/plural form of the adjective: den store mand "the big man", det store hus "the big house".

Number
There are three different types of regular plurals: Class 1 forms the plural with the suffix -er (indefinite) and -erne (definite), Class 2 with the suffix -e (indefinite) and -ene (definite), and Class 3 takes no suffix for the plural indefinite form and -ene for the plural definite.

Most irregular nouns have an ablaut plural (i.e. with a change in the stem vowel), or combine ablaut stem-change with the suffix, and some have unique plural forms. Unique forms may be inherited (e.g. the plural of øje "eye", which is the old dual form øjne), or for loan words they may be borrowed from the donor language (e.g. the word konto "account" which is borrowed from Italian and uses the Italian masculine plural form konti "accounts").

Possession
Possessive phrases are formed with the enclitic -s, for example min fars hus "my father's house" where the noun far carries the possessive enclitic. This is however not an example of genitive case marking, because in the case of longer noun phrases the -s attaches to the last word in the phrase, which need not be the head-noun or even a noun at all. For example, the phrases kongen af Danmarks bolsjefabrik "the king of Denmark's candy factory", where the factory is owned by the king of Denmark, or det er pigen Uffe bor sammen meds datter "that is the daughter of the girl that Uffe lives with", where the enclitic attaches to a stranded preposition.

Nominal compounds
Like all Germanic languages, Danish forms compound nouns. These are represented in Danish orthography as one word, as in kvindehåndboldlandsholdet, "the female national handball team". In some cases, nouns are joined with s as a linking element, originally possessive in function, like landsmand (from land, "country", and mand, "man", meaning "compatriot"), but landmand (from same roots, meaning "farmer"). Some words are joined with the linking element e instead, like gæstebog (from gæst and bog, meaning "guest book"). There are also irregular linking elements.

Pronouns
As does English, the Danish pronominal system retains a distinction between nominative and oblique case. The nominative form of pronouns is used when pronouns occur as grammatical subject of a sentence (and only when non-coordinated and without a following modifier), and oblique forms are used for all non-subject functions including direct and indirect object, predicative, comparative and other types of constructions. The third person singular pronouns also distinguish between animate masculine (han "he"), animate feminine (hun "she") forms, as well as inanimate neuter (det "it") and inanimate common gender (den "it").

 * Jeg sover: "I sleep"
 * Du sover: "you sleep"
 * Jeg kysser dig: "I kiss you"
 * Du kysser mig: "you kiss me"

Possessive pronouns have independent and adjectival uses, but the same form. The form is used both adjectivally preceding a possessed noun (det er min hest "it is my horse"), and independently in place of the possessed noun (den er min "it is mine"). In the third person singular, sin is used when the possessor is also the subject of the sentence, whereas hans ("his"), hendes (her) and dens/dets "its" is used when the possessor is different from the grammatical subject.

 * Han tog sin hat: He took his (own) hat
 * Han tog hans hat: He took his hat (someone else's hat)

Verbs
Danish verbs are morphologically simple, marking very few grammatical categories. They do not mark person or number of subject, although the marking of plural subjects was still used in writing as late as the 19th century. Verbs have a past, non-past and infinitive form, past and present participle forms, and a passive, and an imperative.

Tense, aspect, mood, and voice
Verbs can be divided into two main classes, the strong/irregular verbs and the regular/weak verbs. The regular verbs are also divided into two classes, those that take the past suffix -te and those that take the suffix -ede.

The infinitive always ends in a vowel, usually -e (pronounced ), infinitive forms are preceded by the article at (pronounced ) in some syntactic functions. The non-past or present tense takes the suffix -r, except for a few strong verbs that have irregular non-past forms. The past form does not necessarily mark past tense, but also counterfactuality or conditionality, and the non-past has many uses besides present tense time reference.

The present participle ends in -ende (e.g. løbende "running"), and the past participle ends in -et (e.g. løbet "run"), -t (e.g. købt "bought"). The Perfect is constructed with at have ("to have") and participial forms, like in English. But some transitive verbs form the perfect using at være ("to be") instead, and some may use both with a difference in meaning.

 * Hun har gået. Flyet har fløjet: She has walked. The plane has flown
 * Hun er gået. Flyet er fløjet: She has left. The plane has taken off
 * Hun havde gået. Flyet havde fløjet: She had walked. The plane had flown
 * Hun var gået. Flyet var fløjet: She had left. The plane had taken off

The passive form takes the suffix -s: avisen læses hver dag ("the newspaper is read every day"). Another passive construction uses the auxiliary verb at blive "to become": avisen bliver læst hver dag.

The imperative form is the infinitive without the final schwa-vowel, with stød potentially being applied depending on syllable structure.:
 * løb!: "run!"

Numerals
Certain numerals are formed on the basis of a vigesimal system with various rules. In the word forms of numbers above 20, the units are stated before the tens, so 21 is rendered enogtyve, literally "one and twenty".

The numeral halvanden means $1 1/2$ (literally "half second", implying "one plus half of the second one"). The numerals halvtredje ($2 1/2$), halvfjerde ($3 1/2$) and halvfemte ($4 1/2$) are obsolete, but still implicitly used in the vigesimal system described below. Similarly, the temporal designation (klokken) halv tre, literally "half three (o'clock)", is half past two.

One peculiar feature of the Danish language is that the numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 are (as are the French numerals from 80 through 99) based on a vigesimal system, meaning that the score (20) is used as a base unit in counting. Tres (short for tre-sinds-tyve, "three times twenty") means 60, while 50 is halvtreds (short for halvtredje-sinds-tyve, "half third times twenty", implying two score plus half of the third score). The ending sindstyve meaning "times twenty" is no longer included in cardinal numbers, but may still be used in ordinal numbers. Thus, in modern Danish fifty-two is usually rendered as tooghalvtreds from the now obsolete tooghalvtredsindstyve, whereas 52nd is either tooghalvtredsende or tooghalvtredsindstyvende. Twenty is tyve (derived from Old Danish tiughu, Old Norse form tuttugu, meaning 'two tens' ), while thirty is tredive (Old Danish þrjatiughu, "three tens"), and forty is fyrre (Old Danish fyritiughu, "four tens", still used today as the archaism fyrretyve). Thus, the suffix -tyve should be understood as a plural of ti (10), though to modern Danes tyve means 20, making it hard to explain why fyrretyve is 40 (four tens) and not 80 (four twenties).

For large numbers (one billion or larger), Danish uses the long scale, so that the short-scale billion (1,000,000,000) is called milliard, and the short-scale trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is billion.

Syntax
Danish basic constituent order in simple sentences with both a subject and an object is Subject–Verb–Object. However, Danish is also a V2 language, which means that the verb must always be the second constituent of the sentence. Following the Danish grammarian Paul Diderichsen Danish grammar tends to be analyzed as consisting of slots or fields, and in which certain types of sentence material can be moved to the pre-verbal (or foundation) field to achieve different pragmatic effects. Usually the sentence material occupying the preverbal slot has to be pragmatically marked, usually either new information or topics. There is no rule that subjects must occur in the preverbal slot, but since subject and topic often coincide, they often do. Therefore, whenever any sentence material that is not the subject occurs in the preverbal position the subject is demoted to postverbal position and the sentence order becomes VSO.

 * Peter (S) så (V) Jytte (O): "Peter saw Jytte"

but

 * I går så (V) Peter (S) Jytte (O): "Yesterday, Peter saw Jytte"

When there is no pragmatically marked constituents in the sentence to take the preverbal slot (for example when all the information is new), the slot has to take a dummy subject "der".

 * der kom en pige ind ad døren: there came a girl in through the door, "A girl came in the door"

Main clauses
describes the basic order of sentence constituents in main clauses as comprising the following 8 positions:

Position 0 is not part of the sentence and can only contain sentential connectors (such as conjunctions or interjections). Position 1 can contain any sentence constituent. Position 2 can only contain the finite verb. Position 3 is the subject position, unless the subject is fronted to occur in position 1. Position 4 can only contain light adverbs and the negation. Position 5 is for non-finite verbs, such as auxiliaries. Position 6 is the position of direct and indirect objects, and position 7 is for heavy adverbial constituents.

Questions with wh-words are formed differently from yes/no questions. In wh-questions the question word occupies the preverbal field, regardless of whether its grammatical role is subject or object or adverbial. In yes/no questions the preverbal field is empty, so that the sentence begins with the verb.

Wh-question:
 * hvem så hun?: whom saw she, "whom did she see?"
 * så hun ham?: saw she him?, "did she see him?"

Subordinate clauses
In subordinate clauses, the word order differs from that of main clauses. In the subordinate clause structure the verb is preceded by the subject and any light adverbial material (e.g. negation). Complement clauses begin with the particle at in the "connector field".

 * Han sagde, at han ikke ville gå: he said that he not would go, "He said that he did not want to go"

Relative clauses are marked by the relative pronouns som or der which occupy the preverbal slot:

 * ''Jeg kender en mand, som bor i Helsingør: "I know a man who lives in Elsinore"

Writing system and alphabet

The oldest preserved examples of written Danish (from the Iron and Viking Ages) are in the Runic alphabet. The introduction of Christianity also brought the Latin script to Denmark. And at the end of the High Middle Ages, Runes had more or less been replaced by Latin letters.

Danish orthography is conservative, using most of the conventions established in the 16th century. The spoken language however has changed a lot since then, creating a gap between the spoken and written languages. Since 1955, Dansk Sprognævn has been the official language council in Denmark.

The modern Danish alphabet is similar to the English one, with three additional letters:, , and , which come at the end of the alphabet, in that order. The letters, , , and  are only used in loan words. A spelling reform in 1948 introduced the letter, already in use in Norwegian and Swedish, into the Danish alphabet to replace the digraph. The old usage continues to occur in some personal and geographical names; for example, the name of the city of Aalborg is spelled with following a decision by the City Council in the 1970s and Aarhus decided to go back to  in 2011. When representing the same sound, is treated like  in alphabetical sorting, though it appears to be two letters. When the letters are not available due to technical limitations, they are often replaced by (for ),  or  (for ), and  (for ), respectively.

The same spelling reform changed the spelling of a few common words, such as the past tense vilde (would), kunde (could) and skulde (should), to their current forms of ville, kunne and skulle (making them identical to the infinitives in writing, as they are in speech). Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs slightly, particularly with the phonetic spelling of loanwords; for example the spelling of station and garage in Danish remains identical to other languages, whereas in Norwegian, they are transliterated as stasjon and garasje.

Research
Danish is a well-studied language, and multiple universities in Denmark have departments devoted to Danish or linguistics with active research projects on the language, and there are many dictionaries and technological resources on the language. The language council Dansk Sprognævn also publishes research on the language both nationally and internationally. There are also research centers focusing specifically on the dialects: The Peter Skautrup center at Aarhus University describes the dialects and varieties of the Jutlandic peninsula and is working on a dictionary of Jutlandic, while the Center for Dialect Research at University of Copenhagen works on the Insular Danish varieties. The Puzzle of Danish - a research project at Aarhus University, funded by the Danish Research Council - investigates whether the challenging sound structure of Danish has an impact on how native speakers process and produce Danish language. Their findings suggest that native speakers of Danish tend to use contextual cues to process Danish sounds and sentences, more than native speakers of other comparable languages, and that they produce more lexically, syntactically, and semantically redundant language in conversation.

Multiple corpora of Danish language data are available. The Danish Gigaword project provides a curated corpus of a billion words. KorpusDK is a corpus of written texts in Danish. There are also a number of conversations available in SamtaleBanken, the Danish part of TalkBank.

Academic descriptions of the language are published both in Danish and English. The most complete grammar is the Grammatik over det Danske Sprog (Grammar of the Danish Language) by Erik Hansen & Lars Heltoft, and it is written in Danish and contains over 1800 pages. Multiple phonologies have been written, most importantly by Basbøll and Grønnum, based on work that used to take place at the former Institute of Phonetics at the University of Copenhagen.

Example text
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Danish:
 * Alle mennesker er født frie og lige i værdighed og rettigheder. De er udstyret med fornuft og samvittighed, og de bør handle mod hverandre i en broderskabets ånd.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
 * All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

title: Danish language


text:
Decade (Neil Young album)

Decade is a compilation album by Canadian–American musician Neil Young, originally released in 1977 as a triple album and later issued on two compact discs. It contains 35 of Young's songs recorded between 1966 and 1976, among them five tracks that had been unreleased up to that point. It peaked at No. 43 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, and was certified platinum by the RIAA in 1986.

History
Compiled by Young himself, with his hand-written liner notes about each track, Decade represents almost every album from his career and various affiliations through 1977 with the exception of 4 Way Street and Time Fades Away. Of the previously unreleased songs, "Down to the Wire" features the New Orleans pianist Dr. John with Buffalo Springfield on an item from their shelved Stampede album; "Love Is a Rose" was a minor hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1975; "Winterlong" received a cover by Pixies on the Neil Young tribute album from 1989, The Bridge; and "Campaigner" is a Young song critical of Richard Nixon. The track "Long May You Run" is a different mix to that found on the album of the same name, featuring the harmonies of the full Crosby Stills & Nash before David Crosby and Graham Nash left the recording sessions.

For many years, Decade was the only Neil Young compilation album available. A 1993 compilation called Lucky Thirteen was released, but it only covered Young's 1982–1988 output. It was not until 2004 that Reprise Records released a single-disc retrospective of his best-known tracks, titled Greatest Hits. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Young promised fans a follow-up to the original Decade collection, provisionally titled Decade II; eventually, this idea was scrapped in favor of a much more comprehensive anthology to be titled Archives, spanning his entire career and ranging in size from a box set to an entire series of audio and/or video releases. The first release of archival material since Decade and Lucky Thirteen would appear in 2006, Live at the Fillmore East, a recording from a 1970 concert featuring Crazy Horse with Danny Whitten. Several other archival live releases followed, and in 2009 the first of several planned multi-disc box sets, The Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972, was issued. In April 2017 Decade was reissued on vinyl as a limited-edition Record Store Day release, with remastered vinyl and CD editions planned for general release in June 2017.

Alternate early version
Initially, Decade was to be released in 1976, but was pulled at the last minute by Young. It was shelved until the following year, where it appeared with two songs removed from the original track list (a live version of "Don't Cry No Tears" recorded in Japan in 1976, and a live version of "Pushed It Over the End" recorded in 1974). Also removed were the following comments on those two songs and Time Fades Away, from Young's handwritten liner notes:

"Time Fades Away. No songs from this album are included here. It was recorded on my biggest tour ever, 65 shows in 90 days. Money hassles among everyone concerned ruined this tour and record for me but I released it anyway so you folks could see what could happen if you lose it for a while. I was becoming more interested in an audio verité approach than satisfying the public demands for a repetition of Harvest.

Don't Cry No Tears. Initially titled 'I Wonder,' this song was written in 1964. One of my first songs. This is a live recording from Japan with Crazy Horse.

Pushed It over the End. Recorded live on the road in Chicago, 1974. Thanks to Crosby & Nash's help on the overdubbed chorus, I was able to complete this work. I wrote it for Patty Hearst and her countless brothers and sisters. Also, I wrote it for myself and the increasing distance between me and you."

Reception
The album has been lauded in many quarters as one of the best examples of a career retrospective for a rock artist, and as a template for the box set collections that would follow in the 1980s and beyond. However, in the original article on Young from the first edition of the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll and a subsequent article in the 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide, critic Dave Marsh used this album to accuse Young of deliberately manufacturing a self-mythology, arguing that while his highlights could be seen to place him on a level with other artists from his generation like Bob Dylan or The Beatles, the particulars of his catalogue did not bear this out. The magazine has since excised the article from subsequent editions of the Illustrated History book.

Track listing
All songs written by Neil Young.

Side one

 * 1) "Down to the Wire" – 2:25
 * 2) *Previously unreleased (1967); performed with Buffalo Springfield members Stephen Stills and Richie Furay along with Dr. John; planned for inclusion on the unreleased album Stampede
 * 3) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Stephen Stills – guitar, vocal; Richie Furay – vocal; Mac Rebennack – piano; Bobby West – bass; Jesse Hill – drums, timpani
 * 4) * Recorded at Gold Star Studios & Columbia Recording Studio, Hollywood, 3/28/1967, 3/30-4/18/1967.
 * 5) "Burned" – 2:14
 * 6) *Performed by Buffalo Springfield; appears on the album Buffalo Springfield (1966)
 * 7) * Neil Young – guitar, piano, vocal; Stephen Stills – guitar, vocal; Richie Furay – guitar, vocal; Bruce Palmer – bass; Dewey Martin – drums
 * 8) * Recorded at Gold Star Recording Studios, Hollywood, 8/15/1966.
 * 9) "Mr. Soul" – 2:41
 * 10) *Performed by Buffalo Springfield; recorded live in the studio in New York City, with guitar overdubs added subsequently; appears on the album Buffalo Springfield Again (1967)
 * 11) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Stephen Stills – guitar, vocal; Richie Furay – guitar, vocal; Bruce Palmer – bass; Dewey Martin – drums
 * 12) * Recorded at Atlantic Studios, New York City, 1/9/1967.
 * 13) "Broken Arrow" – 6:13
 * 14) *Performed by Buffalo Springfield; appears on the album Buffalo Springfield Again
 * 15) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Richie Furay – guitar, vocal; Stephen Stills – guitar; Chris Sarns – guitar; Don Randi – piano, organ; Bruce Palmer – bass; Dewey Martin – Drums, vocal; Also – strings. Jazz theme: Don Randi – piano; Jim Horn – clarinet; Hal Blaine – drums; Also – bass
 * 16) * Recorded at Columbia Recording Studio & Sunset Sound, Hollywood, 8/25/1967, 9/5-18/1967.
 * 17) "Expecting to Fly" – 3:44
 * 18) *Appears on the album Buffalo Springfield Again but no band member other than Neil Young appears on the track.
 * 19) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Jack Nitzsche – electric piano; Don Randi – piano, harpsichord; Russ Titelman – guitar; Carol Kaye – bass; Jim Gordon – drums; Choir – Merry Clayton, Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Gloria Jones, Sherlie Matthews, Gracia Nitzsche; Also – English horn, vibes, timpani, strings
 * 20) * Recorded at Sunset Sound, Hollywood, 5/6/1967.
 * 21) "Sugar Mountain" – 5:43
 * 22) *Released as the B-side to "The Loner", February 21, 1969
 * 23) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal
 * 24) * Recorded live in concert at the Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 11/10/1968.

Side two

 * 1) "I Am a Child" – 2:17
 * 2) *Appears on the Buffalo Springfield album Last Time Around (1968) but features no members of the band other than Neil Young and drummer Dewey Martin
 * 3) * Neil Young – guitar, harmonica, vocal; Gary Marker – bass; Dewey Martin – drums
 * 4) * Recorded at Sunset Sound, Hollywood, 2/5/1968.
 * 5) "The Loner" – 3:50
 * 6) *Appears on the album Neil Young (1968)
 * 7) * Neil Young – guitar, pipe organ, vocal; Jim Messina – bass; George Grantham – drums; Also – strings and celli
 * 8) * Recorded at TTG Recording Studios, Los Angeles, 9/28/1968.
 * 9) "The Old Laughing Lady" – 5:59/5:35**
 * 10) *Appears on the album Neil Young (** – Edited version on 1988 CD reissue)
 * 11) * Neil Young – vocal; Ry Cooder – guitar; Jack Nitzsche – electric piano; Carol Kaye – bass; Earl Palmer – drums; Choir: Merry Clayton, Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Gloria Jones, Sherlie Matthews, and Gracia Nitzsche; Also – trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, French horn, clarinet, strings and timpani
 * 12) * Recorded at Sunwest Recording Studios, Hollywood, 10/17/1968.
 * 13) "Cinnamon Girl" – 2:59
 * 14) *Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)
 * 15) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Danny Whitten – guitar, vocal; Billy Talbot – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 16) * Recorded at Wally Heider Recording Studios, Hollywood, 3/20/1969.
 * 17) "Down by the River" – 9:16/9:00**
 * 18) *Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
 * 19) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Danny Whitten – guitar, vocal; Billy Talbot – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 20) * Recorded at Wally Heider Recording Studios, Hollywood, 1/17/1969.

Side three

 * 1) "Cowgirl in the Sand" – 10:01
 * 2) *Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
 * 3) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Danny Whitten – guitar, vocal; Billy Talbot – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 4) * Recorded at Wally Heider Recording Studios, Hollywood, 1/18/1969.
 * 5) "I Believe in You" – 3:27
 * 6) *Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album After the Gold Rush (1970)
 * 7) * Neil Young – guitar, piano, vibes, vocal; Danny Whitten – guitar, vocal; Billy Talbot – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 8) * Recorded at Sunset Sound, Hollywood, 8/5/1969.
 * 9) "After the Gold Rush" – 3:45
 * 10) *Appears on the album After the Gold Rush
 * 11) * Neil Young – piano, vocal; Bill Peterson – flugelhorn
 * 12) * Recorded at Home Studio, Topanga, CA, 3/12/1970.
 * 13) "Southern Man" – 5:31
 * 14) *Appears on the album After the Gold Rush
 * 15) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Nils Lofgren – piano, vocal; Greg Reeves – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal; Danny Whitten – vocal
 * 16) * Recorded at Home Studio, Topanga, CA, 3/19/1970.
 * 17) "Helpless" – 3:34
 * 18) *Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; appears on the album Déjà Vu (1970)
 * 19) * Neil Young – acoustic guitar, harmonica, vocal; Stephen Stills – lead guitar, piano, vocal; David Crosby – vocal; Graham Nash – guitar, vocal; Greg Reeves – bass; Dallas Taylor – drums
 * 20) * Recorded at Wally Heider Studios, San Francisco, 11/7/1969.

Side four

 * 1) "Ohio" – 2:56
 * 2) *Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; released as a non-album single in June, 1970 and later appeared on So Far, 1974
 * 3) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Stephen Stills – guitar, vocal; David Crosby – guitar, vocal; Graham Nash – vocal; Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels – bass; Johnny Barbata – drums
 * 4) * Recorded at The Record Plant, Hollywood, 5/21/1970.
 * 5) "Soldier" – 2:28
 * 6) *Edited version originally from the album Journey Through the Past (1972)
 * 7) * Neil Young – piano, vocal
 * 8) * Recorded at Sawdust Burner, Kings Mountain, CA, 11/15/1971.
 * 9) "Old Man" – 3:21
 * 10) *Appears on the album Harvest (1972)
 * 11) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar; James McMahon – piano; Tim Drummond – bass; Kenny Buttrey – drums; Linda Ronstadt – vocal; James Taylor – banjo, vocal
 * 12) * Recorded at Quadrafonic Sound Studios, Nashville, 2/6/1971.
 * 13) "A Man Needs a Maid" – 3:58
 * 14) *Appears on the album Harvest
 * 15) * Neil Young – piano, vocal; with the London Symphony Orchestra
 * 16) * Recorded at Barking Town Hall, London, 3/1/1971.
 * 17) "Harvest" – 3:08
 * 18) *Appears on the album Harvest
 * 19) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar; John Harris – piano; Tim Drummond – bass; Kenny Buttrey – drums
 * 20) * Recorded at Quadrafonic Sound Studios, Nashville, 4/4/1971.
 * 21) "Heart of Gold" – 3:06
 * 22) *Appears on the album Harvest
 * 23) * Neil Young – guitar, harmonica, vocal; Teddy Irwin – guitar; Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar; Tim Drummond – bass; Kenny Buttrey – drums; Linda Ronstadt – vocal; James Taylor – vocal
 * 24) * Recorded at Quadrafonic Sound Studios, Nashville, 2/8/1971.
 * 25) "Star of Bethlehem" – 2:46
 * 26) *Appears on the album American Stars 'n Bars (1977); originally recorded in November 1974
 * 27) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal, harmonica; Ben Keith – dobro, vocal; Tim Drummond – bass; Karl T. Himmel – drums; Emmylou Harris – vocal
 * 28) * Recorded at Quadrafonic Sound Studios, Nashville, 12/13/1974.

Side five

 * 1) "The Needle and the Damage Done" – 2:02
 * 2) *Appears on the album Harvest
 * 3) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal
 * 4) * Recorded live in concert at the Royce Hall, University of California, Westwood, Los Angeles, 1/30/1971.
 * 5) "Tonight's the Night" (Part 1) – 4:41
 * 6) *Appears on the album Tonight's the Night (1975); originally recorded in 1973
 * 7) * Neil Young – piano, vocal; Nils Lofgren – guitar; Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar, vocal; Billy Talbot – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 8) * Recorded at S.I.R., Hollywood, 8/26/1973.
 * 9) "Tired Eyes" – 4:33
 * 10) *Appears on the album Tonight's the Night
 * 11) * Neil Young – guitar, harmonica, vocal; Nils Lofgren – piano, vocal; Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar, vocal; Billy Talbot – bass, vocal; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 12) * Recorded at S.I.R., Hollywood, 8/26/1973.
 * 13) "Walk On" – 2:40
 * 14) *Appears on the album On the Beach (1974)
 * 15) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Ben Keith – slide guitar, vocal; Billy Talbot – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 16) * Recorded at Studio, Broken Arrow Ranch, 11/30/1973.
 * 17) "For the Turnstiles" – 3:01
 * 18) *Appears on the album On the Beach
 * 19) * Neil Young – banjo guitar, vocal; Ben Keith – dobro, vocal
 * 20) * Recorded at Studio, Broken Arrow Ranch, 12/14/1973.
 * 21) "Winterlong" – 3:05
 * 22) *Previously unreleased; appeared on certain acetate pressings of Tonight's the Night
 * 23) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar, vocal; Billy Talbot – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 24) * Recorded at Studio, Broken Arrow Ranch, 11/28/1973.
 * 25) "Deep Forbidden Lake" – 3:39
 * 26) *Previously unreleased
 * 27) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Ben Keith – pedal steel guitar; Tim Drummond – bass; Karl T. Himmel – drums
 * 28) * Recorded at Quadrafonic Sound Studios, Nashville, 12/13/1974.

Side six

 * 1) "Like a Hurricane" – 8:16
 * 2) *Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; previously unreleased; different lead vocal dub from version on American Stars 'n Bars (Regular version on 1988 reissue CD)
 * 3) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Frank "Poncho" Sampedro – Stringman, vocals; Billy Talbot – bass; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 4) * Recorded at Studio, Broken Arrow Ranch, 11/29/1975.
 * 5) "Love Is a Rose" – 2:16
 * 6) *Previously unreleased; later released on Homegrown (2020)
 * 7) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal, harmonica; Tim Drummond – bass
 * 8) * Recorded at Studio, Broken Arrow Ranch, Woodside, CA, 6/16/1974.
 * 9) "Cortez the Killer" – 7:29
 * 10) *Performed by Neil Young & Crazy Horse; appears on the album Zuma (1975)
 * 11) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal; Frank "Poncho" Sampedro – guitar; Billy Talbot – bass, vocal; Ralph Molina – drums, vocal
 * 12) * Recorded at House, Point Dume, CA, 5/22/1975.
 * 13) "Campaigner" – 3:30 / 4:19 [US LP test pressings and first LP pressings in Germany included an unedited 4:19 version with an extra verse]
 * 14) *Previously unreleased; unedited version later released on Hitchhiker (2017)
 * 15) * Neil Young – guitar, vocal
 * 16) * Recorded at Indigo Ranch Recording Studio, Malibu, 8/11/1976.
 * 17) "Long May You Run" – 3:48
 * 18) *Performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; previously unreleased; original mix (without Crosby and Nash's vocals) appears on the Stills-Young Band album Long May You Run (1976)
 * 19) * Neil Young – guitar, harmonica, vocal; Stephen Stills – guitar, vocal; Joe Lala – percussion, vocal; Joe Vitale – drums, vocal; George "Chocolate" Perry – bass, vocal; Jerry Aiello – organ; David Crosby – vocal; Graham Nash – vocal
 * 20) * Recorded at Criteria Studios, Miami, 2/5/1976.

Personnel

 * Neil Young – guitar, harmonica, piano, vibes, banjo, pipe organ, vocals
 * Billy Talbot – bass, vocals
 * Bobby West, Bruce Palmer, Calvin "Fuzzy" Samuels, Carol Kaye, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Gary Marker, George "Chocolate" Perry, Greg Reeves, Jim Fielder, Jim Messina, Tim Drummond – bass
 * Jim Horn – clarinet
 * Dallas Taylor, Dewey Martin, Earl Palmer, George Grantham, Hal Blaine, Jim Keltner, Joe Vitale, John Barbata, Karl T. Himmel, Kenny Buttrey – drums
 * Ralph Molina – drums, vocals
 * Jesse Hill – drums, timpani
 * Jack Nitzsche – electric piano
 * Bill Peterson – flugelhorn
 * Chris Sarns, Ry Cooder, Teddy Irwin – guitar
 * Danny Whitten – guitar, vocals
 * Jerry Aiello – organ
 * Joe Lala – percussion
 * James McMahon, John Harris, Mac Rebennack, Spooner Oldham – piano
 * Nils Lofgren – piano, guitar, vocals
 * Ben Keith – slide/pedal steel guitars, Dobro, vocals
 * James Taylor – banjo-guitar, vocals
 * David Crosby, Graham Nash, Richie Furay – guitar, vocals
 * Stephen Stills – guitar, piano, vocals
 * Merry Clayton, Brenda Holloway, Patrice Holloway, Gloria Richetta Jones, Sherlie Matthews, Gracia Nitzsche, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris – vocals
 * London Symphony Orchestra

Additional roles
 * Neil Young, Elliot Mazer, Tim Mulligan, David Briggs, Jack Nitzsche, Ahmet Ertegun, Charles Greene, Brian Stone, Ry Cooder, Henry Lewy, L.A. Johnson, Kendall Pacios, Stephen Stills, Don Gehman – production
 * Joel Bernstein, Gary Burden, Henry Diltz – photography
 * Tom Wilkes – photography, cover layout
 * Tommy Grekel – album packaging

title: Decade (Neil Young album)