The if...and conditionals of Helaman 12

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hey Sethbag,

The Egyptian characters interpreted in the Alphabet and Grammar are assigned a phonetic component in addition to their conceptual meaning, so I suppose that it might be possible even under Joseph Smith's weird pseudo-Egyptian system to spell out Hebrew words with hieroglyphs. It might even theoretically be more compact than Hebrew, since under the Smith system each hieroglyph was actually a composite of several smaller graphemes-- as simple, for example, as a line or dot-- each of which was thought to have its own semantic and phonetic content. But as you say, the Egyptian Alphabet is a ridiculous, impossible system that certainly doesn't reflect any historical reality.

Best,

-Chris

[_Sethbag]

We'd have to believe that these phonetic symbols


are significantly more space-efficient than ones like these?

[_CaliforniaKid]

If we believed Joseph Smith knew what the hell he was talking about, then yes, we'd have to believe that. :-)

As an example, the first symbol in the Hor papyrus Joseph Smith broke down into beth-iota-zubzooloan-ki-hi-ash-beth-ku!!!

[_Kevin Graham]

Looks like this topic is being resurrected at MAD again.