The Deseret Alphabet was a writing system, proposed and developed by the Mormon Pioneers of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) Church, to replace the Latin Alphabet and thereby reform English writing.
The name βDeseretβ comes from its birthplace, the town Deseret in Millard County, Utah, which itself is named from the Book of Mormon. In the Book of Mormon, the Jaredites speak Adamic, literally the language of Adam, the language it was proposed that either Adam created in the Garden of Eden, or the language with which God spoke to Adam. Some LDS leaders claimed to have been shown this universal Adamic language in revelations. As a result, the proposed LDS state was named βDeseretβ, which supposedly in the Adamic language meant βhoneybeeβ, as a symbol of industry and a reminder to LDS members that they should strive for productivity and self-sufficiency.Β
The Birth Of An Alphabet
The reform was headed by Brigham Young, president of the LDS church at the time, and was developed between 1847 and 1854 predominantly by George D. Watt. It was proposed to ameliorate the problems with the standard English spelling system, which would make the acquisition of English easier for both children and non-English-speaking immigrants entering the community.Β
However, promoting the accessibility of written English was not the only motive behind this redesign which cost approximately $20,000 at the time, or $544,880 today (Atlas Obscura).
The Deseret Alphabet was also a product of the utopian idealism that characterised the early LDS church. It was believed that society needed a complete transformation for the new millennium in preparation for an imminent Second Coming of Christ.
ππ―π π¨ππ―π» (Deseret) and its Beauty
English orthography (the conventional spelling system of a language) was identified as having two predominant problems:
- One character can produce many different sounds (say cat, care, case, and car out loud and note the different sounds the a makes)
- One sound can be produced by many different characters and character combinations (for example c, k, q, ck, ch, kk, and kh can all produce the same sound β compare cot, kid, quick, school, trekking and khaki)
As a result, the creation of the Deseret Alphabet began with a focus on Pitmanβs English phonetic alphabet, which was made to resolve the ambiguities in English orthography.Β
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Where the characters themselves for the Deseret alphabet came from is unknown, however we know that they were designed to be completely unique from the standard English Alphabet. Despite this, an element of Pitmanβs phonetic alphabet survived β that one letter should equal one sound.
This trace of the phonetic alphabet can be seen below in the passage from Aliceβs Adventures in Wonderland. Looking closely, it can be seen that fewer characters are present in the Deseret script than its corresponding English, owing to the simplified orthography.Β
Accessibility or Isolation?
The question of why so much money and time was invested into a new writing system by the LDS Church does not have a clear answer. Like most questions about causation, the answer is likely a combination of reasons, in this case originating from the LDS ideology which focused on the need to reform society for a second coming of Christ.
Critics have suggested that the true motivation for creating the Deseret Alphabet was as a method of isolating the LDS Church community, both to conceal LDS writings from the outside, and to isolate its members from being able to read outside writings.
Some scholars argue the motivation was purely to ease the difficulty of learning English, in particular for the many LDS converts coming to Deseret who did not speak English.
Fall and Rescue
The reasons the Deseret Alphabet is not used today are many and not entirely surprising. Not only was it expensive to reprint extant literature, and the alphabets lacking aesthetics, but the biggest reason is the specificity of its use. The alphabet was created for the LDS Church meaning it would remain isolated to this small community and not becoming a widespread writing system. Additionally, the alphabet was designed according to the accent of the Deseret region which makes the script relatively inaccessible to English speakers from any other region. As a result, the alphabet died with Brigham Young in 1877.
However, the Deseret Alphabet is not entirely lost β we still have much writing in the alphabet, and the alphabet can be found in traces of the accent and colloquialisms of Utah. Many people with a Mormon or Utah background retain traces of Deseret pronunciation, with words such as corner, horse, and Mormon sounding like carner, harse, and Marmon.
Neil Alexander Walkerβs βA Complete Guide to Reading and Writing the Deseret Alphabetβ provides the most accessible introduction to the study of the Deseret Alphabet. Learning an obsolete writing system may seem entirely pointless, but why not indulge in the allure of the beautifully alien Deseret Alphabet, purely to uncover the mysteries of a language forgotten to time.
