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
The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of ...
under the leadership of
Brigham Young
Brigham Young (; June 1, 1801August 29, 1877) was an American religious leader and politician. He was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), from 1847 until his death in 1877. During his time as chu ...
, the second
president of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...
(LDS Church).
George D. Watt is reported to have been the most actively involved in the development of the script,
as well as being its first serious user.
In public statements, Young claimed the alphabet was intended to replace the traditional
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
with an alternative, more phonetically accurate alphabet for the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
. This would offer immigrants an opportunity to learn to read and write English, he said, the orthography of which is often less phonetically consistent than those of many other languages.
Similar
neographies
A constructed script is a new writing system specifically created by an individual or group, rather than having evolved as part of a language or culture like a natural script. Some are designed for use with constructed languages, although several ...
have not been uncommon, the most well-known of which for English is the
Shavian alphabet.
The Deseret alphabet was an outgrowth of Young's, and the early LDS Church's,
idealism
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ...
and
utopianism
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island soci ...
. Young and the
Mormon pioneers believed "all aspects of life" were in need of reform, and the Deseret alphabet was just one of many ways they sought to bring about a complete "
transformation in society".
Young also prescribed the learning of Deseret to 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."
During the alphabet's heyday between 1854 and 1869, books, newspapers, street signs and correspondence used the new letters, but despite heavy and costly promotion by the early LDS Church, the alphabet never enjoyed prolonged widespread use and has been regarded by historians as a failure.
History
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
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...
(LDS Church) which set about building a new society in the Utah desert after the death of the church's founder,
Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was 24, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, h ...
. The Deseret alphabet was just one of many ways that the Mormon pioneers tried to bring about a complete "
transformation in society", as an outgrowth of their
idealism
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ...
and
utopianism
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia'', describing a fictional island soci ...
.
The Deseret alphabet was developed primarily by a committee made up of the board of regents of the
University of Deseret
The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of ...
, members of which included church leaders Brigham Young,
Parley P. Pratt and
Heber C. Kimball. According to
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-d ...
professor Richard G. Moore, most scholars believe that
George D. Watt's contribution to the actual form the alphabet took was the greatest;
he furthermore "plant
dthe idea of
spelling reform
A spelling reform is a deliberate, often authoritatively sanctioned or mandated change to spelling rules. Proposals for such reform are fairly common, and over the years, many languages have undergone such reforms. Recent high-profile examples a ...
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 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
Willard Richards, 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 that in his view "those characters...seem like putting old wine into new 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."
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
Julius Lucius Brenchley (30 November 1816 – 24 February 1873), of Maidstone, was a 19th-century English explorer, naturalist and author.
Life
Born at Kingsley House, Maidstone, Kent, Julius Brenchley was educated at Maidstone Grammar School ...
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
The Utah State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Utah. It is a bicameral body, comprising the Utah House of Representatives, with 75 state representatives, and the Utah Senate, with 29 state senators. There are no term ...
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
Lehi (; he, לח"י – לוחמי חרות ישראל ''Lohamei Herut Israel – Lehi'', "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi"), often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,"This group was known to its friends as LEHI and to its enemie ...
,
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
George Albert Smith (June 26, 1817 – September 1, 1875) was an early leader in the Latter Day Saint movement. He served in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and as a member of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...
, 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
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...
. 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
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
based
font foundry, to design more pleasing type. The result was the
Bodoni-esque font (at right) 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,
utto 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. It sat unappreciated in handwritten form at the
LDS Church Archives
The Church History Library (CHL) is a research center and archives building housing materials chronicling the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The library is owned by the Church and opened in 2009 in downt ...
until 2014, when Kenneth R. Beesley, a
writing system researcher and computer scientist, noticed its significance 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
A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution.
In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or element ...
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
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...
, ''
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
''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pen ...
'', 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. As long as a
freely licensed Deseret alphabet font and a font of the standard orthography have similar inked surface areas, printing a book in the Deseret alphabet using modern technology would have a similar cost as printing a book in the standard orthography.
Film director Trent Harris used the Deseret alphabet in his 1994 satire of Mormon theology, ''
Plan 10 from Outer Space
''Plan 10 from Outer Space'' is a 1994 low budget science fiction film starring Karen Black as Nehor and written and directed by Trent Harris. The film is a surreal satire of Mormon theology. The film has no connection to ''Plan 9 from Outer S ...
'', where it features as an alien language used on a mysterious "Plaque of
Kolob
Kolob is a star
or planet described in the Book of Abraham, a sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement. Several Latter Day Saint denominations hold the Book of Abraham to have been translated from an Egyptian papyrus scroll by Joseph Smit ...
".
During the 1996 Utah Centennial celebration, an
activity book
An activity book is a type of book, generally aimed at children, which contains interactive content such as games, puzzles, quizzes, pictures to colour and other elements that involve writing or drawing in the book itself. The book may, or may no ...
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
heirname 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
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
.
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
Fontographer (FOG) is a font editor for Windows and macOS; it is used to create digital fonts. It was originally developed by Altsys but is now owned by FontLab Ltd.
History Altsys Corporation
In December 1984, James R. Von Ehr II founded th ...
while working on ''
Plan 10 from Outer Space
''Plan 10 from Outer Space'' is a 1994 low budget science fiction film starring Karen Black as Nehor and written and directed by Trent Harris. The film is a surreal satire of Mormon theology. The film has no connection to ''Plan 9 from Outer S ...
''.
Kenneth R. Beesley created a
Metafont (and thus, LaTeX-compatible) font called in 2002.
All computers running
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
's
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...
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
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...
Unicode fonts for the alphabet, which he collectively terms the "Bee Fonts."
There also exist
free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...
fonts for the Deseret alphabet.
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
, 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
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired ...
font called "Analecta" as part of his
Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts project, which supports the
Coptic,
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
, 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
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
, 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
wine–whine merger. Those who do exhibit the merger might instead prefer the spelling dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...
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
.
in the modern era: they are no longer distinguished in many dialects of English.
Speakers who exhibit the