The Deseret alphabet (;. Converted to IPA from dĕz-a-rĕt′ according to key on p. 533. 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 the 1847 version 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 term that occurs only once in the Book of Mormon, which is said to mean "honeybee" in the only verse it is used in.. : And they did also carry with them deseret, which, by interpretation, is a honey bee; and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees, and all manner of that which was upon the face of the land, seeds of every kind. This reformation of English orthography was believed by its creators to be a first step to the ultimate restoration of Adamic language.
The Deseret alphabet was an outgrowth of the Restorationist idealism and utopianism of Young and the early LDS Church. 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."
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.LDS Tenth Article of Faith
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.
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 (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.
Young wrote of the reform that "with a very few additions, it is believed, 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. 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."Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 1:69-71
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"Jules Remy, A Journey to Salt Lake City (London, 1861) 185. 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 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)