Creation (1847โ1854) 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." 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; along with Pratt. 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. to praise. 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 (1869โ1877) 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. 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. 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.
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". 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 โ$7,500 (as of 2004). 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, 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 maintained a
public domain font called "Analecta" until 2022 as part of his
Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts project, which supports the
Coptic,
Gothic, and Deseret scripts and is still available on
archive.org. Deseret glyphs are also available in the popular pan-Unicode fonts
Code2001 and
Everson Mono (as of version 5.1.5). == Alphabet ==