Deseret-Alphabet

The Deseret alphabet, sometimes called the Mormon Alphabet, was in the middle of the 19th century at the University of Deseret (later the University of Utah ) under the direction of Brigham Young, the second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints developed.

History

Main creators were the church leaders Parley P. Pratt and Young's private secretary, George D. Watt.

It is an alphabetic script, the cursive letters partly a remote resemblance to the Cherokee writing have, even if there is no connection between the two. There are over Youngs Secretary also points of contact to the then-common form of shorthand.

The aim of this neuentworfenen writing was, the English consistently to write phonetically. This then seemed particularly important, since many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints emigrated to Utah, but came from different countries with very different pronunciation of the same letter written Latin, but it already spoke English in most cases. The Deseret alphabet should help to resolve this problem. At the same time it should promote an independent ethnic identity of the Mormons and the distancing of the other Americans who began to train in the decades of isolation, on. The introduction should here be realized successively over a long period, because it is also a lack of appropriate first printing type.

It appeared at least two fibulae, an excerpt from the Book of Mormon, and printed in very small editions in New York, a complete book of Mormon in this document; also in the Mormon newspaper, the Deseret News, for a time published individual short article in this publication.

The writing was at heart of Brigham Young, was invested for the considerable sums of money, which many other leaders of the Mormons but faced quite skeptical. When, a few years after the publication of the alphabet, the railroad reached the present-day Utah and the isolation picked up, whereupon also many non-Mormons settled there, the project was shelved due to impracticality and after Young's death officially abandoned.

Today we find the font in Utah as local cultural oddity even sometimes as a decorative element.

Alphabet

Although Deseret is an alphabet with upper and lower case, but the only difference between lowercase and capital letters is the size. There is no different forms such as the Latin alphabet.