The Deseret Alphabet (๐๐ฏ๐ ๐จ๐๐ฏ๐ป)
The Deseret Alphabet is an autochthonously created American script associated with Deseret, the unofficial state in the American West that was colonized by Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) in the nineteenth century. The Deseret Alphabet is unique: it is an American script created specifically to write English within a an American religious community that also had a political presence (whether officially or unofficially).
The Deseret Alphabet is a phonemic script with (roughly) one letter for each phoneme of most English dialects. Its classic form, as used in the 1869 publication of ๐ ๐๐ณ๐ฟ ๐ฑ๐ ๐ฃ๐ซ๐๐๐ฒ๐, employed spellings that did not directly represent the phonology of any one American or British dialect (e.g. it was conservatively rhotic while showing vowel innovations that had not yet spread to North America).
During its peak periods of use, the Deseret Alphabet was used in print (a handful of published books and several excerpts in a local newspaper), on coinage, on gravestones, for official Church meeting notes, and in personal correspondence. It was even used to transcribe the Hopi language by missionaries, which is now known thanks to a recently rediscovered dictionary manuscript (Beesley and Elzinga 2015).
The Deseret Alphabet has continued to be used as marker of cultural identity by descendants of the community who briefly used it more than 150 years ago. A copy of the Neil Alexander Walker’s 2005 guide to past and present usage of the Deseret Alphabet is now archived with WIELD and may be accessed here:
A Complete Guide to Reading and Writing the Deseret Alphabet
References
Beesley, Kenneth R. and Dirk Elzinga. 2015. An 1860 English-Hopi Vocabulary Written in the Deseret Alphabet. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
University Of Deseret. 1869. ๐ ๐๐ณ๐ฟ ๐ฑ๐ ๐ฃ๐ซ๐๐๐ฒ๐: ๐๐ ๐๐ฟ๐ต๐๐ป ๐ก๐ฎ๐ป๐ ๐บ๐ด ๐ ๐๐ฐ๐๐ผ ๐ฑ๐ ๐ฃ๐ซ๐๐๐ฒ๐, ๐ฒ๐น๐ฑ๐ ๐๐๐ฉ๐ป๐
๐๐ฉ๐ฟ๐ ๐๐๐ฑ๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ฉ๐ป๐
๐ฑ๐ ๐ค๐จ๐๐ด. translated by Smith, Joseph, Jr. New York: Published for the Deseret University, by Russell Bros.
Walker, Neil Alexander Walker. 2005.A Complete Guide to Reading and Writing the Deseret Alphabet. Unpublished manuscript.