Why Was the Deseret Alphabet Created?
The Deseret alphabet was the brainchild of Brigham Young and his colleagues. Young, one of the foundational members of the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, sought to create an alternative to English so that adherents of Mormonism could separate themselves from their surrounding culture. In fact, it was Youngโs goal that the Mormon community fully separate from the rest of the United States, becoming its own independent stateโand with Deseret as its primary language.
The Deseret alphabet derives from English, and thus, English can be directly transliterated into Deseret using the same sounds. Therefore, it is not its own unique language, but rather a different way to write English. This choice to focus on phonetics aimed to target the many European immigrants entering the region, making their transition from English into the insular Mormon community more seamless.
The Barriers That Prevented Adoption of Deseret
With such strong convictions underpinning the creation of the Deseret alphabet, why did it ultimately fail? In fact, Deseret struggled to gain a foothold even at its peak, spanning from only 1847 to its discontinuation in 1869. There are many factors that impacted the Deseret alphabetโs lackluster adoption rate:
- The transcontinental railroadโs completion, which complicated the isolationist goals of the Mormon community
- The growing schism in the Mormon community at the time following the death of founder Joseph Smith, making widespread adoption across multiple groups more difficult
- The lack of ascenders and descenders (that is, characters that go above or below the middle of a line of text) that impacted how easily the Deseret alphabet could be read; a copy of the Book of Mormon was later created with ascenders and descenders to remedy this issue in one instance
- Difficulty writing the Deseret characters given frequent letter terminations on the left side of the character while being written in a left-to-right manner, which favors ending a character on the right
- A general sentiment that learning a new language that was a close copy of English was not worth the effort
- The failure of Deseret to become an independent state with its own declared native language
The assimilation of the Mormon community rather than its break-off into an independent state played a significant role in the decline of Deseret. In the end, Deseret failed to get off the ground, and its use largely died with Brigham Young in the late 1800s. Only four books were published in Deseret, and while some scriptures were posted in the Deseret News, the publication soon returned to using English (and continues to do so today). A single tombstone resides in Cedar City, Utah bearing Deseret text.
Is Deseret Unique?
While Deseret did not succeed as a religious language, other places throughout the world have seen significant linguistic shifts according to religious divisions. Ecclesiastical Latin, also known as liturgical Latin, was specifically developed separately from classical Latin to discuss church philosophy and theology, primarily within the Catholic sect.
Similarly, small communities utilize their own dialects unique to their religious cultures. Baghdadi-Arabic is profoundly different between Christian adherents and Muslim practitioners. Dobhashi, an alternate Bengali dialect that was used to write poetry centered on Muslim beliefs, went extinct after a standardized version of Bengali was created in the colonial period spanning from the 1850s to 1940s.
Sanskrit has its roots in Dharmic religion, and Koine was regularly used by Christians as an alternative to the common language Greek of ancient times. Ethnically diverse regions are more likely to break significantly into progressively more niche religious languages and dialects, but rarely do they create something entirely separate from existing parent languages.
In the end, many โreligiousโ languages meet their end in the strain caused by linguistic standardization and cultural assimilation. However, those that persist continue to support communities bonded by their shared religious beliefs, helping to identify other members and providing a unique avenue of communication and understanding. While Deseret met its end, many more unique dialects and language alternatives continue to thrive around the world to represent the myriad religions that inspire and inform cultures of all types.
Image credit: Psiฤฅedelisto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
