Why nineteenth-century Mormon pioneers tried to replace the English alphabet with a new script.

Cultures · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Between 1847 and 1854, the leaders of the LDS Church developed the Deseret alphabet, a radical phonemic spelling reform. Intended to simplify English for immigrants and restore a pure, Adamic language, the project became a costly, failed attempt to unify society in anticipation of the Second Coming of Jesus.

The Deseret alphabet was born from the utopian idealism of Brigham Young and early Mormon pioneers. Believing that traditional English orthography was corrupt and inconsistent, church leaders sought to create a phonetic system where each letter represented a single sound. This effort was not merely linguistic; it was a religious mission to prepare for the Millennium and the restoration of a pure language spoken before the Tower of Babel. The board of regents at the University of Deseret, including Young and Apostles like Parley P. Pratt, led the project, with George D. Watt providing the unique glyphs.

The development process was marked by intense debate. Initially, the committee considered adopting existing phonotypic alphabets, such as those by Isaac Pitman. However, in 1853, Apostle Willard Richards argued that they should avoid any resemblance to English characters, leading to the adoption of an original 38-letter alphabet in 1854. Despite this, the project faced immense practical hurdles. Creating suitable metal type proved difficult and expensive, with the church spending $20,000 on the initiative. Even when books like the Book of Mormon were finally printed in 1869, they failed to gain traction among the public.

Historians often point to several factors for the alphabet's decline. The arrival of the Transcontinental railroad brought non-Mormon populations to Utah, diluting the religious motivation required to learn a new script. Furthermore, the cost of textbooks was prohibitive, with estimates suggesting it would take over $5,000,000 to supply all schoolchildren. By 1870, the church ceased promoting the books. While the alphabet was considered a failure in its own time, modern digital typography has revived it as a cultural heirloom, with the characters now included in Unicode and supported by various open-source fonts.

General information, not professional advice. Spotted an error? Flag the card or see corrections and complaints.

Intellect Plus is a visual educational discovery platform for exploring fascinating facts and ideas. Brain Food, Not Brain Rot. What is Intellect Plus?

Related

• How an illiterate man built a writing system that outpaced the English alphabet
• Could a forty-eight letter alphabet fix the inefficiencies of the English language?
• How a 19th-century pamphlet became a pillar of Mormon doctrine
• How a 19th-century American religious movement transformed into a global faith tradition
• The English alphabet was not always twenty-six letters long
• From radio repair to a billion-dollar debt crisis: the volatile history of DeVry
• From Chicago detective to Hollywood icon: the unlikely career of Dennis Farina
• The tiny dot on your 'i' is actually a functional tool
• Demotic: The Ancient Egyptian Script That Powered Daily Life for Over a Millennium
• Why two tiny dots over a vowel change how you read a word
• From mass emigration to a rapidly diversifying nation: Ireland's demographic metamorphosis
• The Greek letter that vanished from language but survived as a number

More in Languages · More in Cultures · Latest · A–Z · All topics