Was the Deseret Alphabet inspired?

[_asbestosman]

I like whipping out my Deseret Alphabet edition Triple combination in the middle of church. My sig line used to have a scripture in the Deseret Alphabet.

Blixa, I actually used the Hunneybee font to write a letter to a missionary. The example you quoted isn't properly spelled. It looks more like the Latin alphabet was directly substituted. The most egregious example is the last word on the first line Which is probably supposed to be the word, "there" but ends up missing the r sound and not properly replacing the "th" combination with the appropriate Deseret letter (it uses t and h separately). Still, I enjoy it. I also have a cheap reprint of the Deseret reader books used to teach schoolchildren--I think I got it from the BYU bookstore about a decade ago.

Chap, the missionary objection is one major reason I don't believe the Deseret Alphabet would be an effective means to keep Mormons ignorant. Missionaries needed to read the Latin Alphabet especially for foreign languages. Furthermore, the Deseret Alphabet is quite simple to learn. If someone wanted to publish something specifically for Mormons, it would be fairly simple to do so. It's not really a very good cipher since at best it might be a substitution cipher. These are trivially cracked in cryptography. No Urim and Thummim or Rosetta Stone required. Just do frequency analysis and a few educated guesses. Going the other way probably wouldn't be too difficult either.

[_Blixa]

Blixa, I actually used the Hunneybee font to write a letter to a missionary. The example you quoted isn't properly spelled. It looks more like the Latin alphabet was directly substituted. The most egregious example is the last word on the first line Which is probably supposed to be the word, "there" but ends up missing the r sound and not properly replacing the "th" combination with the appropriate Deseret letter (it uses t and h separately). Still, I enjoy it. I also have a cheap reprint of the Deseret reader books used to teach schoolchildren--I think I got it from the BYU bookstore about a decade ago.

I figured there were problems when it looked a little too readable. Was it originally based on some shorthand symbols?

[_asbestosman]

I figured there were problems when it looked a little too readable. Was it originally based on some shorthand symbols?

I don't recall the precise history. It is phonetic just as shorthand is, but it's not really quick to write and voiced consonants don't always look similar to unvoiced ones although many are. I think someone suggested that the actual characters are based on a combination of Greek, Latin, and shorthand, but I'm not very familiar with shorthand.

It is curious to me that they didn't try reusing more of the existing Latin letters as that would have reaped significant savings for the printing costs. Apparently they spent thousands of 19th century dollars for the printing materials. Some savings were realized by letters which can be formed by turning an existing letter (such as h and "ay").

[_Quasimodo]

Could anything like that have been behind the Deseret Alphabet? Brigham Young certainly did not see it as a major aim to integrate his flock with the wider cultures of the US of his day, and the prospect of creating a literature that was 'safe' and to which children would be confined by their education may have been attractive.

Of course it was a major failure and waste of resources - but certainly caused less suffering than Joseph Smith's equally ill-judged venture into banking did.

I think you may have a point, Chap. Brigham was notoriously frugal. Even to the point of not paying employees and contractors that did work at his request.

I doubt he would have frivolously spent the time and money to create a new alphabet unless he thought there was some big benefit in doing so.

Isolation from the rest of the U.S must have been his reasoning (he did move everyone to the wilderness to avoid confrontation with U.S authorities).

Children taught the new alphabet exclusively would find it difficult to read periodicals from the "outside world". The general population in the outside world would find reading internal Mormon publications impossible.

It did turn out to be a failed idea, but I bet that was his motive.

[_truth dancer]

The DA was as inspired as the costume/uniforms BY created for women. ;-)

I sense BY just wanted to have his own kingdom, I mean Country its own language, clothing, rituals, religion, marriage practices, etc.

Quite different than the modern day LDS church that wants acceptance in mainstream society.

;-)

~td~

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hello Mr. Joseph,

This:



Reminds me of this:



How does this project undermine his Prophethood? I'm not sure I'm following you.

V/R
Dr. Cam

[_Quasimodo]

Hello Mr. Joseph,

This:



Reminds me of this:



How does this project undermine his Prophethood? I'm not sure I'm following you.

V/R
Dr. Cam

They are actually quite different, Dr. Cam. One is merely replacing letters in the English alphabet with other symbols. The other is an attempt to create symbols for sounds in another language (Cherokee) that had never been written before.

I think the point was that if BY was a prophet, he should have realized (through divine providence) that it was a waste of time.

[_moksha]

Furthermore, the Deseret Alphabet is quite simple to learn. If someone wanted to publish something specifically for Mormons, it would be fairly simple to do so. It's not really a very good cipher since at best it might be a substitution cipher.

Not if you combined it with Navajo code talking and perhaps used 2048 bit encryption as well. Bet the gentiles would give up searching for the secret of the Bees if facing that level of complexity.