An alphabet for the sounds of English
The Deseret Alphabet is an alternative way of writing English developed among Latter-day Saints in nineteenth-century Utah. Its central rule is wonderfully simple: write the sounds you say rather than copying the often unpredictable spelling of ordinary English. Phone, for instance, begins with an F sound even though English writes it with ph. In Deseret, it begins with the F letter: 𐑁𐐬𐑌.
The movement behind it was educational. Brigham Young hoped that children could learn to read more quickly and that converts arriving from different countries could learn written English without first mastering such puzzles as though, through and thought. George D. Watt, an English-born shorthand writer familiar with Isaac Pitman’s phonetic systems, was central to designing the letters.
Why it has 38 letters—or sometimes 40
The standard books published in the late 1860s used 38 letters. Some earlier manuscripts and alphabet charts used two additional characters for the sounds in boy and few, making 40. Both extra letters are encoded in Unicode today. Your first practical task is simply to recognise the shapes and their sounds; you do not need to learn linguistic jargon.
The alphabet runs from left to right. Deseret capitals and lowercase have the same basic shapes but different sizes. Ordinary spaces, punctuation and numbers work much as they do in English.
Start with six words
Read these slowly. The characters represent their sounds, not the corresponding letters of English spelling.
| Word | Deseret spelling | Sounds to notice |
|---|---|---|
| see | 𐑅𐐨 | s + i: |
| moon | 𐑋𐐭𐑌 | m + u: + n |
| cat | 𐐿𐐰𐐻 | k + ae + t |
| cot | 𐐿𐐱𐐻 | k + o + t |
| fish | 𐑁𐐮𐑇 | f + i + sh |
| phone | 𐑁𐐬𐑌 | f + ou + n |
Is there a single correct spelling for every English word?
There is not always one spelling for every accent. In the southern British reference pronunciation used in our learning tables, cot has the vowel 𐐱 and caught has 𐐫. Many Americans pronounce those two vowels alike. Historical Utah spellings also frequently preserve an R after vowels where much present-day British English does not pronounce one. For learning, write your own speech consistently and look at original 1860s books when you want their historical spelling conventions.
Try reading before learning every letter
The fastest way to see the idea is to compare 𐐿𐐰𐐻 (cat), 𐐿𐐱𐐻 (cot) and 𐐿𐐲𐐹 (cup). All three words end with the same T character, but their middle letters change to reflect different vowels. That is precisely what English spelling so often hides. Now compare 𐑉𐐴𐐻 (right) and 𐑉𐐴𐐻 (write): they are identical because, in the reference pronunciation, they sound identical.
For a first week, memorise the three vowels in cat, cot, cup and five consonants you already hear clearly. Adding a few letters at a time is more useful than attempting to reproduce an unfamiliar 40-character page at speed.