Thank you for your wonderful response. Now would some kind person please again post the link to the Deseret site. Best, Elaine Snow, Donald R. wrote: > Just a quick note about the Deseret alphabet. As pointed out already, it > wasn't secret at all. In fact it was very public since it was an attempt > by early Mormon leaders to help people learn to read and speak English. > There were lots of converts coming to Utah from Scandanavia and elsewhere > who didn't speak much English. As I remember it, Orson Pratt, one of the > Mormon apostles was involved in developing it. They took all the sounds of > the English language and made symbols to represent them so they could spell > a word the way it actually sounded in English. If it was a sound that was > always spelled the same way in English, they used a symbol that was like > that spelling so people would recognize it. So English speakers can read > most of it without much trouble. They had to make special type for the > characters to be able to print it and they printed several readers and the > Book or Mormon in it. I've got a couple of copies of Deseret alphabet > books in my collection. > > Don Snow > >