See, that’s the way the Internet is. But even knowing that, it will often surprise you.

In the mid 19th century, Brigham Young came up with a new alphabet designed to help foreign-speaking immigrants to the State of Deseret (otherwise known as the Utah territory) learn to read English. Developed by the board of regents of the University of Deseret (later the University of Utah,) it was known as the Deseret Alphabet. Four volumes were published in the alphabet in 1868 – two primers (the Deseret First Book and the Deseret Second Book), extracts from the Book of Mormon and a complete volume of the latter. The Deseret News published a column printed in the new alphabet, and there are still diaries, letters, meeting minutes, coinage and one headstone in Cedar City, Utah, to attest to its brief existence.

Mormon five-dollar gold piece, inscribed with “Holiness to the Lord” in Deseret Alphabet.

The gravestone in Cedar City. The inscription reads,

“In memory of John T. Morris Born Feb
14 1828 Lanfair Tahaira
Danbyshire North Wales.
Died Feb 20, 1855 Aged 27”

The Deseret Second Book.

Sample from the Deseret Second Book. Lesson 3 is entitled “The Spring,” Lesson 4 is “The Hare.”

As with other spelling reforms initiated during the same period of history, it never caught on. Immigrants preferred to learn English with all its horrid spelling ^[1] in a script that most of them already knew than try to struggle with an entirely new alphabet, and the Deseret Alphabet quietly died.

Or so it seemed.

Searching this morning, just out of curiosity as to what the printed volumes are selling for these days (I own copies, you see,) I happened across this:

It seems that an afficionado of the Deseret Alphabet (as intimated above, there are afficionadi for everything, no matter how obscure) has taken the trouble to transliterate every XKCD into Deseret Alphabet. I, too, am an afficionado of the Deseret Alphabet; this dude is the linguistic equivalent of Techno Bill. The irony here is delicious – I couldn’t think of a more appropriate, edgy strip to retrogress back into a failed religious experiment. For the curious, the original page where this strip is found includes links to the English version of the comic so you can see what it says. It is of note that the Unicode Consortium took note of the Deseret Alphabet, so regardless of whether or not interest in the artifact continues, it will always have a place in history.

As obscure as it is, this delights me no end, as I made a study of the Deseret Alphabet during my days as a master’s candidate in applied linguistics. And, just in case you think that you’ve reached the bottom of strangeness with this little bit of whimsy, you may want to have a peep here, if you dare. Rule 101 has no bottom. ^[2]

𐐜 𐐄𐐢𐐔 𐐚𐐃𐐢𐐙 𐐐𐐈𐐞 𐐝𐐑𐐄𐐗𐐤.

[1] You’re not certain English spelling is all that bad? Try reading “The Chaos”, found at this page. I triple-dog dare you to read it through without any mistakes. Any non-native speakers who can do so win the Internet. I’m looking at you, Bjornar.

[2] I’m not even talking about the dark underbelly of the internet. Trust me, you don’t want to go there. That way lies madness.