Archaic and Alternate Deseret Characters

4.1 Early Forms of Deseret Letters

The first versions of the Deseret Alphabet did not have all the same letter shapes as the version used in the 1860s. Originally, the so-called short vowels were to be smaller than the long vowels and other letters.1 Many of the consonants had slightly different shapes than they would in the printed type of the 1860s. These early versions of the Deseret Alphabet were more conducive to cursive writing than later ones.2 These early variants, with the exception of the variant for 𐐩 used in the Deseret News, were not used in print, but were exclusively handwritten. Table 14 lists early variants together with their equivalents in the final font of the late 1860s.

Table 14: Early Deseret letters with equivalents

4.1.1 Symbol for /ə/

Though the final printed version of the Deseret Alphabet did not have a single character for /ə/, some handwritten manuscripts employed a separate symbol for the sound.3 This character, I, has the same shape as the older form of 𐑌. Table 15 lists two possible spellings of the same word, one in the 1869 standard and one with the alternate character for /ə/.

Table 15: Alternate spelling with /ə/ together with standard spelling

4.2 Cursive Deseret Script

Some early handwritten documents show a cursive hand. Such documents are nearly illegible and cannot be dealt with satisfactorily in this book. However, there are some tips which can aid in decoding such writing. The principle of syllabic readings for consonants is often taken to extremes. Thus, a word might seem to be lacking vowels when in fact the reader is expected to supply the vowel found in the consonant’s name. Also, the letters 𐐮 𐐯 𐐰 𐐱 𐐲 𐐳, the so-called short vowels, are written smaller and deformed to join strokes between consonants (if they are written at all). Some letters are written as descenders, 𐐹 for example, and many others have the older shapes listed in Table 14.4