About the Journal | ๐๐บ๐ต๐ป ๐ ๐๐ฒ๐๐๐ฒ๐
Wilford Woodruff kept one of the most important personal journals in nineteenth-century Mormon history. In June 1859, he briefly experimented with writing portions of that journal in the Deseret Alphabet, following efforts by church president Brigham Young and fellow apostle George A. Smith to introduce the script into the church bureaucracy.
Woodruffโs Deseret entries are brief. He used the alphabet intermittently from 18 June to 9 July 1859, producing fewer than 650 words in the new script. Even so, the entries are significant because they show how the alphabet appeared in ordinary manuscript practice when adopted experimentally by a prominent Church leader.
For instance, Woodruff did not consistently transcribe proper names into the Deseret. Names such as Eckels and Johnson remain in Roman script, while Kimball is transliterated. In his final entry using Deseret characters on 9 July, Woodruff switches conspicuously from Roman cursive into Deseret while referring to a matter involving prisoners.
The journal is also valuable for phonological study. Among other interesting examples, Woodruff uses the lot vowel (๐ฑ) rather than the thought vowel (๐ซ) in pre-rhotic contexts, a detail that may help clarify how individual writers understood the sound values and distribution of Deseret letters before something akin to standardization was imposed in 1868โ1869.
