Discussions toward a better understanding of LDS doctrine, history, and culture. Discussion of Christianity, religion, and faith in general is welcome.
I have always been confused by the early Utah Mormons' desire to develop and enforce a new alphabet. I was thinking about Newspeak in 1984 and suddenly it made more sense. The reason given was that it was phonetically based and people could learn that alphabet more quickly than the Roman alphabet and focus their efforts on other fields of learning. But it makes more sense to me that it would serve as a huge boost to message controlling. If you teach a generation of kids to read an alphabet that looks nothing like the one in the books that come from outside the kingdom you instantly make them illiterate regarding any outside message while keeping them fully literate to all indoctrination coming from inside. The added bonus is that it makes it very easy to identify which books are approved and which are subversive. Two levels of message control.
If the only goal was to make English writing more phonetic you could easily tweak the existing alphabet and spelling conventions to that end (e.g. use markings to differentiate long and short vowels, spell tough as tuff, etc.)
In case you're not familiar with it, the Deseret Alphabet is about as close to English as Reformed Egyptian:
And in case you want to start making the transition yourself, here's a handy translator: http://2deseret.com/
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain
Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."
You know, of course, that A Christmas Story is Satan's counterfeit of the Joseph Smith story. There's a mystical thread that binds it all together. Just follow the clues:
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain
Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."
