Item Detail
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26663
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0
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19
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English
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An 1860 English-Hopi Vocabulary Written in the Deseret Alphabet
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Salt Lake City, UT
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University of Utah Press
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176
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In 1859 Brigham Young sent two Mormon missionaries to live among the Hopi, “reduce their dialect to a written language,” and then teach it to the Hopi so that they would be able to read the Book of Mormon in their own tongue. Young also instructed the men to teach the Hopi the Deseret alphabet, a phonemic system that he was promoting in place of the traditional Latin alphabet. While the Deseret alphabet faded out of use in just over twenty years, the manuscript penned by one of the missionaries has remained in existence. For decades it sat unidentified in the archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints—a mystery document having no title, author, or date. But authors Beesley and Elzinga have now traced the manuscript’s origin to those missionaries of 1859 and decoded its Hopi-English vocabulary written in the short-lived Deseret alphabet. The resulting book offers a fascinating mix of linguistics, Mormon history, and Native American studies.
The volume reproduces all 486 vocabulary entries of the original manuscript, presenting the Deseret and the modern English and Hopi translations. It explains the history of the Deseret alphabet as well as that of the Mormon missions to the Hopi, while fleshing out the background of the two missionaries, Marion Jackson Shelton, who wrote the manuscript, and his companion, Thales Hastings Haskell. The book will be of interest to linguists, historians, ethnographers, and others who are curious about the unique combination of topics this work connects.
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A Frontier Life : Jacob Hamblin, Explorer and Indian Missionary
A Mormon Chronicle : The Diaries of John D. Lee, 1848-1876
Biography of George Washington Hill
Creating a New Alphabet for Zion : The Origin of the Deseret Alphabet
English Convert Used Phonography Skills in Development of Original Deseret Alphabet
Hamblin : A Modern Look at the Frontier Life and Legend of Jacob Hamblin
History of the Deseret Alphabet and Other Attempts to Reform English Orthography
Jacob Hamblin : A Narrative of His Personal Experience
Jacob Hamblin, Apostle to the Lamanites, and the Indian Mission
Jacob Hamblin : Buckskin Apostle
Jacob Hamblin : Mormon Apostle to the Indians
Jacob Hamblin, the Peacemaker
Journal of the Southern Indian Mission : Diary of Thomas D. Brown
Massacre at Mountain Meadows : An American Tragedy
Over the Rim : the Parley P. Pratt Exploring Expedition to Southern Utah, 1849-1850
Thales Hastings Haskell : Pioneer, Scout, Explorer, Indian Missionary, 1847-1909
The Hopis and the Mormons : 1858-1873
The Mormon Passage of George D. Watt : First British Convert, Scribe for Zion
The Mountain Meadows Massacre