Officially, the Deseret alphabet was created to simplify the spelling of English words for the benefit of children and English as a second language learners.
The charge that the Deseret alphabet's main purpose was to keep outsiders ("gentiles" in LDS terminology) in the dark was brought almost immediately, as evidenced by the following 1858 Lyttelton Times reprint of an unnamed "New York newspaper":[REF] .-The