page_title: Utah Mormon English
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Utah Mormon English / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Utah state population density map based on Census 2000 data. See the data lineage for a process description. Français&#160;: Carte de densité de l'état de l'Utah
context_page_description: Utah Mormon English refers to American English, primarily used by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah, showing an abundance of linguistically possible features without any overall consistency of these features. Ample small-scale research has been conducted on English in Utah, showing several possible variants common especially among LDS Church members; however, any variant by itself is still used by only a minority of the total speakers. Therefore, Utah Mormon English is too inconsistent to classify as either a sub-dialect of Western American English or a separate dialect of its own.
context_section_description: Utah is the only U.S. state with a majority population belonging to a single religious denomination. Mormon pioneers first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, eventually settling the Utah Territory. Many of these settlers came from New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, where the LDS Church had been based previously, plus from foreign nations, notably including English-speaking immigrants from United Kingdom and Canada, persuaded to Utah as a result of Latter-day Saint missionary work. These already-native English varieties thus adapted to the English of the Utah Mormon community, with Mormon English differences further supported by Latter-day Saints' geographic and social isolation from neighboring communities. More recently, an influx of Californians to Utah is affecting speech patterns in Salt Lake and elsewhere along the Wasatch Front. One historical example of Utah Mormons seeking to consciously separate themselves from others linguistically was with Brigham Young's failed Deseret alphabet.
caption: Population density of Utah (the Wasatch Front in red).
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