The Book of Mormon describes the Nephites as a civilization that descended from a small group of immigrants from Jerusalem around 600 BCE. This narrative has led to a common assumption that the Nephites spoke Hebrew or other Old World languages throughout their history. However, this perspective becomes less plausible when we consider linguistic evolution, the presence of indigenous populations in the New World, and the inevitable process of cultural and linguistic assimilation. In this blog post, we’ll explore why the Nephites likely did not retain Hebrew or other Old World languages over their thousand-year history and argue that their language would have been replaced by the ambient languages of the New World.
The Loss of the Original Language
One of the most significant challenges faced by small immigrant groups is the preservation of their native language in a foreign environment. For the Nephites, the original language—likely a form of Hebrew or closely related Semitic tongue—would have faced immediate pressures from the linguistic environment of the New World. Language loss often occurs in just a few generations when speakers are immersed in a new linguistic context, particularly if they are a minority group surrounded by larger populations speaking a dominant language.
Initially, the first generation of Nephites may have tried to maintain their ancestral language, especially in religious or ceremonial contexts. However, as subsequent generations were born in the New World, their exposure to the indigenous languages around them would have gradually increased. Children naturally adopt the language most useful in daily life, often shifting away from their parents’ native tongue when it does not serve their social or practical needs. This process, called language shift, is well-documented in historical and modern contexts.
For example, immigrants to a new country often see their children become bilingual, with the next generation favoring the dominant language of their new homeland. By the third or fourth generation, the original language is often completely replaced. Given the thousand-year timeline of Nephite history, it is highly unlikely that they retained Hebrew or any Old World language as their daily mode of communication.
The Influence of Ambient Languages
The Americas were already home to diverse and complex societies with their own languages long before the arrival of Lehi’s family. These indigenous languages would have formed the linguistic “ambient” environment—the surrounding linguistic landscape—that the Nephites encountered upon their arrival. This environment would have had a profound influence on the Nephites’ language from the very beginning.
Trade, intermarriage, and other interactions with indigenous peoples would have exposed the Nephites to local languages. Over time, their own language would have absorbed vocabulary, grammatical structures, and phonetic patterns from these languages. In fact, the Nephites’ small population would have made it almost inevitable that their language would be overwhelmed by the larger, more established linguistic communities around them. The dominant indigenous languages would have gradually replaced Hebrew as the language of daily life, leaving only remnants in religious or formal contexts.
Why We Should Not Expect Old World Words in Indigenous Languages
If the Nephites’ original language was subsumed by the languages of the New World, we should not expect to find Hebrew or other Old World words in the indigenous languages of the Americas. Language replacement often leaves little trace of the original tongue, especially when the minority group is small and their language lacks institutional support.
Instead of searching for traces of Hebrew or other Old World languages in the Americas, it would make more sense to look for evidence of indigenous linguistic features in the text of the Book of Mormon. The languages spoken by the Nephites, Lamanites, and other groups described in the book would have been shaped primarily by the New World’s linguistic environment, not their distant Semitic roots.
Indigenous Linguistic Features in the Book of Mormon
If the Book of Mormon reflects the linguistic reality of the Nephites, it should contain elements that align with the languages of the ancient Americas. This might include structural features such as agglutination (the process of combining morphemes to form complex words), noun incorporation, or unique phonetic patterns that are characteristic of indigenous languages. For example, the place name Moronihah, could be either a reference to water(ha means water in many Mayan languages) or it could refer to lineage or represent a family unit i.e the place of the Moroni family. While the Book of Mormon is written in English as translated by Joseph Smith, scholars could examine its phrasing, idiomatic expressions, and narrative structures for parallels with indigenous linguistic traditions.
For instance, certain repetitive or formulaic expressions in the Book of Mormon might reflect oral traditions common in Native American cultures. Similarly, the emphasis on kinship, land, and spiritual connections found in the text could be rooted in the cultural and linguistic frameworks of the New World.
Historical Examples of Language Assimilation
To understand the Nephites’ linguistic journey, we can look at historical examples of language assimilation. Consider the case of the Vikings who settled in Normandy. Within a few generations, their Old Norse language was replaced by Old French due to contact with the dominant local population. Similarly, the Mongols who conquered China adopted Chinese as their primary language within a few generations.
In both cases, the minority group’s language was supplanted by the dominant linguistic environment, even though the minority group initially held political or military power. The Nephites, being a relatively small and isolated group, would have been even more susceptible to this process of linguistic assimilation.
The idea that the Nephites would have spoken Hebrew or other Old World languages throughout their history is inconsistent with what we know about language loss, cultural assimilation, and the dynamics of linguistic contact. As a small immigrant group in a land already populated by diverse and complex societies, the Nephites would have quickly adopted the dominant languages of the New World.
This process would have resulted in the complete replacement of their original language by indigenous languages, leaving little to no trace of Old World words in the Americas. Instead, we should focus on identifying indigenous linguistic features in the Book of Mormon, which could provide insights into the cultural and linguistic realities of the peoples it describes.