Historical Authenticity of The Book of Mormon - Linguistics

Linguistics

An additional criticism concerns linguistics. According to the text, the Nephites and the Lamanites initially spoke Hebrew (600 B.C.) and might have spoken a modified Semitic language until at least 400 A.D., when the Book of Mormon ends. The non-canonized introductory paragraph to the LDS Church edition of the Book of Mormon previously stated that the Lamanites were the "principal ancestors of the American Indians". However, no Semitic language is spoken natively in the Americas today and there is no evidence that any Native American language has been influenced by any Semitic language at any point in its history. Historical linguists who specialize in the languages of Native America are in agreement that the languages of Native America cannot be proven to be related to each other within the last eight to ten thousand years, let alone within the last thousand. A common counterargument is that the Book of Mormon mentions contact with other civilizations with their own non-Semitic languages that might have influenced or supplanted any Semitic language being spoken. Apologists point out that the introductory heading merely stated that the peoples mentioned in the Book of Mormon are the primary ancestors of the Native Americans; it did not claim that they are the sole ancestors.