I’m a blue-shirt with evidence for the historicity of Lehi’s posterity in the Americas [referring to statements in previous presentations].

Believers and non-believers have both assembled their separate sets of misconceptions about the Book of Mormon. So as truth emerges, everyone gets to be surprised in some ways, myself included.

A Native American language family has been identified, appearing to descend from the Nephi-Muleki merger, which answers 3 previous unknowns about Book of Mormon languages. Let me explain that there are some 1500 Native American languages that belong to 170-plus different language families. A language family is a group of related languages descended from the same ancestor language. So each language family is not related to the other 169-plus. That means a huge linguistic variety exists in the Americas and also means that many peoples came here besides Lehi and Mulek.

Uto-Aztecan (UA) shown below:

Uto-Aztecan (UA) is a language family of some 30 related languages on the west coast of Mexico and in the United States Southwest, and several dialects of Nahua (Aztec) dialects related to Classical Nahuatl. Let me give some background to UA. Edward Sapir first established UA as a language family with a couple of articles written in 1913 and 1915, almost exactly 100 years ago. About a half century later, Voegelin, Voegelin and Hale (1962) produced 171 cognate sets for UA. A cognate set is a group of related words in the related languages, which set of words are all descended from the same ancient word. Five years later Wick Miller (1967), my linguistics professor at U of U, published Uto-Aztecan Cognate Sets with 514 cognate sets. Miller and others continued working on comparative UA until his death which yielded a computer file of 1100 some cognate sets by 1988. Kenneth Hill and all of us Uto-Aztecanists continued adding sets until Kenneth Hill’s collection in 2006 contained over 1200 sets. In 2011, I published Uto-Aztecan Comparative Vocabulary, containing 2700 sets. The UA specialists were all very happy about it, and it received a good review in the International Journal of American Linguistics. Then in 2015, I produced Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan, which demonstrated with over 1500 cognate matches that UA descends from whatever else plus a substantial Semitic-Egyptian infusion of some kind. The reception of this later 2015 work was not nearly as enthusiastic as the earlier 2011 work.

Most American language families were established with an article demonstrating 50 to 200 cognate sets. So 1500 similarities is very substantial. I sent a copy to the other top dozen Uto-Aztecanists, all PhDs in linguistics who specialize in UA. There are only 6 or 7 of us who do comparative research on the whole language family; the other 40 or 50 work on one UA language or on a branch of UA. So I sent the Semitic-Egyptian-UA tie to a dozen linguists: 4 responded favorably, it looks good, everything in place to be a decent case; the other 8 remain silent, but none have refuted it with specifics. So it has passed some good early tests. All the BYU linguists and Hebrew/Semitic professors were skeptical when first hearing of it, as they should be, but all who have looked at it also now view it favorably, as far as I’ve heard.

Uto-Aztecan appears to explain three previous questions:

Egyptian language or script? What did the Nephite language look like? What did the Mulekite language look like? Was it lost or partially preserved in the Nephite-Mulekite mix?

UA has 3 separate sets of data from Near East languages:

400 matches w/ Egyptian 700 matches w/ Aramaic-Hebrew, of the same sound changes as the Egyptian matches 400 matches w/ Phoenician but of a different set of sound changes

Many ask why the Nephites and Mulekites could not understand each other if they both left Jerusalem just 400 years earlier:

may have developed different accent / tone patterns may have started w/ different languages, as we will see the languages likely changed in different directions due to contact w/ different languages

In Semitic-p, Semitic b > UA *p

1 baraq ‘lightning’ > UA *pïrok; My berok

2 byt / bayit / beet ‘house, spend the night’

> UA *pïtï; Tr bete ‘house’

> UA *pïtï ‘lie down, spend night’; Numic *payïC ‘go home’

3 Hebrew boo’ ‘coming (used as ‘way to’)

> UA *pooC ‘road, way, path’

4 Hebrew batt ‘daughter’ > UA *pattï

5 Aramaic bǝsár ‘flesh, penis’ > UA *pisa

6 Aramaic baka’ ‘cry’ > UA *paka’ ‘cry’

7 Arabic bṣr ‘see’; baaṣirat ‘eye’

= Hebrew *booṣer(et) > UA *pusi ‘eye’

8 Aramaic bǝquuraa ‘livestock’

> UA *pukuN ‘domestic animals’

Proto-Semitic *đ (> Arabic đ, Aramaic d, Hebrew z), > UA *t

9 Aramaic dakar ‘male’ > UA *taka ‘man’

8 Aramaic diqn-aa ‘beard / chin-the’

> UA *tï’na ‘mouth’ (not Hebrew zaaqaan)

10 Aramaic di’b-aa ‘wolf-the’

> UA *tï’pa ‘wolf’ (not Hebrew hazzǝ’eb)

11 Semitic *đabboot(eey) ‘flies’

> UA *tïpputi ‘flea’

1st C of cluster disappears or doubles the 2nd

debt > det, ex-mit > emit, in-legal > illegal

Semitic ’aleph or glottal stop ’ > w in UA (which change also occurs in Arabic):

12 ’ariy / ’arii ‘lion’ > UA *wari ‘mtn lion’

13 Hebrew ya’amiin-o ‘he believes him/it’

> UA *yawamin-(o) ‘believe (him/it)’

14 Hebrew ’egooz ‘nut tree’

> UA *wokoC ‘pine tree’

15 Semitic ya’ya’ / yaa’ayaa’ ‘(be) beautiful’

> Ls yawáywa, Sr yï’aayï’a’n ‘pretty, beautiful’

16 Hebrew ’iiš ‘man, person’ > UA *wïsi ‘person’

17 Hebrew ’išaa / ’ešɛt / ’išt– ‘woman, wife of’ > UA *wïCti ‘woman, wife’

18 Hebrew ’arṣ-aa ‘earth-ward, down’

> UA *wïcï ‘fall’ (c = ts)

Semitic voiceless pharyngeal ђ > UA *hu,

or w/o/u, and non-initially ђ > w/o/u:

19 ђbq ‘break wind’ > UA *hupak- ‘stink’ (*q > k)

20 ђnk ‘train, dedicate’; ђanukkaa ‘dedication, consecration’ > Ca huneke ‘to take an Indian bath’;

Yq húnak-te ‘show, direct, raise (young)’

21 ђmm ‘heat, bathe, wash’ > UA *huma ‘wash, bathe’

22 ђml ‘carry, lift, pick up’

> UA *homa ‘take, carry, pick up’

Semitic voiced pharyngeal ʕ > UA w/o/u, i.e., some form of rounding; the Phoenician ʕ was also rounded as ʕ became Greek o:

23 ʕagol ‘round’ > UA *wakol ’round(ed)’

24 paqʕ- ‘whiteness, species of fungus’

> UA *pakuwa ‘mushroom, fungus’

25 ʕmṭ ‘cloud over, become dark’

> UA *(w)umaC / *(w)ïmaC ‘rain, be cloudy’

26 Hebrew ʕaaqeeb ‘heel, footprint’

> UA *woki ‘track, footprint’

27 Aramaic / Syriac ṣibʕ- ‘finger’

> UA *sipwa ‘finger’ (not Hebrew ’ɛṣbaʕ)

28 dʕk, impfv: -dʕok (< *-dʕuku) ‘(fire) go out’ > UA *tuku / *tuka/i ‘fire go out, dark, black, night’

29 nʕm ‘be lovely, good, beautiful’

> UA *numa / *noma ‘good, well, pretty’

30 ršʕ ‘act wickedly, be guilty’

> UA *tasawa ‘be/do bad’

Many sounds remain the same, such as t, k, p, s, m, n:

31 Hebrew mukkɛ ‘smitten’

> UA *mukki ‘die, be sick, smitten’

32 *taqipa (sg), *taqipuu (pl) ‘overpower’

> UA *takipu ‘push’ (*q > k)

33 Hebrew kutónet ‘shirt-like tunic’

> UA *kutun ‘shirt’

34 Hebrew participle pone ‘turn to, look’

> UA *puni ‘turn, look, see’

35 Hebrew panaa-w ‘face-his’

> UA *pana ‘cheek, face’

36 pl construct paneey– (< *panii) ‘face, surface of’

> UA *pani ‘on, on surface of’

37 šippaa ‘make smooth’

> UA *sipa / *sippa ‘scrape, shave’

38 šεkεm / šikm-, Samaritan šekam ‘shoulder’ > UA *sïka ‘shoulder, arm’, Numic *sikum ‘shoulder’

39 sapat ‘lip’ > UA *sapal ‘lip’

40 šwy / šawaa ‘broil, roast’

> UA *sawa ‘boil, apply heat, melt’

41 Hebrew šor ‘navel’; Arabic surr ‘navel cord’ > Sr ṣuur ‘navel’

42 snw ‘shine, be beautiful’

> Hopi soniwa ‘be beautiful, bright, brilliant, handsome’

43 Arabic kann ‘shelter, house, nest’

> NUA *kanni ‘house’ > SUA *kali ‘house’

Semitic initial r- > t- in UA:

44 r’y / raa’aa ‘see, v’ > UA *tïwa ‘find, see’

45 Aramaic rima / rimǝ-taa ‘large stone-the’

> UA *tïmï-ta ‘rock’

46 Aramaic rə’emaan-aa / reemaan-aa ‘antelope-the’ > UA *tïmïna ‘antelope’

47 Semitic rakb-uu ‘they mounted, climbed’

> UA *tï’pu / *tïppu ‘climb up’

48 Aramaic rakb-aa / rikb-aa ‘upper millstone-the’ > UA *tïppa ‘mortar (and/or) pestle’

Egyptian > UA

Cyrus Gordon, the internationally renowned Semitist who did the founding work in Ugaritic, was the first to notice the similarity between the Egyptian and Nahuatl words for crocodile. I merely added another 400 Egyptian-with-UA similarities to what he started.

49 sbk / *subak ‘crocodile’ > UA *supak / *sipak ‘crocodile’ (Cyrus Gordon 1971, 135)

50 tks ‘pierce’ > UA *tïkso ‘pierce, poke’

51 km ‘black’ > UA *koma ‘dark, black’

52 nmi ‘travel, traverse’

> UA *nïmi ‘walk around’

53 šm ‘go, walk, leave’

> UA *sima ‘go, leave’

54 wr / wrw ‘great > UA *wïru ‘big’

Note again Egyptian b > UA p, as in the Semitic-p data:

55 sbq ‘calf of leg’ > UA *sipika ‘lower leg’

56 sbty ‘enclosure’

> UA *sapti ‘fence of branches’

57 qbb ‘cool; calm, quiet, cool breeze’

> UA *koppa ‘quiet, calm’

58 bbyt ‘region of throat’

> UA *papi ‘larynx, throat, voice’

59 bši ‘spit, vomit’, bšw ‘vomit, vomiting’

> UA *piso-(ta) ‘vomit’

60 bnty ‘breast’ > UA *pitti / *piCti ‘breast’

61 sb’ ‘star’ > UA *sipo’ > *si’po ‘star’

Egyptian x > UA *k, as in the Semitic-p data:

62 txi ‘be drunk, drink deep’, txw ‘drunkard’

> UA *tïku ‘drunk’

63 xpš ‘foreleg, thigh’ > UA *kapsi ‘thigh’

64 xpd ‘buttock’ > UA *kupta ‘buttocks’

65 xpdw ‘buttocks’ > UA *kupitu ‘buttocks’

67 sxt ‘field, country, pasture, willow’

> UA *sakat / *sakaC ‘grass, willow’; Hopi tïïsaqa

68 x’yt / h ’yt ‘disease, slaughter, corpse-heap’ > UA *ko’ya ‘die, pl subj; kill, pl obj’

69 xpx ‘rob’ > UA *kïpïk ‘take, grasp’

70 wxd ‘be painful, sick, suffer, endure’

> UA *okotï ‘be in pain, suffer, sorrow’

71 xt ‘fire, heat’ > UA *kut ‘fire’

Egyptian initial pharyngeal ђ > UA *hu, and

non-initially ђ > w/o/u, as in Semitic:

72 ђbi ‘be / make festival’

> UA *hupiya ‘sing, song’

73 ђnqt ‘beer, drinkers’

> UA *hunaka ‘drunk, alcohol’

74 ђtp / hotpe ‘be peaceable, set (sun), bury’ > UA *huppi ‘peaceable, go down, sink’

75 ђw’ ‘foul, putrid, stink, vi’ > UA *hu’a / *hu’i ‘break wind, stink’

76 nђbt ‘nape of the neck, to yoke’ > UA *nohopi > nopi ‘hand, arm’

77 nђb ‘to harness/yoke’ > UA *noopi ‘carry on back’

78 ђti ‘smoke, vapor’ > UA *uti ‘dew, vapor, frost’

79 ђnn ‘penis’ > UA *huna ‘penis’

Egyptian glottal stop ’ > w, as in Semitic-p:

80 m’i ‘lion’ Coptic mui > UA *mawiya ‘mountain lion’

81 t ’y ‘male/man’> UA*tawa/tawi > *tïwi ‘man/male’

82 q’i ‘tall, high’; q’yt ‘high land, hill’ > UA *kawi ‘mountain, rock’

83 ’xi ‘sweep together’ > UA *wak / *wok ‘sweep, comb, brush’

84 t’ ‘earth, land’; Coptic to > UA *tïwa / *to’o ‘sand, dust’

85 i’w ‘old man’; i’wi ‘be aged’ > UA *yo’o ‘old’

86 s’ ‘son’ > UA *so’o ‘child, son’

Above is Lehi’s Egyptian and Semitic-p

Below is Mulek’s Phoenician

In Semitic-kw, Hebrew b > UA *kw

87 Hebrew baašel ‘boiled, cook, ripen’

> UA *kwasïC ‘cook, ripen’

88 Hebrew bááśaar ‘flesh, penis’

> UA *kwasi ‘tail, penis, flesh’

89 Hebrew baalaʕ ‘swallow’

> UA *kwïluC ‘swallow’

90 Semitic *bahamat ‘back’

> UA *kwahami ‘back’

91 bky / bakaay ‘cry’ > UA *kwïkï ‘cry’

92 barr- ‘land’ > UA *kwiya / *kwira ‘earth’

93 brm ‘worn out, weary, bored with’

> UA *kwiyam ‘be lazy, do lackadaisically’

94 Arabic ṣabba ‘pour, drip, overflow’

> UA *cikwa ‘rain’

Unlike its associated rounding in Semitic-p, the Semitic-kw glottal stop ’ is not rounded and is often lost:

95 Hebrew ni-qra’ ‘he/it is called/named’

> UA *nihya ‘call, name’

96 ’argaamaan ‘purple, red-purple’

> UA *aNkaC ‘red’

97 Hebrew mee-’ayn ‘from where?’

> Tb maa’ayn ‘where from’

98 ’aamaqqǝt-aa ‘lizard-the’

> UA *makkaCta(Nka) ‘horned toad’

99 ’adaamaa / ’adaamaa ‘earth’

> UA *tïma ‘earth’

100 Hebrew ’abneṭ, pl: ’abneṭ-iim ‘sash, girdle’ > UA *natti ‘belt’

Semitic-kw g/q > ŋ in Uto-Aztecan:

101 Sem *gassa/giššeš/*-gaššiš ‘touch, feel’ > UA *ŋisi ‘touch, feel cautiously’

102 Hebrew grr ‘to ruminate, saw, drag’

> *ŋaya/ŋayaya ‘to move side to side’

103 Semitic gdl ‘braid, weave,

Ls ŋááray-ni ‘s.th. crocheted or woven’

Ls ŋáároy-ta ‘spider web’

104 Hebrew qiinaa ‘funeral song, dirge’

> Ls ŋináŋna ‘feel sorry for, be broken hearted’

105 Syriac qanqen (< *qanqin) ‘to chant, sing’ > UA *ŋaŋi ‘cry’

106 Hebrew tiqqen ‘straighten s.th.’

> Ktn tïŋen ‘straighten arrows’

107 Hebrew/Aramaic ’agap(u) ‘wing, pinion, feather, arm’ > UA *aŋapu ‘wing, arm’

108 Hebrew/Aramaic ’agap(u) ‘wing, pinion feather, arm’ > UA *wakapu ‘wing, feather’

Lehi’s Aramaic-Hebrew kept *x and *ђ separate, like Israeli Semitic before 300 BC

Semitic-p *x > UA *k (oft softened to x or h)

Semitic-p *ђ > UA *hu/ho/o/w (rounding)

Mulek’s Phoenician had already merged *x and *ђ, like Phoenician

Semitic-kw *x > ђ > UA *hu/ho/o/w

Semitic-kw *ђ > ђ > UA *hu/ho/o/w

109 Hebrew ђole (< *xole) ‘be sick, hurting’ > UA Sem-p *koli ‘be sick, hurt, vi’

110 Aramaic ђamar (< *xamar) ‘wine’; Hebrew ђεmεr ‘wine’; Arabic xmr ‘to ferment’; xamr ‘wine’; ximiir ‘drunkard’

> UA *kamaC ‘drunk’

111 Hebrew ђalaaṣ-ayim ‘loins’;

Akkadian xanṣaatu;

Arabic xaṣr- ‘hip, haunch, waist’;

Samaritan ђarṣ-aa; Aramaic ђarṣ- ‘hip’; Mandaic halṣa, haṣa; Syriac ђaṣṣaa > UA *kaca-pawï ‘hip’

UA has pairs of words, one from Semitic-p and one from Semitic-kw:

112 Semitic-p *’axar ‘follow, after, another’

> UA *wakay ‘two, after’

*’axar > Semitic-kw *’aђar ‘follow, after, another’

> UA *(a)hoy ‘back, follow’

Semitic-kw (b > kw) has the sound changes of Phoenician (*x > ђ), not Israeli Semitic or Hebrew before Christ. In addition, the Zarahemla people named their river Sidon. Sidon is a major Phoenician port city, not part of Israeli geography. So their naming the river Sidon and their Semitic having Phoenician sound changes both suggest a very real probability of the Mulekites coming on a Phoenician vessel, as the Phoenicians were the major seafaring power of the time.

Semitic-p (b > p, etc) and Egyptian (b > p, etc) w/ the same sound changes and matching ancient Israelite Semitic, not Phoenician, suggest these two were from the Nephite language. However, Semitic-p more often aligns with Aramaic more than Hebrew.

Some Semitists are now suspecting that some northern Israelites may have kept their original Aramaic, or were bilingual, adding Hebrew, but keeping their Aramaic. Hebrew was not the original language of the Israelites as many suppose. Abraham and Laban the Aramean and his daughters Leah and Rachel, the mothers of Israel were all Aramaic speakers. And according to the UA data, the Lehi-Ishmael party’s language seems to have been quite Aramaic-like or Hebrew-Aramaic mix. Yes, we all get to be surprised in some ways.

This may also best explain Lehi’s language as consisting of “the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.”

Notice he does not say the language of the Jews, so not Hebrew necessarily, though Lehi undoubtedly could speak Hebrew too. But Lehi’s language consists of the language of the Egyptians and the learning of the Jews in the sense of having learned the scribal craft for reading and writing either Hebrew or Aramaic.

Conclusions

1 Given the sizable amount of Egyptian in UA suggests “the language of the Egyptians” means the language of the Egyptians, not only an Egyptian script.

2 The Lehi-Ishmael Semitic-p was very Aramaic-like, a northern Israeli suspicion.

3 The Mulekite language may have been Hebrew when fleeing Jerusalem, but their probable passage on a Phoenician vessel had them shifting to the dialect of the majority—the Phoenician majority, residually apparent in the Semitic-kw data of UA.

Sources cited

Gordon, Cyrus H. Before Columbus: Links between the Old World and Ancient America. New York: Crown Publishers, 1971.

Hill, Kenneth C. Revision and Expansion of Miller’s 1988 Computerized Data Base for Uto-Aztecan Cognate Sets, versions 2006 and 2008.

Hill, Kenneth C. Review of Uto-Aztecan: A Comparative Vocabulary, by Brian Stubbs. IJAL 78/4 (2012), 591-3.

Miller, Wick R. Uto-Aztecan Cognate Sets. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Sapir, Edward. 1913, 1915. Southern Paiute and Nahuatl: a study in Uto-Aztecan, parts 1 and 2. Part 1, 1913 in Journal de la Société des Américanistes de Paris 10:379-425. Part 2, 1915 in American Anthropologist 17:98-120, 306-328, reprinted 1919 in JSAP 11: 443-88. Parts 1 and 2 reprinted 1990 in The collected works of Edward Sapir 5: American Indian Languages, William Bright, ed., 351-444. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Stubbs, Brian D. Uto-Aztecan: A Comparative Vocabulary. Flower Mound, Texas: Shumway Family History Services and Rocky Mountain Books, 2011a.

Stubbs, Brian D. Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan.Provo: Jerry D Grover Publications, 2015d. .

Stubbs, Brian D. Changes in Languages from Nephi to Now.Blanding: Jared Berrett Publications, 2016.

Voegelin, C.F., F.M. Voegelin, and Kenneth L. Hale. Typological and Comparative Grammar of Uto-Aztecan. Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics: Memoir 17, supplement to IJAL 28(1), 1962.