The Mormon Church does not want even its own members to know how to pronounce Shimnilom. Most Mormons do not know the words of their own so-called scripture. If you ask a typical Mormon to say “Shimnilom,” they will not recognize it as a word from their “golden Bible.” Ask them to explain what “Shimnilom” means, and all you get is a blank stare. But if you are debating phonology with one of the Mormon elite or a self-proclaimed “Mormon apologist” and ask him the same question, he will turn to the pronouncing guide at the end of the Book of Mormon—and fall right into your trap. “Shimnilom” does not occur at all in the pronouncing guide! The formerly self-assured apologist will visibly deflate when he finds only the word “Shimnilon” with an N. The novice “Mormon studies” scholar may start to wonder what other falsehoods might be found among his cherished assumptions about the pronouncing guide, but a FARMS bigshot will likely try to explain final nasals in Semitic, early American dialects, and the typesetting process. The truth is much more sinister: the Mormon Church does not want anyone to talk about Shimnilom. No Mormon leader has ever mentioned Shimnilom in their conferences, and the “church” conceals references to Shimnilom in its publications.

That is not the only glaring error in the pronouncing guide of a supposedly “inspired” book! Hidden in the Book of Mormon, the careful reader will find “Ammah,” “Ophir,” and “Jotham,” but the pronouncing guide substitutes labiodentals for the true bilabial nasals. Do you notice something about the distorted forms “Amnah,” “Opher,” and “Jothan” in the pronouncing guide? They are all words from the HOLY BIBLE that have been diabolically misspelled in the pronouncing guide! If you are ever involved in an onomastic debate with a Mormon missionary, just ask him if he has heard of Ammah. “Sure,” he’ll say, “that’s one of the missionary companions of Aaron who preached at Ani-Anti and Middoni.” Then you can say to him “No! Ammah is a hill that lieth before Giah by the way of the wilderness of Gibeon! The Ammah in the Book of Mormon is not the same Ammah of the Bible! Mormons do not believe in the Christian Ammah!” If the incredulous elder does not believe you, just point out the false “Amnah” in the pronouncing guide, and he will not know what to say, or how to say it!

Almost as shocking as the twisting of scriptural names is the complete omission of sacred toponyms. The Mormon Church does not want to acknowledge that their own scripture mentions Cush, Nob, or Palestina. The Bible teaches that Doeg the Edomite saw the Son of Jesse coming to Nob, but the Mormon pronouncing guide won’t help you say it correctly. For Bible Christians, Palestina is the Holy Land. No wonder the Book of Mormon pronouncing guide doesn’t include it. When will the Mormon Church finally stop hiding the truth about its pronouncing guide? How many more combinations of vowels and consonants are missing from it? There could literally be hundreds!

But the most fiendish pronunciation aid of all is without question “Mahonri,” a word that does not occur in the Book of Mormon or anywhere else in the Mormon scriptures. What does Revelation say about adding or taking away from the words of the Bible? But the Mormons have added and taken away words from the very pronouncing guide itself! The Mormon Church can no longer hide the fact that “Mahonri” is in the pronouncing guide but not in the Book of Mormon. Even their own web site will tell you: “There were no occurrences of the word MAHONRI found in the Text of the Scriptures.” What word does it suggest instead? MASONRY. Enough said.

The researcher Mary Jane Woodger looked into the controversial history of the pronouncing guide, a history that most Mormons don’t know about because their “church” is hiding it from them. But Mary Jane Woodger documented a startling and shameless cover-up, including changes to the text of the Book of Mormon pronouncing guide as recently as 1981! Woodger’s conclusion? “Uniformity.” From early 20th century, when the authority of the Mormon hierarchy was crumbling in the face of the collapse of polygamy, until the church’s imminent collapse today due to worldwide expansion, the pronouncing guide has enforced rigid conformity in pronunciation on generations of Mormons too deluded or too frightened to sound it out for themselves. When faced with an unfamiliar word, Mormons unthinkingly look to a familiar and trusted authority that is in fact faulty, incomplete, and, most tragically of all, does not use the IPA for its phonetic transcriptions. But the TRUTH about the Book of Mormon pronouncing guide will not stay hidden.