Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Is there evidence for Hebrew in ancient America? When we talk about evidence for the Book of Mormon, one place we can turn to is linguistics. And there's one scholar who thinks he has indeed found traces of Hebrew language elements in ancient American languages, namely the UTO Aztecan language family. So we've got Brian Stubbs with us. So thank you for being here with us, Brian.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: We are excited to have you. You are a scholar of linguistics. So you have studied a variety of Langu like Hebrew, Egyptian and a variety of Semitic ones. In addition to getting your master's at the University of Utah in linguistics and also teaching. Well, you did all but dissertation at University of Utah linguistics as well. And then you spent your career teaching at the College of Eastern Utah and also Utah State University.
So that's a pretty impressive list of credentials. And you've got a whole like stack of books here on your experience. So we've got changes in languages from Nephi to now this is his most recent book treating the connections potentially between Hebrew Udo Aztecan. But he's also got a variety of books that are respected in the field of Udo Aztec. And you are, you know, a well respected scholar in that language family, Udo Aztec in a comparative vocabulary. And this is a pretty seminal work in the field when it comes to comparing cognate words in Udo Aztecan and their descendants.
[00:01:26] Speaker C: Yeah. In fact, I think, and Brian, you can, you can correct me if I'm being a little too over the top and praising your work here, but if I'm not mistaken, this is actually a groundbreaking work in the field of UTO Aztecan. I actually have a quote here from Kenneth Hill, who reviewed it for the International Journal of American Linguistics and he praised it as a monumental contribution raising comparative UTO Aztecan to a new level.
So this is, you are a very serious, well respected Udo Aztec and linguist who has made serious contributions to the field and you believe that it has, there's compelling evidence that it has its roots in Semitic and Egyptian languages, Is that correct?
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Yes, that there's a significant Semitic and Egyptian component in Udo Aztecan.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: So why don't we to get started, why don't we talk about how did you first come across this possibility and what generated your interest in it and what led you to look to Udo Aztecan specifically and how did you make this discovery?
[00:02:37] Speaker B: So I dove into languages, masters in linguistics, Ph.D. a.B.D. all but dissertation, did the coursework and the comprehensive exams for a PhD in Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic.
And then I dove into Looking at most Native American language families, and most of them had nothing but a few had some interesting hints, and Utah Aztecan had a whole bunch of interesting stuff. And so that's why I specialized in UTO Aztecan.
And.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Okay, so can you define UTO Aztecan for us?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Yes.
We have a map right up here that shows the geographic spread of Utah Aztec, and it's one of the larger language families in the Americas, both north and south.
We have Quechua with 5 to 8 million speakers in the Andes in South America, and we have the Mayan in Mesoamerica.
UTO Aztecan is one of the bigger ones in North America. And northern Udo Aztecan all comes out of the Los Angeles area.
And then southern Utah Aztecan is along the west coast of Mexico there.
Plus the several Nahua dialects or languages, 28 of them actually scattered all over southern half of Mexico and even clear down into Nicaraguan, El Salvador and so forth. So, yeah, it's a big language family.
[00:04:09] Speaker C: And these are the wide geographic spread?
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a huge geographic spread. And they divide themselves into 11 branches. So you have 30 to 40 languages, but more closely related groups of languages within Eurazec and form into about 11 branches.
[00:04:29] Speaker C: So given this really wide geographic spread and people, like we said, we'll have this map on screen so people will be able to see this.
What.
What are the origins? Where. Where does this language family originate from? And how does it end up so diversely spread across such a wide.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: I mean, I hear Udo Aztecan, and I think, oh, the Aztecs. But it's clearly much broader than just that.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah. In fact, the name comes from the Utes in the north and the Aztecs in the south.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Oh, so it's like a bookend.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And yeah. As far as where it originated, that's a good question. And there's not a consensus on that.
Earlier, they thought it originated in the north, you know, because everything comes across the Bering Strait. Right, right. That's what the conventional wisdom is. So they figured it came south. However, there are three of us, three Udo Aztecanists, who believe there's evidence that they started in Mexico somewhere and spread northward.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: And when you say there's three of us, I mean that's a good chunk of your field. From what I understand, it's a pretty small field.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: There's only three or four or five of us that do research in the whole language family. There are people who focus on one language or branch of languages.
[00:05:37] Speaker C: So based on. Based on what you Just explained. Then you believe, and. And a couple of others in the field believe as well that this language family would have originated somewhere in Mexico, Mesoamerica, and would have been a native Mesoamerican language that then spread out northward and even southward to some extent.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: Right there. There's, you know, we don't have it really pinpointed, but yeah, somewhere in, in the south half. But that's just, you know, three of us. A whole bunch of other people think it's the other way, so.
[00:06:05] Speaker C: Sure, sure.
Yeah. And a lot of what we'll be talking about today, especially your findings in relation to Semitic and Egyptian, don't represent the consensus of Udo Aztecan scholars. But there is a lot of data that you have brought to the table. And so we don't want to make people's eyes glaze over too much, but we're here to talk about the evidence. So why don't we maybe dig into some of that data a little bit here. What you found is cognates, right Between Semitic, Egyptian and then UTO Aztecan languages. What is a cognate and why is that evidence of a relationship between two languages?
[00:06:39] Speaker B: First of all, a language family is a group of related languages descended from one common parent language. And the main feature that linguists look for in relatedness is, of course, words.
However, linguists have found that as the sounds change over time, that each sound in each language will change in a consistent way in another language. It'll change consistently within that language, but in a certain way, which sets up sound correspondences. In other words, we have here examples of, for example, hound in English and hund in German and kwon in Greek, kanis actually svan in Sanskrit.
But all of those come from something started with a k. But in the Germanic branch, the K changed to h.
And in Sanskrit it actually changed to s. So that's a typical sound correspondence in Indo European, among Indo European languages.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: And that's really interesting to me because, like, I look at the difference between H and k, and that seems like such a big leap to me, like vocally for my English speaking ears, and even P and f. But at the same time, I feel like they're all sounds that you make at the same part of your mouth, like the P and the F. Those are both sounds you make with your lips. So I could see how that would transition over time. The H and the K. I mean, that's happening more in the back of your mouth a lot of the time. So that like, oh, okay, cool.
[00:08:15] Speaker C: I am no linguist but having. I studied some of this stuff in preparation for talking to you and I've read up on your stuff before and I've gotta say as a non expert, sometimes these sound shifts are so strange to me, like you wouldn't expect it. But this is, this is well studied linguistic science.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: It's tested, it happens.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:08:35] Speaker C: So these kinds of things, these cognate sets with consistent sound shifts, this is what linguists look for when they're trying to establish a relationship between two different languages. And how, like what percentage or how much of a language do they expect to see overlap before they say, you know what, there's probably a relationship here?
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Good question.
Generally they won't pay attention to much that is less than 10%. They like to find at least 10% or more.
For example, Modern English only kept 15% of Old English and the rest were French and Latin loans. Right. When French ruled England.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's, I think that's really helpful context here and to set us up for the evidence that you found that you believe persuasively shows that there is Hebrew or Semitic at least, and then Egyptian relationships with Uto Aztecan. So the standard is about 10% for establishing a relationship between a language.
What have you found with UTO Aztecan and the Semitic and Egyptian languages? And maybe we can go over some examples of the kinds of things you found as well in this book.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: This book's 2700. 2700 cognates, which are groups of related words that descend from the same ancient word. There are 2700 in that book. If you want to hold it up. That one is which cognates are descended from Hebrew, Aramaic and Egyptian, specifically those three. And it has 1650 cognates. Wow. Relating to the Semitic, which is about 60% of what's in this.
[00:10:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: So it has a good percentage.
[00:10:29] Speaker C: That's a large chunk of the Udo Aztecan vocabulary there.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Right. And it.
And so yeah, we're just. The more we look, the more we find. I say we. I.
[00:10:42] Speaker C: So let's, let's go over some of the examples. What are examples of some of these words and let's talk through some of them.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, let's. For example, Semitic B changed to Yudoztecan. P.
Barak is the word for lightning in most Semitic languages.
In Yudo Aztecan we have Baroque and Mayo and Peroq is the reconstruction. But it's in six or seven or eight languages.
The very close. And it also means lightning.
Baca. In fact, in Aramaic it's got a glottal stop at the end. Baka. And in Udo Aztecan, paka both mean to cry.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: And even as you're verbalizing that, like, I can hear, they're very similar because the b and the p, like you're both making that sound with your lips. It sounds very close.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Exactly. And the Hebrew bat, the word for daughter, Yudoztecan, pata, daughter, bo, is interesting. It's the verbal noun of to come.
And as a verbal noun, it also means the way to the coming to a place is the way to a place. In UTO Aztecan, it's po, which is road or way.
That capital C just means a consonant. They don't know which consonant, but linguists know that there is a consonant there.
Basar is the verb to see. And there's a Arabic word from that, baserat, which means I.
And the Hebrew parallel or cognitive of that would be boser, if it were found, but we don't know for sure. We haven't found evidence that it exists. But if it did, it would be boser, which exactly parallels Udo, Aztec and Pusi ay.
Aramaic, bakura, for livestock is extremely interesting because in most Semitic languages and including Aramaic cognates, it's bakar, or some form of it, with long or short vowels, but the vowels are bakar and so forth.
But in Euro Aztecan, it's pukun. There's some kind of final consonant, but they don't know which. Again, most think it's a nasal. But that's curious, because there's one place in among all the Aramaic dialects where it's bakura instead of bakar.
And that first short vowel would be so short and unaccented that it would likely change to what the longer stressed vowel is the second one. And Yudoztecan exactly fits that. And that happens to be in northern Palestine, where ancient northern Israel was that. Yeah. That one word fits that one dialect. We have a few words like that pointing to northern Palestine where ancient northern Israel was.
[00:13:40] Speaker C: So northern Israelites, such as maybe people from the tribe of Manasseh.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: Or Ephraim.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Or any of the 10. Right, yeah. And in fact, Samaritan Aramaic has a word or two that's like Udo Aztecan.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Oh, really?
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Okay. So as someone who is not a linguist themselves, I've done some Hebrew.
I'm looking at this and this. These. It seems really interesting. But I've also seen other people claim that, like, oh, there's Hebrew influence even in English, because the word British. You can break up into British. And it's like, oh, man of the covenant. And I see that. And like, well, that's just like a sharpshooter fouls. That's just like pulling at straws. How do we know that this is actually being done with, like a sound methodology? Like what. What method are you using to make sure that these are actually legitimate and not just like pulling things out of thin air to create a connection?
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Good question.
Because there are coincidences in language. So two words in different languages can coincidentally look alike, but. But they're not related. And so it's. It's a numbers game. You have to have. When you get certain numbers that fit these patterns over a certain number, then it's really quite impossible that it happens by chance. And then the larger the number, then the stronger the case, you know, that there is some kind of relationship, something happened in the past to show these are related.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Okay, so it's partly like a volume game. It shows up over and over and over in a pattern.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: In fact, see, these six are six out of 1657.
[00:15:13] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: And we have a number of others.
In fact, here are the other voiced stops devoiced in Uto Aztecan. So BD&G devoiced to P, T and K.
And for example, dubur is one of the words for hind end. And in Udo Aztec. And we have tupur, which exactly. Both consonants are devoiced meaning hip or hinden, dober, pasture vegetation, tupi. Again, same devoicing meaning grass, vegetation, heap of stones, yakar, nose, point ridge, sigob, squirrel, siku, with some kind of constant, the end squirrel. See, the word biblical Hebrew does not have a word for squirrel. There's no word for squirrel in the Old Testament. But we have Arabic words to which the Hebrew cognate would be segob, and it fits perfectly the U. Aztecan word for squirrel. And so there's a lot of.
Not a lot, but there are some of these that are
[00:16:23] Speaker C: so. And from what I understand, then it's. It's this presence, like you said, it's the volume, but then it's also the presence of these. These consistent patterns.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Exactly. Consistent sound correspondences among related languages. Right.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: That occur in a way that suggests that this is not just happenstance, like the example Jasmine gave, or that you're not just doing a random grab bag sort of thing. You are looking for this kind of consistent pattern, which is kind of the gold standard for what linguists look for to establish a relationship between two different languages.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: The argument is that There's a descent relationship between Hebrew, Aramaic, Semitic stuff and Udo Aztecan. Besides just the geographical challenges, knowing these are an ocean away, how do you know that that it's a descent relationship versus the other way around?
[00:17:12] Speaker B: How do linguists tell that or contact borrowing? Right, Good question. The when, if it fits a certain set of sound correspondences, then you know that it's a descent.
And loans will come into a language with different sounds, different, they don't fit that those sound correspondences necessarily.
And I used to think when I first was finding, and I was only in the, you know, 3 or 400, 600 and then it went to 800, I used to think, you know, maybe this is a Semitic group that came into Utah Aztec.
But the more I looked at it, we have much higher percentages. And then I decided that the ancestor proto Utah Aztecan had this group group in it.
Another sound correspondence is changing the glottal stop to W. That happened in the change from Semitic to Udo Aztecan. That also happens in some Arabic dialects. By the way, the glottal stop changing to W. But here we have Hebrew ari, lion in Eurazecan, wadi, mountain lion.
Hebrew word for to believe him or it ya amino.
And in UTO Aztecan, yahwamino, to believe him or it identical with a glottal stop going to W, a nut tree, egos, woko in Udra Aztecan again glottalostap to w.
Ya or ya ya in Semitic in Luisano, ya wah yua.
There's actually one of the languages, Serrano, that keeps the glottal stav, ya, ya' an and truffle. That's a food, an edible food that grows on a root system underground.
And kama sweet potato. So you know, when you get, when you get hundreds of these kinds of patterns that match so well and with a consistent set of sound correspondences, that's good evidence of descent.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: So if you think there's a descent relationship, what's the consensus on when Uruaz Tekin develops as a language family?
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Another very good question that there's no consensus on.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: One of the problems is glottochronology's time depth. According to that, most people think that utero Aztecans split up about 5,000 years ago. But we can see that glottochronology has a lot of problems. For example, it gets all skewed dealing with language mixes. For example, Yiddish, the European Jews language only has about 15 to 20% of the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Whereas the, you know, so the glottochronological date that would point to would be separating from Israel about 10,000 years ago. But we know it was more like 2000 or 2500.
So it's a completely skewed same thing with Uto Aztec. And we have, you know, some people think 5000 years ago, but I think it's about half that. In fact, what an interesting dilemma that they, that the anthropologists present for themselves is that they think the Aztecs came from the north about, you know, 2000, 4000 years before Columbus, you know, a thousand or 1200. That's been the consensus for a long time. However, the glottochronological dates for the separation of the Nahua languages and Kota Chol, which is closely related to Nahua, is 5,000 years. Even the Kota and Huichol separation within that small branch is about 3,000 years ago. So hey, that would suggest that they were there in the area, you know, at least 3,000 years ago or 2,500 years ago. So, you know, that fits really well with Book of Mormon stuff, whereas the 5,000 doesn't. But there are many questions about a lot of chronology that it not. Linguists do not pay attention to it. They look at it and they consider it as one of the factors, but they know that it's not reliable, it's not definitive.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly, you say there is a reasonable case to suggest that maybe there's introduction of Book of Mormon people's languages into the Americas and that's where Udo Aztec and develops from.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: That's a pretty bold.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: That's what I would have to guess from the 1600 cognates we have. But yeah, and there's, you know, I'm not going to argue with anybody. They can think time will tell.
It'll be after I'm gone. But okay, let's see you.
We have to touch on this because we're going to see it a lot. This pharyngeal H is. We don't have it in European languages, but it's made with a way. It's a deep H way in the throat.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Like an aspirated.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And also deeper in the throat where the pharynx is and it goes to hu or ho in Utero Aztecans, sometimes just a round vowel. We have lots of examples of that. For example.
Yeah, there are changes in meaning.
Some of them are slight changes. Some of them are very understandable changes and others are these kinds of changes,
[00:22:36] Speaker C: though they do happen.
They're not what you expect to see in linguistic change.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: In fact, later on, we're going to look at some combinations of meanings that carry over into Udo Aztec and. Which are very impressive. Yeah, Some Egyptian correspondences. The Egyptian has the same sound changes as the Semitic that we were just looking at.
For example, calf of the leg. Now, Egyptian did not write vowels. We only have the consonants.
[00:23:01] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Occasionally they're hinted at. For example, in 42 bob, beat. It's got that Y, which is A, e sound, basically. And babit, region of the throat, uterus, tekken, papi, larynx, throat voice. Very. I mean, identical, basically.
But sabak, the calf of the leg. Sipika in UTO Aztecan.
Sabati, an enclosure. Udo Aztecan. Sapti, fence of branches.
Bashi is the verb for spit or vomit. Bashu is the noun vomit or vomiting, vomit.
Saba is the. Are the three consonants for the word for star. In Udo Aztecan, we have sipo, which often changes to sipole.
The glottal stop jumps to another spot. But that's common in language change.
Same three consonants for flatten, BDS and pitasa, flatten and utero Aztecan. So, you know, again, we've listed 45 and there are 1600. So it's a very strong case.
The Egyptian does also has like Semitic does. And it does the same thing goes to round vowels. Or hu or ho or w, O, U. We have H, B, I to make, to be a festival or make festival. Yida, estecon, hupiya, honokat, beer or drinkers.
Hopi, honaka, be drunk, alcohol.
This is an interesting one.
Hotpeh in.
It's actually voweled later in Coptic, and that's where these vowels come from. Hotpeople is the Egyptian word for peace or be peaceable, gracious, kind. It also means to set of the sun. It also means to bury. You know, when the sun set, it looks like it goes below the earth. When you bury somebody, you put them below the earth. It also means for the hair to fall out. Now, those are three very different meanings. To be peace and to bury or set and for the hair to fall out. In Yudo Aztecan, we have peaceable. We have sink or dive. And for the hair to fall out.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Oh, that's very.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: That's an amazing combination. Three very different meanings all carry over into Udo Aztec.
[00:25:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that's one of the examples you talked about where you see the combinations of meanings. Combinations and meanings that.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Exactly. Oh, and also the glottal stop to w often happens in Egyptian.
M, glottal stop E is the Egyptian word for lion.
Exactly. A correspondence of the same.
I mean, the correspondence is fit. And again, the change from lion to mountain lion in both Hebrew and Egyptian.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: Now that's. I want to maybe comment on that because that actually stood out to me when I reviewed some of your stuff as a potentially interesting insight for Book of Mormon related stuff, because lion is something that shows up in the Book of Mormon. It mentions lions.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: It mentions.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: And it's something that some people have called an anachronism in the Book of Mormon because there aren't lions in the Americas. Not the African line, not the African lion anymore.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:20] Speaker C: And the answer that some Latter Day Saints would give is that there's a loan shift going on or a semantic extension where their Old World word is being extended to a native, an indigenous American species.
And this is maybe evidence that would suggest or maybe corroborate that sort of thing. You see a shift from lion to mountain lion.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: In fact, you know, it's only the male lion that has the big hair and mane.
The female lion looks a lot like a mouse.
[00:26:52] Speaker C: Yeah, they look so identical.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: So I want to maybe comment on that. Just this pattern that we're observing here as you share or put some of these. These maybe correspondences on screen, we're seeing many of the same sound shifts in both Semitic component and the Egyptian component, which might suggest that we had one group of people that came with both a Semitic and Egyptian background, and their use of both of those languages gets represented through Udo Aztecin with the same set of sound correspondences, sound shifts, which a Book of Mormon reader might immediately recognize as significant since the Nephites we know from Mormon 9, 33 and 34, they had both Egyptian and Hebrew linguistic knowledge.
So there's a little bit of a Book of Mormon connection there.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Both Semitic and Egyptian parallels in Eurozdeq and have the same sound correspondences and so are spoken by the same people or group. And that's what you were is talking.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: Right, Right.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: However, a sizable yet separate set of data have a different set of sound correspondences in which Semitic B went to Udo, Aztec and Qua, which is a similar. That seems strange.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: It seems very strange to me.
[00:28:16] Speaker C: That's one of those ones when, when I was commenting earlier that, when I learned about it, I was like that.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: That doesn't make much sense. You're using different parts of your mouth. But interesting.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's like the correspondence in Indo Europeans, Greek P corresponding to Latin.
[00:28:30] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: I mean like hippo is a river horse. Hippopotamus is a river horse in Greek, and equus equus in Latin. Oh, so that P in Greek corresponding to the qua.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: I made that connection before. Cool.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: But, hey, let's look at some of this Semitic kwa stuff where the bee changed here, as in kwa in Hebrew, baash means to be boiled or to cook or to ripen.
And kwasa, they know there's a consonant at the end. It's been lost, but they know it's there. Its effect is felt in various words.
Kwasa, again, everything matches except the B became kwa ba la to swallow the final. The third consonant is that ayn, that pharyngeal ein that causes rounding, remember? And we have in utero Aztecan identical meaning.
Oh, this is an interesting one, because in Hebrew, bama means a high heel, and it comes from the Semitic word bahamat with a lost h. Baha mat means back. And in udo Aztecan, it retains the h but also changes the b to qua. So kwahami means back, big back or ridge.
And that's why in Hebrew it's hill, a high hill. But see, that is actually where our English word behemoth I was actually about. This is. The plural would be bahamot.
[00:30:00] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: And so behemoth is from bahamut.
[00:30:02] Speaker C: So something big something, Right.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: That's a loan into English from.
From Semitic. In fact, probably Phoenician rather than Hebrew.
And Baca, we have that. We had that in Semitic P, baka, but quokka tikrai, and uto Aztecan da, ber, tekwi.
Also the. Yeah. And B' nai children, Kone offspring.
So, yeah, there are probably 20, 25, 30 examples of this sound change in Yido Aztecan. So again, a lot of data to make a good case. 500 Egyptian terms and 700 Semitic. So anyway, the difference between Semitic P and Semitic kwa, I just differentiate those dialects according to what B changed to. So Semitic P, B changed to p for those 700 items in Semitic Kwa, the B changed to Kwa for about 400.
So this Nephite Mulekite merger, about 3/4 of the language was the Nephite dialect and about one fourth was the Mulekite. Now, from reading the text, the Book of Mormon texts, you know, hey, we taught them the language, and most people might assume that, hey, they just dropped their other language. But we find out here that, no, they mixed. But yeah, they learned. But the Nephite language was a more dominant. That's what they learned.
[00:31:26] Speaker C: Right. And I think what's kind of interesting here is we have in the encounter in the Book of Mormon they find that even though they came from the same origin point and you would think they would speak mutually intelligible languages, we can even see now in this data if it's related to the Book of Mormon, they actually did have some differences evolve in their languages that made it so that they would have had a difficulty understanding exactly.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: They were living next to other languages that changed in different ways. Changed them in different ways. When they came together they couldn't understand each other because different vocabulary too. You have Aramaic and Egyptian in the one, a lot of Phoenician in the other, even though they're both kind of Semitic. So yeah, there's a number of reasons why they could not understand each other.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: So when you talk about a descent relationship, you're not saying that like Nephi and Lehi came over and they were the only people there and that language evolved over time, but rather they are a small group coming into a much larger language environment with lots of different civilizations. And it mixes into that they were
[00:32:30] Speaker B: influenced heavily by their neighboring Native Americans that spoke different languages.
So people ask, as they should, what do the top authorities think? David H. Kelly, an international scholar, Harvard PhD who published in anthropology linguistics Euro Aztecan and helped decipher the Mayan glyphs, said upon receiving an early draft of this book from John Sorensen, he said the thick thing came in the mail and I did not want to tackle it, but I dutifully opened it intending to look at a page or two.
However, I started to read and ended up reading the whole book. It is the most interesting and significant piece of research I have seen in years.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: That's wow.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: That's what David Kelly says. John Robertson, a leading Mayan scholar, Harvard PhD in historical linguistics, retired chair of the BYU linguistics department wrote two positive reviews. Also Dirk Elsinga wrote a positive review and he is a udoist. He's a specialist in NMEC which is a branch of Utero. I was taken also Royal Skousen, Mark Davies, Mary Richie key who's non LDS, Eric Elliot. He's also a U2 Aztec and specialist in Louis Seino and others have said good of it and if I can
[00:33:40] Speaker C: just plug in there. Another linguist that I've read who said good things about your work was Roger Westcott.
He published a paper on potential pre Columbian contact and evidence of Eurasian linguistics in North America and highlighted your work in in that publication. And he's. He was a pretty, I think he had like over 400 linguistics publications.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And he was, he's president of the U. S. Canada linguistic association. So he was, he was a prominent linguist. Yes.
The two people have tried to. Two linguists have tried to take it down.
And in answer to them on the interpreter website, it's online, so anybody can go read it. The, the article that I wrote, answering the critics in 44 rebuttal points. Notice that's not 10 or 12, that's 44.
So you can, Anybody can read that that wants to.
And of the of the 10 Semitic scholars that I sent this work to, five said it is a strong case. Three said the Semitic coverage shows that I know Semitic, but they did not know and declined to comment. Two did not answer.
[00:34:48] Speaker C: But there's something you actually say towards the end of this book that I think is maybe worth highlighting because lots of people, when they ask for evidence of the Book of Mormon or they'll say, hey, you know, the Book of Mormon says it was written in Egyptian or Hebrew.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Where's the reformed Egyptian?
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Where's the evidence? Where's the inscriptions of that? There's something you say in this book that I think is really germane to that. So let's maybe talk about this. You say the strength of language evidence is that if enough of it has been preserved to be documented linguistically, then language is among the strongest kinds of evidence. Language families, unlike inscriptions, cannot be fabricated. Written records unearthed in the Americas are often labeled hoaxes.
But language ties, when apparent, show specific ties from ancient to modern times. And the thousands of speakers of the related languages are beyond fabrication.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:35:37] Speaker C: So I, I think that really speaks to the power of this kind of data. It's. This is actually way more significant than digging an inscription out of the ground that people might dispute the authenticity of.
Because you can't, you can't fake this kind of thing. You can't fake 1657 cognate sets. Either that data is there and it's real or.
Right or it's not. But it's not something you can just fabricate. Right.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Right. And you can't, you can't fabric. You can't create 1500 speakers of related languages for a good family.
[00:36:12] Speaker C: Exactly. This isn't. It would. This would be either a massive conspiracy or the data. Or the data holds up. Right.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: This is a vast topic. It can be a technical topic. So thank you for walking us through your arguments. We can understand it a little bit better. And for those who want to learn more about the connections between the Book of Mormon and Udo Aztecan Brian Stubbs has a chapter coming out in a new volume with the Religious Studies center at Brigham Young University entitled In the Eyes of the Ancient Historical Perspectives on the Book of Mormon. So you can see his latest research in that volume. Remember, you can believe boldly in the restoration and study deeply, and we'll see you next time.
