Language and Writing Systems

Although we are normally quite unaware of it, there is a great difference between a spoken language and the characters (script) we use to write that language.

For example:  In the State of Israel the news of the day is written in modern Hebrew letters for its Jewish readers.  The same news story may be printed in a different newspaper, but written in Arabic script for its Palestinian readers.  While the content of the stories may differ because of different backgrounds and interests, the language that the Palestinians and Israelis speak is understood by both groups.  There are many Israeli citizens who can read only one OR the other of those two newspapers.   At the same time, a person who can read either of those newspapers aloud, can be readily understood by the non-reader because the spoken words they use sound essentially the same.

In addition, sounds are imperfectly communicated by most alphabets.  In English, we have distinct differences in sound between the R and the L.  To many Asians, these distinctions are  totally missed and the Korean name of Rhee (as in former Korean President Syngman Rhee), may be equivalently written in English as  Lee, Li, Ree, Ri, Yee, or Yi.  One reason for this is that the Korean character that represents the sound of the English R is sometimes used to also represent the Korean sound of the English L or Y.  Thus, a Korean may pronounce the English word rice as lice.

The Book of Mormon (BOM) says that the Nephites’ language (Hebrew) was written in a script THEY called, ‘Reformed Egyptian.’   We have no way of knowing what the Nephite words SOUNDED like in the modified form of Hebrew that they spoke, for the last Nephite prophet (Moroni) also said that their spoken Hebrew language had been altered over their 1000 year history.  (Mormon 4:98-99 CofChrist: 9:32-33 LDS)

We have found no evidence of the representation of sound in any of the CT characters.  There is ample evidence, however that the shapes of the Nephite characters were related to the MEANINGS of the Nephite words.  Those Nephite character shapes were shorthand abbreviations of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that carried MEANINGS.  The following chart shows characters which all include the meaning of ‘tongue’ within them.

The lower copy of each line has shaded areas which do NOT include ‘tongue’.  Therefore, note the unshaded parts which all represent ‘tongue.’

Another example:  The Egyptian character that was a picture of a clenched fist carried the meaning of “to hold tightly to’ or ‘to grasp,” To the Nephites, this ‘clenched fist’ character represented what we mean as ‘to preserve’ in English and that character is found as the central element in characters A3, B12, C19, D6, E13, E30, F28, and G32.  See the Code Sheet for identification of these characters.  (10/11/2018)
[See Dictionary for the makeup of each character by clicking on the code number link.]

Egyptologists tell us that the clenched fist hieroglyphic character was most likely pronounced “ahm,”  but we have no way of knowing the pronunciation of the corresponding word in the Nephite form of the Hebrew language.  Fortunately, with the Nephite form of hieroglyphic writing, once we know that the meaning of this character is ‘preserved’ in English, we don’t NEED to know how it was pronounced in either Egyptian OR Hebrew spoken languages–we simply call it ‘preserved,’ for that was the MEANING of the character, regardless of how it was pronounced.

We can do the same thing with ALL of the 20 basic characters that are represented in the CT!  This principle holds true for all languages!  Once we know the meaning of that particular shape in any language, it can be called by that name wherever it appears in the CT.