In 2014 I published a blog article entitled "Early Modern English."
The next year I published another article entitled "English in the Book of Mormon."
Both articles support the idea from Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack that the language Joseph Smith dictated to his scribes in 1829 was primarily Early Modern English. Nothing I have encountered in the intervening years has convinced me otherwise. But, I have run across people who wonder if an archaic form of English may have been spoken by rural people in the Palmyra, New York frontier area during Joseph's lifetime. After all, we know that Appalachian English aka Smoky Mountain English aka Southern Mountain English is an oral linguistic phenomenon known to science that persists today in the mountainous area from southern New York to northern Mississippi and Alabama.
Point #1: Appalachian English is not a fossilized form of Early Modern English preserved in isolation in the hills and hollers of the region. It has much stronger affinities with 18th century American Colonial English which is generally considered Modern English. Scotch Irish influences from northern Ireland are widely recognized. See A Handbook of Varieties of English (Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004) and Michael Montgomery, "How Scotch-Irish is your English?" in The Journal of East Tennessee History, Vol. 67 (2005).
Point #2: English in most parts of colonial North America was surprisingly uniform. Historical linguists such as Paul K. Longmore and Joey L. Dillard discuss "linguistic levelling" and the "American koiné" that they attribute to extensive travel and migration and the rapid assimilation of immigrants speaking Dutch, French, German, Swedish, and other western European tongues. "By the early to mid-eighteenth century, varieties of English emerged that many observers perceived as both homogenous and matching metropolitan (London) standard English." Paul K. Longmore, "Good English without Idiom or Tone: The Colonial Origins of American Speech" in Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 37:4 (Spring, 2007). The nation building that accompanied the American Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783) further standardized a language that was already much more normalized than the regional dialects prevalent in Britain at the time. John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born in Scotland. He observed that Americans had geographic, occupational, and social mobility so they were "not so liable to local peculiarities either of accent or phraseology." Very high American birth rates added to the linguistic levelling effect since native born colonials quickly came to vastly outnumber immigrants. Intercontinental travelers and long-term settlers such as Hugh Jones, William Eddis, Jonathan Boucher, and many others were impressed with the homogeneity they found in American speech patterns. See "They Speak Better English than the English Do: Colonialism and the Origins of National Linguistic Standardization in America" in Early American Literature Vol. 40 No. 2 (2005). Eighteenth century British visitors marveled at the "striking uniformity" of the English spoken by American colonists. "The American Koine - Origin, Rise, and Plateau Stage" in Kansas Journal of Sociology, Vol. 9 No. 2 (1973),
Point #3. Joseph Smith, Emma Hale Smith, Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and others associated with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon precisely matched the demographic profile described above: geographically, occupationally, and socially mobile.
Point #4. The Erie Canal was under construction from 1817 - 1825. It runs right through Palmyra, New York. Construction was a polyglot enterprise employing thousands. Once it began operation, people from around the world traveled on it routinely. It connected Buffalo on Lake Erie to Albany on the Hudson River to New York City on the Atlantic. Palmyra was not a bucolic backwater. After 1825 it was highly integrated into the global economy of the time. Click to enlarge the map below.
 |
| 1825 Map of the Erie Canal. The Red Arrow Indicates Palmyra. |
Point #5. Beginning about 1760 there was a conscious effort among American nationalists to further standardize language throughout the colonies. This was considered a social, economic, and military good. Luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) fostered the movement. Noah Webster (1758-1843) eventually became a leader in the cause which culminated in his celebrated 1828 dictionary of American English.
Point #6. Methodism was the fastest growing faith community in North America from 1766 through the 1820's, largely due to circuit riders. These itinerant preachers traveled widely and their far-flung influence helped standardize linguistic patterns throughout the country. See William A. Powell, Jr. "Methodist circuit-riders in America, 1766 - 1844." Master's thesis, Paper 813, University of Richmond (1977).
So, the notion that the archaic language in the earliest Book of Mormon text originated in or was intended to communicate colloquially with upstate New York seems far-fetched. We have a fair sampling of Joseph's personal words and a larger sampling of his mother's words. Both spoke Modern English as we would expect given their cultural origins in 1805 Vermont and 1775 New Hampshire respectively.
