Bom Evidence Unkown Language And Characters

[Tom m]

Unknown characters and Language

Mormon 9:34

34 But the Lord knoweth the things which we have written, and also that none other people knoweth our language; and because that none other people knoweth our language, therefore he hath prepared means for the interpretation thereof.

 

(Gaspesian/Mik Maq Indians Proposed Nehite/ Hopewll survivors)
"The Gaspesian language has nothing at all in common, in its expressions, any more than in the meaning of its words, with the languages of our Europe ....because, amidst an infinity of different tongues which prevail among all these peoples, our Gaspesians are distinguished from the Montagniez, Soquoqui, Abennaqui, Hurons, Algomquins, Iroquois, and other nations of this new world, by a language which is peculiar to them."
(Clercq 1680 pg141)

 

(The area mentioned in the quote corresponds with the Gaspesian/Mik Mak Indians lands the proposed Hopewell/ Nephites survivors)
“A very respectable American author has imagined,
that the Indian tribes to the northward of
the river Saco spake a language very different
from that of the tribes to the southward of the
famed river. He informs us, that " there was not
one word" of the language of the tribes of Penobscot
and St. John's, who dwell to the northward
of the Saco.”
(Barton pg LVIII)

 

“Letters of an unknown alphabet are inscribed upon a rock in (he western parts of New-York. 1 here is a rock, called the Dighton rock, on Taunton river, near Dighton, in Massachusetts. It is a large rock in the margin of the sea, and upon it are inscriptions in strange characters, partly alphabetical and partly hieroglyphic.”
(Haywood 1823 pg329)

 

“There are certain enchanted beads, thin plates of copper, of which extraordinary figures are engraved, with inexplicable words and unknown characters.”
(Haywood 1823 pg346)

[Brant Gardner]

Micmac is an Eastern Algonquin language. That means that if you are using uniqueness as fulfillment of Mormon 9:34, it fails. It did have some characters in a pictographic language, but that is also not unique in the New World. The "alphabet" that has become know for them was developed from the pre-contact characters by the early priests and is therefore too late to have had anything to do with the Book of Mormon.

[Tom m]

I have not even mentioned the Mik Maq Book of Parers yet but I'm glad you brought this up. Some north American native Inidian tribes believed that had a book of scripture and letters. In the case of the Mik Maq Indians. Jesuit priest Clercq in 1670 took pictographs that the Mik Maq already had and help them compose a written language. In his writings when he first arrived he saw Mik Maq Indian writing on Birch Bark.

 

If Clercq wanted to help a tribe that had no symbols or writing system he would not have used hieroglyphic and pictograph characters. Some of which have semblance to Egyptian characters. He would have used the latin alphabet the language he speaks and writes in.