The original languages of the Book of Mormon

What did the writing on the plates look like? Can there be any comparison to known ancient languages? Aside from the 'Caractors' roughly drawn by Joseph or perhaps one of his scribes, we have little to go on. What is Reformed Egyptian anyway? And more importantly, what do Book of Mormon writers say themselves about the languages they used?

Our first clue comes very early in the record, when Nephi tells us that his record is in the language of his father. He then goes on to tell us that it consists of the 'learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians.' (1 Ne 1:2). Admittedly, we don't know exactly what he means, but obviously, Lehi and his family would have spoken Hebrew, the language of the Jews. We might think we know what Hebrew looks like, but the written language was changed anciently. The block script used today was adopted by Jews in the third century BC. Before that, they used an older script called paleo-Hebrew. In the image below, the two writing systems are compared. Aleph starts on the far right, then Beth, then Gimel, and so on. Remember that Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, was written and read from right to left. The familiar Hebrew alphabet on the top line would have been unknown to the Jews of Lehi's day. They would have been using the characters shown on the bottom line.