In considering the problem of the language of the plates translated by Joseph Smith it is well to keep these facts in mind: (1) the word language has several different meanings and includes both spoken and written concepts, such as grammatical constructions, thought patterns, and exact phraseology; (2) Joseph Smith translated from two different records (the small plates of Nephi and the plates of Mormon); these plates were prepared and written nearly 1,000 years apart, and the language of one well might not be the language of the other.
Thus several possible interpretations exist of Nephi's statement, "I make a record in the language of my father, which consists of the learning of the Jews and the language of the Egyptians." First of all, what is the antecedent of the pronoun which: record or language? Then what do the terms "language of my father" and "language of the Egyptians" mean? Is Nephi referring to the spoken words, the written script, the grammatical constructions, the thought patterns, the exact phraseology, or what?
One scholar of the Book of Mormon concludes from this quotation that "Nephi wrote in the Hebrew language but used Egyptian characters or script in the same sense that a stenographer uses Gregg characters to express English words" (Sidney B. Sperry, Our Book of Mormon [Bookcraft, 1950], p. 31), whereas another scholar believes that Nephi "is not telling us what language his father spoke, but giving notice that he is . . . going to quote or paraphrase a record actually written by his father" (Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Desert [Bookcraft, 1952], p. 14). The fact that the experts honestly disagree on the interpretation of these verses should not concern us unduly; their interpretations are given here primarily to illustrate the complexity of the problem.
If this statement by Nephi does not give us a hint as to the actual language (or script) characters written on the small plates of Nephi, then we are left almost completely in the dark concerning this question, as the matter is not mentioned again by Nephi or the other writers on the small plates of Nephi. However, we are given some help as to the written script of characters of the plates of Mormon by the following statement made by Moroni about A.D. 400.
And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.And if our plates had been sufficiently large we should have written in Hebrew; but the Hebrew hath been altered by us also; and if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record.
But the Lord knoweth the things which we have written, and also that none other people knoweth our language. . . . (Mormon 9:32-34.)
Moroni, writing approximately 1,000 years later than Nephi but having access to the small plates of Nephi, can see that their written characters have been altered during the 1,000-year period; thus the written characters on the plates of Mormon are called "reformed" Egyptian because they have been "altered" by the Nephites.