Richard Packham

In light of the many linguistic blunders and erroneous translations made by this man who claimed to be a divinely inspired "translator," it is difficult to see why anyone with any understanding of linguistic phenomena would accept his claims. Joseph Smith was quite ignorant of languages, in spite of his boasting of his abilities and divine inspiration, and when one examines his linguistic claims and his supposedly divine linguistic accomplishments, one must conclude that if his god inspired him, his god was as poor a linguist as he was. Mormonism's claims fail on many other fronts besides linguistics. But even a few of the gross linguistic errors as discussed here should be sufficient to show that Smith's claims are no more than the boastings of an ignorant (although charismatic) human being.