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I believe this would count as an inconsistency, though only a vague one. Hear me out.
Back in Omni, we were told that the first Mosiah came to Zarahemla and found the numerous Mulekites, who had left Jerusalem at the time that Zedekiah had been carried into Babylon (around the time of the destruction of the Temple, in 587-586 B.C., in the 11th year of Zedekiah’s reign). This would have been within a few years at most of the time that Lehi, Laman, Nephi, etc., set sail for the Americas, since they left after 8 years of wandering in the wilderness plus however much time it took them to build their boat, and they left Jerusalem in Zedekiah’s first year. This means they had left at the same time, and they obviously would have all spoken the same language at that time. But in Omni, we’re told that these two people groups no longer spoke the same language by the time Mosiah found them — “their alanguage had become corrupted; and they had brought no brecords with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them” (v17) — and this would have been somewhere around 175-150 B.C. (The LDS Church says the book of Omni covers from 323-130 B.C., but we’re not told exactly when Mosiah would have found these people; just that he’s the father of King Benjamin to whom the last writer of the book of Omni gives the plates. So, this is approximately 400 years, and at most 470 years of separation, between the time the two groups of people left Jerusalem and their offspring reunited in the Americas.)
However, we’re also told that the Nephites and Lamanites separated soon after they arrived at the Americas, which would also be about the same time that the Mulekites and Nephites were separated — perhaps a decade’s difference at most. We read that Mosiah had the Mulekites learn his language, but we never get any hint that there is any language difference or difficulty between the Lamanites and Nephites — not 400 years after they split, and not even after 1,000 years! Since the Mulekites’ language was corrupted in 400 years, how come the Lamanites’ language never did?
We’re explicitly told that the Mulekites didn’t bring any Scriptures or other written records with them, and the same thing can be said of the Lamanites — or at least, that they didn’t have any such records, since Nephi took them with him when he and his people fled from the Lamanites. I point this out because written records have a way of preserving a language longer (probably a big reason why English has changed relatively little in the past 400 years — especially compared to the 400 years before that), but this cannot be claimed in the case of the Lamanites. Nor can it be claimed that the reason was because the Lamanites and Nephites were living in close proximity to each other and necessarily maintained a common language — to help with trade or some other thing. No, this doesn’t work, because every time they get together, they fight and try to kill each other. There was no trade or commerce, and no reason to keep a single language.
If the Mulekites’ language had become incomprehensible because they were an isolated people group without any written records, so should have the Lamanites’ language. The fact that no matter how much time has passed, the Lamanites and Nephites can easily understand each other with no interpreter, is a plot hole. The only way I can see that this would not be a problem, is if this “language” of the Mulekites is referring to the writing system that they use, rather than their spoken language. It is difficult to see how Omni v17 can be referring to that, though.
Again, the pertinent part of the passage read, “their alanguage had become corrupted; and they had brought no brecords with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them.” This sounds like it’s saying that their way of speaking had become corrupted so that neither Mosiah nor the people with him could understand what they said — with “them” referring to the people. The only way it could be talking about their writing system is if it was meaning, “their writing system had become corrupted, so that neither Mosiah nor the people with him could understand what they wrote”. This doesn’t really make sense of the passage as written, because it would require the final “them” to refer to written works by the Mulekites which are never otherwise mentioned, except to say that there were none, as in “they brought no records with them”. As we all learned in grammar school, a pronoun (such as “them”) must have an antecedent (a noun to show what the pronoun is referring to — such as “Mulekite writings”).
I will grant that this understanding makes more sense of the larger context here, because it says that Mosiah has the Mulekites learn his language. The only way that makes sense is either 1) if it’s talking about speech and they speak different languages so that they are mutually incomprehensible to each other — but this doesn’t really make sense for the small group with Mosiah to make all the “exceedingly numerous” Mulekites change their way of speaking to be that of Mosiah; or 2) if it’s talking about the writing system being different, but they all speak the same language. If it’s actually talking about the writing system, it would be more the equivalent of learning the sounds of the Greek or Cyrillic alphabet so that you could write English words in them, rather than learn an entirely new spoken language.
In summary, if the Mulekites speak a different language from the Nephites, it raises the question of why the Lamanites don’t and also why the “exceedingly numerous” Mulekites are made to learn a new spoken language; but if they don’t speak a different language, and only write the language differently, that raises the question of why this passage is so poorly worded that it sounds like it’s talking about a spoken language, with there being no antecedent for “them” as being written records. I can see JS making this sort of elementary mistake in grammar, but it’s harder to claim that God made such a mistake in revealing the BOM to JS.
TOYBOM: The One Year Book of Mormon 