Here scribe 2 of 𝓞 wrote drownded, the past-tense form for the base verb drownd (in place of the standard drown, which of course has the past-tense form drowned ). The base verb drownd is well attested in historical documents and even today is prevalent in dialectal and colloquial speech. The process of adding d is not unique to this word: in standard English there are a number of words now ending in nd that historically did not have the d (such as astound, compound, and sound ). When Oliver Cowdery copied this passage into 𝓟, he replaced drownded with the standard drowned.
The question here is whether the dialectal drownded in 1 Nephi 4:2 represents the original text or scribe 2’s own pronunciation (or even Joseph Smith’s). Elsewhere the manuscripts have only the past-tense form drowned. Scribe 3 of 𝓞 wrote drownd (his spelling for the standard drowned ):
Oliver Cowdery (in both manuscripts) consistently wrote drowned rather than the dialectal drownded. Besides the spelling drowned in 𝓟 for 1 Nephi 4:2 and 1 Nephi 8:32, there are nine more extant occurrences of Oliver’s spelling drowned in the manuscripts:
In none of these additional cases is there any evidence that Joseph Smith might have been dictating drownded rather than drowned. If he had, we might see some examples of the scribe initially writing the dialectal drownded, then correcting it to drowned.
So the question here is whether drownded actually occurred in the original text for 1 Nephi 4:2. It is difficult to decide. From a textual point of view, probably the best solution would be to follow the earliest textual sources unless we have clear evidence that the resulting form is an actual scribal error. If the manuscript reading is dialectally possible, then we allow it. Such a procedure would thus permit drownded in 1 Nephi 4:2.
Summary: Accept the one case of drownded in the text (1 Nephi 4:2) since it is dialectally possible, even though it may very well represent the scribe’s (or even Joseph Smith’s) own form.