According to Michael Hobby, it would be naive to believe that a city of Mulekites were all taught Hebrew by the command of Mosiah1, and that thereafter, they all lived happily ever after speaking Hebrew. As any student of language knows, one does not abandon his native tongue. And, as the mastery of a second tongue represents a great deal of very hard work, immigrants are slow to tackle the problem. Even if enough of a second language is mastered to enable basic communication in the market place, the language at home continues to be the mother tongue. Segregation virtually assures that language alienation will persist until later generations have been taught the new language throughout lower education, and become bilingual.
When Mosiah2 desired the record of Zeniff to be read, the Mulekites and the Nephites were gathered into segregated language groups to have the record read aloud in both languages. In addition to language segregation, we have to wonder if this segregation also applied to the areas where they lived. When Mosiah1 and his people happened upon the people of Zarahemla, did the Nephites have to establish residences in a different section of the populated area than that already filled with Mulekite residences? [Michael M. Hobby, The Mulekite Connection, pp. 26-27]