Alma 10:11 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for behold he hath blessed mine house he hath blessed me and my women and my children and my father and my [kinsfolks 1ABCEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|kinsfolk~s D|kinsfolk RT] yea even all my kindred hath he blessed

The original text uses the word kinsfolks, here in Alma 10:11 and in two other places in the text:

In all three cases, the 1920 LDS edition replaced the fully archaic kinsfolks with the less archaic kinsfolk (but not with the American dialectal kinfolk or kinfolks—that is, kin without the s). The Oxford English Dictionary states that both kinsfolks and kinsfolk are now rare in English. Citations from the OED and Literature Online show that both kinsfolks and kinsfolk were frequent in Late Middle English and Early Modern English, but by the 19th century kinsfolks had diminished in usage when compared with kinsfolk (the latter occurring about 20 times more frequently in the 19th century, according to statistics from Literature Online). And in the 20th century, there are no citations of kinsfolks in these two electronic sources, but kinsfolk still persists. This shifting in frequency explains the 1920 change from kinsfolks to kinsfolk (although the RLDS text has retained the original kinsfolks). The critical text will, of course, restore the original kinsfolks, common enough in the 19th century and the intended form in the Book of Mormon.

Summary: Restore the original kinsfolks in Alma 10:11, Mormon 8:5, and Ether 8:13; the earliest textual sources consistently support this form, one that was common in earlier English.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 3

References