Dr. Glade Hunsaker, a former professor of English at BYU, commented on the beauty and appropriateness of the language as follows:
"This beautiful soliloquy, as we sometimes call, it begins with, ‘O that I were an angel.’ We take it so for granted. You notice that the ‘I,’ the subject, does not seem to agree with were. Were seems to be plural, and there are very few folks today who realize that it is a singular subjunctive. We have PhDs in English that, unless they have studied German, French, or another language, have no clue what the subjunctive mood is. If this were really a product that had been put together in upstate New York by some flimsy folks, that piece would be lost to ‘O that I was an angel?’ I would pick up my bag and leave. All the pieces are there. It is just exquisite.
"While using the subjunctive ‘were’ in this case may not have been the prevailing English grammatical usage in Joseph Smith’s day, it was not unknown then. Although Alma’s usage is unique in the Book of Mormon, it appears several times in the King James Bible. See 2 Samuel 15:4 (’Oh that I were made a judge’); Job 9:15, 21; Job 29:2 (’Oh that I were as in months past’); Psalms 50:12; 1 Corinthians 5:3; 2 Corinthians 13:2). Its linguistic touch in Alma 29 is compositionally elegant. Alma 29 is without a doubt a beautiful, powerful piece of writing. People can try to paraphrase the Book of Mormon, but to do so often diminishes its sophisticated beauty. In reading the writings of Alma, Mormon and Joseph Smith, the best presumption is that every phrase and every word is there for some very meaningful reason, and that reading technique certainly serves flawlessly well throughout Alma 29 in particular."