Did the Jaredites speak and write the "Adamic tongue"? According to Daniel Ludlow, the key word in the verses which pertain directly to the problem (Ether 1:33-37) is confound. What does it mean when the record states that the Lord "did not confound the language of Jared"? Does it mean the same as saying that the Lord did not change the language of Jared? If so, Jared and his people apparently spoke and wrote the language of Adam because so far as we know there was only one language before the "great tower" of Babel.
Thomas Valletta notes that there is likely more to the account of the retaining of "the language of Jared" (Ether 1:35) than what initially meets the eye. According to Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, "they carried with them the speech of their fathers, the Adamic language, which was powerful even in its written form, so that the things [the brother of Jared] wrote 'were mighty even unto the overpowering of man to read them.' That was the kind of language Adam had; that was the language with which Enoch was able to accomplish his mighty work" (The Way to Perfection 60).
The book of Moses described the language of Adam as "pure and undefiled" (Moses 6:5-6). More importantly, this language was intimately connected with the "priesthood, which was in the beginning, [and] shall be in the end of the world also" (Moses 6:7; see also Zephaniah 3:9). . . . An example of the relationship between language and power (or priesthood) is contained in the book of Moses which describes Enoch's faith as causing him to be feared among men because "so powerful was the word of Enoch, and so great was the power of the language which God had given him" (Moses 7:13; emphasis added). [Thomas R. Valletta, "Jared and His Brother," in The Book of Mormon: Fourth Nephi through Moroni, From Zion to Destruction, p. 309] [See the commentary on Melchizedek in Alma 13]
Hugh Nibley, has a viewpoint based on Ether 1:34 which says, "Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words." According to Hugh Nibley, how can it possibly be said that "we may not understand our words"? Words we cannot understand may be nonsense syllables or may be in some foreign language, but in either case they are not our words. The only way we can fail to understand our own words is to have words that are actually ours change their meaning among us. That is exactly what happens when people, and hence languages, are either "confounded," that is, mixed up, or scattered. In Ether's account, the confounding of people is not to be separated from the confounding of their languages; they are, and have always been, one and the same process. . . . That "confound" as used in the book of Ether is meant to have its true and proper meaning of "to pour together," "to mix up together," is clear from the prophecy in Ether 13:8, that "the remnant of the house of Joseph shall be built upon this land; . . . and they shall no more be confounded," the word here meaning mixed up with other people, culturally, linguistically, or otherwise. [Hugh Nibley, The World of the Jaredites, p. 173]