Brian D. Stubbs: Mormon Linguist

Brian Darrell Stubbs is a linguist who teaches English, Spanish, and ESL at the College of Eastern Utah, Blanding Campus (Utah State University Eastern). He researches the Ute, Hopi, and Tewa languages spoken in the region, as well as scores of other Native American languages. He is also known for his work on connections between Uto-Aztecan language group and Old World languages such as Hebrew.

He served a full-time mission speaking Navajo for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which he is a member.

Stubbs earned his master’s degree in linguistics from the University of Utah. He has a PhD (ABD—all but dissertation) in Near Eastern languages and linguistics also from the University of Utah. His coursework is in Hebrew, Arabic, Egyptian, and Aramaic. He is a leading scholar and author on the Uto-Aztecan language family. His book Uto-Aztecan: A Comparative Vocabulary is the largest in the field, double the size of previous works on comparative Uto-Aztecan studies.

Brian and his wife, Silvia, are the parents of five children.