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Hebrew a Dead Language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Makrasiroutioun Quadrilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Canada infowars.com Joined 6105 days ago 210 posts - 236 votes  Speaks: French*, English*, Armenian*, Romanian*, Latin, German, Italian Studies: Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 17 of 43 07 August 2008 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've read dozens of scholarly papers on Hebrew phonology (pre-Classical, Classical, and Modern) and the consensus is that Modern Hebrew pronunciation has some stark differences with that of the ancient version of the language. It has lost all forms of proto-Semitic pharyngealisation/glottalisation (the "emphatic" consonants), it has merged the uvular plosive with its velar plosive, it has mostly lost pharyngeal and epiglottal consonants, it has lost the distinction between long and short vowels, and outside of phonology, the syntax is utterly different.
All these mergers have caused a large number of homophones to develop within Modern Hebrew, which can sometimes be frustrating for the learner! However, Arabic-speaking Jews do, for the most part, preserve many of the typically Semitic phonemes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 18 of 43 07 August 2008 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Urg! No. Italian is probably very different from Latin. For one thing, Italian has a V/U distinction, where Latin had a single semi-vowel V. When Italian evolved out of Latin, the sounds would have been close. This means that it would have been very difficult for Italians to tell the difference and they would have slowly drifted away from the Latin pronunciation, and their Latin pronunciation would have followed. Similar interference can be observed in places like Gallicia, where people are commonly bilingual in two similar languages. Some old folk and many language activists complain that even when speaking Gallician, people are starting to speak in a more "Spanish" accent, but in other cases tourists get confused because some people speak in a very Gallician accent even when speaking Spanish. (No radical stem changes, for example.) When the Vatican decided that "true" Latin was becoming corrupted by local accents, it's said that they turned to Irish monks to teach them the accent. Because Latin and Irish are not very closely related, the Irish clergy spoke Latin in an accent distinct from their native one. It was presumed that this was the "correct" accent. It probably wasn't, but it was likely to be pretty close -- in those days the mass was held in Latin and most people were regular church-goers, so children would have been exposed to the accent regularly from infancy. The accent will have undergone some internal change as all accents do, but it was not under the great pressure of having a notably similar accent in use locally. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 19 of 43 07 August 2008 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes we do, because Pontius Pilate thankfully was a keen ethnographer and recorded his many conversations with Herod on his Edison wax phonograph. ;-P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 20 of 43 07 August 2008 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unfortunately Modern Hebrew is too much of a political hot potato for serious study.
A minority of extremists in both the pro-Israel and anti-Israel camps make it impossible to have a rational discussion about any Israel-related topics. Whatever your conclusion, you're likely to upset someone. As the majority of studies are carried out by people with an axe to grind, there's no reliable data whatsoever on this subject. This, therefore, is an entirely pointless debate. Unless someone is simply looking for a fight. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zorbo Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6248 days ago 7 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, FrenchC2 Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 21 of 43 07 August 2008 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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What a great discussion. I don't mean for the issue to become politicized, which won't prove or solve very much and I personally don't like dichotomies. But I will say that I have heard people in the right-wing Israeli camp acknowledge that the Hebrew spoken in Israel today is spoken more purely by those Jews from the Arab countries and by Arabs; I have heard similar things from Palestinians. So it's not all monolithic. I just love languages and it helps me in pronunciation and spelling when ayin, het, resh are pronounced as Semitic sounds...
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| morgansw12 Tetraglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6072 days ago 6 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 22 of 43 08 August 2008 at 7:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I lived in Israel a number of years, and I'm a Hebrew speaker. Biblical Hebrew continued to develop - there are differences in the language between the earlier and the later books of the Bible, showing development and changes in vocabulary.
Hebrew continued it development after the close of the biblical period - the Mishna (first written down ca.200) is in a Hebrew very close to modern Hebrew. Jewish religious works continued to be written in Hebrew down to modern times (commentaries on Bible and Talmud, Jewish legal texts, poetry etc.) The sounds of Hebrew never died out because of the practice of praying in Hebrew in Jewish religious services. Hebrew also served as a common language for Jews from different countries. It was fairly common, for example, for Jews from the Middle East to travel to Russia to raise funds for religious schools etc. in the Holy Land. In 19th century Jerusalem, where there were Jews from Yemen, North Africa, Iraq, Persia, Russia, Romania etc. starting to arrive in large numbers, Hebrew again served as a common language. While Hebrew can sound quite different when pronounced by European Yiddish speakers than (for example) Yemenites, the differences are not that difficult to overcome. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cordel Newbie IsraelRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6043 days ago 29 posts - 30 votes | Message 23 of 43 08 August 2008 at 8:25am | IP Logged | ||
Indeed it is.Here in Israel ,Hebrew is the main language which is spoken among the israelies. We also like to talk in Russian and Georgian. Edited by Cordel on 08 August 2008 at 8:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 6029 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 24 of 43 08 August 2008 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dead? If you mean Biblical Hebrew...yes. Modern? Well I am pretty sure the language I am learning is not dead!
But I am not a fan of the word dead, when it comes to languages. I can surely learn latin and read 2 thousand year olds texts. The language is not dead....only all the native speakers. I don't think Hebrew needs to be political. I am happy to not agree with either party without fear of what they may think of me or do to me. Violence and exclusion does not sway me. Noone says don't learn Arabic..too political. I think it is too easy to look at the news and a few opinions and expect them to not be hospitable if you don't want to take sides...or even the other side. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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