Re: Hebrew and Conlangs

Katav Dan Sulani:

> First of all, Ivrit does not only refer to post-Ben Eliezer Israeli lang.
> It refers to the lang of the Bible and all subsequent stages of its
> development.
>     And those stages are fully documented.
>     Hebrew has never ceased to be a vehicle of communication
> among Jews, and as such, has changed over time (and, like any
> other language in use, has borrowed words and been influenced
> by other langs over time.)
>     The thing is that, about 2000 years ago, Hebrew ceased to be
> a vernacular, spoken by the masses of people.
> Learned people still spoke it to each other and wrote in it.
> While unlearned _Ashkenazi_ (European)  Jews might have spoken
> Yiddish to each other (And other types of Jews _did_  exist and they
> did _not_ speak Yiddish), learned Jews who had no other lang in common
> did, in fact, communicate orally in Hebrew!
>     Yiddish, AFAIK, was heavily influenced by Hebrew, not the
> other way around! Modern Hebrew, regarding its grammar,
> is a Semitic lang in all regards. It is _not_ words from the Bible
> pasted onto a Germanic  or Slavic grammar!
I can only say that I agree with Dr.Sulani "mea achuz" (100%)

>     The significance of Ben Eliezer is that he helped institute
> a massive development of Hebrew in a short time, so that it
> could deal with all the things one would need to refer to in a
> modern technological culture. And he didn't create words
> out of his head.
Well, there are some words that were indeed *invented* by Ben Yehudah, but
most of his innovations (like |sach-rachok| for 'telephone') have not
survived (and you have |telefon| now).

> Let's just say that passions were running hot on all sorts of topics,
> in those days, including which lang should be spoken.
"If there are two Jews, you'll find five opinions among them" (a Yiddish
saying).

Yitzik
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