Re: Hebrew and Conlangs

> > "The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew:
> > A Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past"
> > the thing that interested me, was that if his thesis was accurate,
Ivrit/Modern
> > Hebrew would then be the world's first conlang to achieve the status of
an
> > official spoken language.
>
> mind.  But I agree with you that Modern Hebrew must be a conlang of
> sorts too, and I certainly admire Eliezar Ben Yehuda; if I recall
> correctly he was also an amateur linguist but I may be wrong.  I
Being too tired after 4 hours of classes on Psalms as a translater (English)
and 2 hours of my own Introductory Biblical Hebrew, I'm not sure I can give
a detailed comment on this matter,

BUT !

1. to say frankly, Modern Hebrew *is* a kind of conlang or at least a
"controlled language";
2. she is heavily a posteriori, her grammar being based on Mishnaitic
Hebrew, and vocabulary gathered from any possible source, or *constructed*;

and,
3. as Eamon mentioned

> influenced by the speech habits
which must be true, but cannot be proved by documents, since already
mediaeval Hebrew literature shows explicite Indo-European literature.
Possessive pronouns like |sheli| were NOT invented by ben-Yehudah. They 've
been already there.

Marginal note: an Israeli friend of mine tells, that in his grandpa's days
(under the British mandate) one could easily be smashed into face for
speaking Yiddish in the Land, and while the person was being beaten, he was
told: "Y'hudi, daber 3ivrit!" (Jew, speak Ivrit!). No comments.

Yitzik
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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