Re: Hebrew and Conlangs

On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 11:47:42 +1300 Wesley Parish
<wes.parish@...> writes:
> His point was that "gazlan" had the |-an| agent noun termination of
> Yiddish,
> while "gavan" - if I have remembered the word correctly - was in the
> CaCaC
> agent noun form of Biblical/Classical Hebrew.  He argued that the
> |-an| agent
> noun form was the standard for of Modern Hebrew, and again, I must
> confess, I
> have very little knowledge of Modern Hebrew, so I refuse to comment
> either way.
-

Both CaCCân (as in |gazlan|) and CaC²âC (as in |ganav|) are native Hebrew
agent noun forms.
Unless CaCCân is Aramaic, that is...  but in either case, it's not
Yiddish.  Yiddish generally uses |-er|.
Both patterns are used for new words:
CaCCân is used in, for instance, |hhamtzan| "oxygen"
CaC²âC is used in, for instance, |davar| "mailman"

> Actually sooner, if what we read in the books of `Ezra and Nehemyahu
> are
> anything to go by.  Aramaic was growing in use among the returnees
> from
> Babylon and that was deeply resented by some of the senior priests
> and
> officials.  Certainly, if we look at the Christian Bible, we find
> that one
> Iesu of Nazareth used Aramaic - "Tabitha koum" - "little girl, get
> up."
-

If i remember correctly, around the non-year 0, Aramaic was the native
language of most Jews in the Galilee; but those in Judea itself still
mostly spoke Hebrew.  In fact, recently my Medieval Spaniard Hebrew
Poetry teacher told me about a theory someone has that the distinctive
syntax and vocabulary of the classical Piyyut literature (c.800s CE) may
be due to Hebrew still being a living spoken language at that time.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "armu>"