Re: Hebrew and Conlangs

Dan Sulani scripsit:

>     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.
True enough.  But more centrally, Hebrew ceased to be a (literal)
mother tongue, and became a learned, as well as learnèd, language.

> 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!
Catholic priests who had no other lang in common likewise communicated
in Latin, more or less continuously over the centuries.  But no one doubts
that Latin is and has been dead.

>     Yiddish, AFAIK, was heavily influenced by Hebrew, not the
> other way around!
Well, after all, Yiddish is essentially a German relex of Western Slavic.
The main Hebrew influence was in vocabulary, and not that much of it.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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