Re: Hebrew and Conlangs

One point that surprised me - and it probably should be raised, since what
many of us are involved in, risks doing precisely the same thing with our own
languages - is an example Wexler used, of "gazlan" - robber, "gavan" - thief
- that's if my memory hasn't played tricks on me again ;)

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.

Which leads me to the question I almost raised above - how many of us find we
drag in our birth language's suffixes, prefixes, infixes, vowel/consonant
distributions, etc, even when we are trying to design a language that bears
no resemblance to our birth languages?

Tok Pisin was one of my birth languages, and save for some consonantal
juxtapositions inherited from English, Yhe Vala Lakha is based on the Tok
Pisin phonology with some input from a fragmentary knowledge of Polynesian.
Ie, very few diphthongs, instead they are broken up with glottal stops.  That
Yhe Vala Lakha has no English endings is largely due to me throwing them out
the instant they appear.

Wesley Parish

On Friday 28 February 2003 08:19 pm, you wrote:
> On 27 Feb, Wesley Parish wrote:
> > HI.
> >
> > I've just read some parts of a monograph called:
> >
> > "The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew:
> > A Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past"
> > by Paul Wexler
> > Otto Harrassowitz; Wiesbaden, 1990
> >
> > Wexler's thesis is that Ivrit, or Modern Hebrew, is a massive Hebraic
>
> relex of
>
> > Yiddish, and his secondary thesis is that Yiddish is a Germanic relex of
> > Western Sorbian, one of the minor Western Slavic languages.
> >
> > I found it interesting, though I don't know enough of any of the
> > languages referred to (Hebrew, Yiddish, German, or Sorbian) to say either
> > way.  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.
> >
> > (Donning flameproof underware)  So I was also wondering, how would Dan
>
> Sulani,
>
> > etc, feel about that?  It is a distinction, after all.
>
>     No need for the flameproof underware (any other kind, of course,
> is at your discretion! ;-)
Thanks!  :-)

  ). I'll try not to flame.
>     I haven't read this particular book, but if that is its thesis, it's
> wrong.
> 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.
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."

> 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)
I'm aware of the existence of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish as spoken by the Sephardic
communities in some parts of the world.), and of some Hebrew-influenced
Arabics.  How many people in Israel would still use them?

, learned Jews who had no other lang in common
> did, in fact, communicate orally in Hebrew!
I have seen some of their poetry, published in the Penguin Book of Hebrew
Verse, and it is very, very good.

>     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!
>     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.  As Eamon Graham wrote:
>
> A book we have at the library here (I forget the title and author,
> sorry!) mentions many of the ways Ben Yehuda derived some of these
> words and they are quite ingenious.  In addition to reviving
> obsolete or archaic vocabulary (sometimes with change or expansion
> of semantic range), borrowing (especially from Aramaic and Arabic)
> or by using analogy with Aramaic and Arabic...
>
> To continue with Eamon's post:
> > 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.
>
> I've just finished reading "The Jewish State" by Herzl and unless I
> misread or misunderstood, he was against using a revived Hebrew.
> Was this a common attitude at the beginnings of Zionism?  How did
> the linguistic attitude in your anecdote come about I wonder?
>
>
> Let's just say that passions were running hot on all sorts of topics,
> in those days, including which lang should be spoken.
Hence my words on the "flame-proof underware!" ;)

>
> Dan Sulani
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a
>
> A word is an awesome thing.
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."

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