Re: Hebrew and Conlangs

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! ;-)  ). 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.
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!
    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.

Dan Sulani
----------------------------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.

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