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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Ancient Language Acquisition

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Trevor Peterson <06peterson AT cua.edu>
  • To: Jonathan Walther <krooger AT debian.org>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ancient Language Acquisition
  • Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2004 05:26:53 -0500

Jonathan Walther wrote:
When I learned to read English as a lad, I did just that; I steadily
read my way backwards from Alice in Wonderland, to Howard Pyle, to
Shakespeare, to Chaucer. Beyond Chaucer I could not go; Beowulfe feels
very familiar, but is gibberish as far as comprehension goes. My
English is a conglomerate of all the variations and developements from
the past thousand years. Would it be a bad thing to understand ancient
Hebrew or koine Greek in the same way?

There is a major difference. You were not learning to speak English from these sources. Also, you were cognizant of the different periods you were reading (at least, that's the way you paint the picture above). Imagine if you had been a foreigner trying to learn spoken English, and someone had given you a big bag of audio tapes, all jumbled together, with these titles, and told you to listen to them over and over again until you acquired enough English to communicate. Imagine if during that time, you didn't speak to anyone who already knew spoken English. What would your English be like? Like I said, I have no problem with students encountering the various dialects found within BH. Indeed, it cannot and should not be avoided. But I think what you described about English is a much better way to do it--start with one dialect, and move intentionally into others, so you can get a feel for both the continuity and the differences. And like I said before, if you take it more methodically like that, and the main point is to read texts, the process of internalization will be slow enough that you can properly assimilate the necessary distinctions. A beginner who is trying to learn BH for the first time and learning much like a person would learn a modern spoken language is, IMO, a quite different situation.

Incidentally, I would be curious along the lines of this thread to know what people think about the notion that a person ought to learn Modern Israeli Hebrew or spoken Arabic first, before learning ancient Semitic languages. The potential disadvantage is that modern speakers sometimes assume too much continuity between their language and the ancient forms; but if it were done deliberately, I think this hazard could be easily avoided. The benefit would be that a person could begin study of ancient languages with genuine fluency in a real, spoken language--something that may perhaps be approached, but never achieved, with ancient languages. In this respect, the individual could begin study of ancient Hebrew in the same position as an English speaker beginning to study Shakespeare or Chaucer. I haven't tried it myself, but I suspect that there would be some significant gains. Any thoughts?

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics




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