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  • From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
  • To: "Isaac Fried" <if AT math.bu.edu>, "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Piel Participles of ayin-waw-yod
  • Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2010 10:30:20 +0100



Of course languages change, yet they may still remain the same. A definite statement about what is "the same" and what is "different" requires a norm, or a measure, which is elusive for such a complicated thing as language.
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If we look at phonetics, we can characterize the discontinuities between Ancient Hebrew and Modern Hebrew:

1. Prosody: lost
2. Vowels: length is lost
3. Weak and accented vowels: thoroughly transformed
4. Glottalized emphatics: lost
5. Laryngeals and pharyngeals: lost
6. Fricatives: lost
7. Laterals fricatives: lost
8. Affricates: lost (except Tsade)

The discontinuity between Ancient Hebrew and Modern Hebrew is worse than that between French and most kreyols based on French.
The ancient phonetics is entirely ruined.
A.
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Yet I believe that were Moses to reappeared today in a coffee house in Tel Aviv he would understand most of the talk.
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I seriously doubt that.
In my opinion, he would characterize Modern Hebrew as a funny foreign language with traces of Ancient Hebrew in it.
Nearly nothing (maybe 20%? at best) is pronounced the way he did.
A.
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He would certainly recognize the words מים
חמים, כוס, צלחת, עוגה, לחם, חמאה, ירקות טריים, מרק בשר, as well as the exclamation איזה ערב נעים but he would not recognize סוכר, קפה, עגבניה, מלפפון. He would certainly understand the people asking him מה הענינים מושיקו, הכול בסדר אצלכם Yet I suspect he would not recognize the people he took out of Egypt, but it should not take him more than a couple of days to adapt and become fluent in "modern" Hebrew.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

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Recently they created a site with reconstructed Akkadian recordings.
I don't know if that kind of experiment exists for Ancient Hebrew.

As for Moses, I suppose he would never become fluent in Modern Hebrew, even if he tried, and I suppose he would on the contrary create an organization promoting the restauration or instauration of Ancient Hebrew instead of the horribly and unbearably (to him) bad phonetics of Modern "Hebrew" (= not his native language). Actually I wonder it this does not already exist somewhere? In all cases this is the kind of undertakings I would expect from him. Climbing mountains and crossing deserts for years and then renounce to speak the only really good phonetics!? ts ts ts. Who can believe that? I'm afraid you have not gotten the right picture of the man. If I were Moses, I would flog you until you can pronounce glottalized emphatics and lateral fricatives perfectly.

As you live in the USA, I suppose you have a fairly negative opinion of Black English, as most native speakers of English do. In my opinion, your Boston Hebrew would probably arise in Moses about the same kind of feeling Black English arises in you. (What on earth have they done to the language...)

Arnaud Fournet










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