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b-hebrew - Re[4]: Poetry (was [6]: ex 26 + 36.8ff, (36.29))

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  • From: Peter_Kirk AT SIL.ORG
  • To: b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re[4]: Poetry (was [6]: ex 26 + 36.8ff, (36.29))
  • Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 00:59:51 -0500 (EST)


To you, Dave, your daughter's sentences seem ill-formed, because you
are not a speaker of her dialect. To her friends, her sentences are
well-formed, but perhaps yours are not. If your daughter changes to
speak a dialect closer to yours, it will probably be because of
pressure to study well, get a good job etc for which a particular
dialect of English is required. The same would be true, in England at
least, of someone with a strong regional accent; they would have to
conform more closely to a certain standard to get on well in life.
Another way to put it is that your dialect is the prestige dialect,
and your daughter's is not. If she goes for a low status job in an
inner city area (I guess you hope not!) her dialect will change less,
or differently. Someone said a language is a dialect with an army;
perhaps rather it is one with universities and corporations.

We must be careful before reading this type of generation gap
situation back into ancient Hebrew, of course. But perhaps the Tel Dan
inscription would illustrate my point: is it a corrupt form of Aramaic
as some seem to suggest, or is it the perfectly good standard language
of that people at that time? Or how about the odd Hebrew of Job? I
just don't think we know enough to start identifying certain types of
language as in error rather than as representative of a different
dialect.

Peter Kirk



  • Re[4]: Poetry (was [6]: ex 26 + 36.8ff, (36.29)), Peter_Kirk, 02/01/1999

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