Biblical Hebrew Forum

[peter_kirk AT sil.org]

I'm not talking about bilingualism in isolated villages, but about 
bilingualism in a multicultural city, Jerusalem, which actually had a 
remarkably high level of education at least for the Jewish males among 
its population. Your suggestion that the average people of Jerusalem, 
or any other city, did not have full control of any language (I 
suppose you suggest they used signs and grunts and perhaps a few 
concrete nouns?) is not only scientifically indefensible but also 
offensive. Linguists studying the languages of remote tribes in modern 
times, tribes who don't even know what it means to read and write, 
have revealed that these supposedly primitive tribes speak fully 
formed and highly complex languages. How much more the people of 
Jerusalem could properly speak their own particular dialects of Hebrew 
and/or Aramaic.

Actually in the city where I live there are many people who are barely 
literate in their own mother tongue as they have received all of their 
education in another language. Here the minority (but formerly 
dominant) community has steadfastly refused to learn the language of 
the majority, but the majority community have learned the language of 
the minority, in some cases to a higher level than the language they 
first learned as children. Now that the political climate has changed, 
those who learned the minority language only are put at a 
disadvantage. The situation may not be as different from Jerusalem as 
you think.

But, as Henry says, enough of anecdotal evidence. Look at the 
literature.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[3]: Josephus & 1Esdras (Peter II)
Author:  mc2499 AT mclink.it at internet 
Date:    15/07/1999 17:02


Dear Peter,
<snip>

>On general sociolinguistic grounds (and my experience living in a 
>bilingual city), I would expect a considerable degree of bilingualism, 
>especially in the cities which must have had a mixed population.

You should have lived in a situation like that in the Albanian villages in 
southern Italy. Very little bilingualism. Or perhaps the valleys of England 
where from one valley to the next there are differences in dialect; or the 
valleys of Switzerland in which there are different languages.

A modern analogy that works on a speech community that has an education 
that is extremely different from that of the ancient communities you are 
trying to comment on means that the analogy is inappropriate. You don't 
even know what the average individual's control of one language was like.

>This
>would probably be deeper than the basic words needed in the market but 
>well short of the double native speaker proficiency which Henry seems 
>to be suggesting.

Did the average person have more than the basic words in their own 
language? We take it for granted that the average person can not only speak 
their own language but can read and write it.


Cheers,


Ian

www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/5210/histreli.htm




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