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b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] Re: organic language learning (was: "Basic question on Qal, Piel, and Pual")

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  • From: Sameer Yadav <sameer_yadav2 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Re: organic language learning (was: "Basic question on Qal, Piel, and Pual")
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 22:04:21 -0700 (PDT)

Michael,

Your illustration is poignant, and I agree that a
language is best studied in conjunction with its
living tradition.

However, I wonder if you could make the relation
between the legitimate study of a classical language
and its living tradition more explicit. Does the
inability of a scholar to interact with the living
tradition invalidate his contribution to the study of
its classical predecessor? If so, why?

And if it does not *invalidate* it but in some other
way undermines it or weakens it, then how, exactly?
Is such an unfamiliarity an Achilles heel to studying
classical Hebrew *in principle*, or must each
scholar's contribution (originating from a lack of
familiarity with modern Hebrew) be examined
individually? If the latter, then precisely which
points of neglect have the tendency toward errors in
judgment regarding a linguistically adequate
description of classical Hebrew?

This is not intended as a rhetorical way of refusing
to take the problem you raise seriously, but as a
request to focus the nature of the problem, so that,
if legitimate, I can know what to do about it.

Thanks,

Sameer

--- Deborah Millier <deborahmillier AT yahoo.com> wrote:
> T. Peterson wrote:
>
> > Aside from classical scholars
> > and people with physical
> > handicaps, almost no one
> > reads a language without
> > knowing how to speak it.
> > Certainly, living writing
> > systems are not designed for
> > people to do so--they are
> > developed by and for
> > native speakers and work
> > because they presume a
> > certain level of oral
> > competence with the language.
>
> Near the school from which I recently graduated
> (Jerusalem University College) there is a gate
> leading
> into the Old City of Jerusalem: Zion Gate.
> Attached
> to an outside wall is a brass plaque commemorating
> one
> of the Israeli Army's Engineering units pulling down
> enemy positions and clearing mines from the gate
> area
> in 1967.
>
> One of my Hebrew professors at JUC, Randall Buth,
> was
> taking a well-known hebraist friend of his from the
> States (Randy graciously never revealed his identity
> but assured those of us in class that day that we
> all
> would recognize his name) on a short tour and they
> stopped off at Zion Gate, where the brass plaque
> hangs.
>
> "What does that say?," the celebrated author of a
> few
> Hebrew reference works asked my professor.
>
> "Read it yourself," replied Dr. Buth.
>
> The famed hebraist strained then finally gave up
> saying, "I've tried but I'm used to only biblical
> Hebrew. It's just no use."
>
> Dr. Buth was taken aback. Here is a plaque that any
> Israeli third grader could read, but this man, the
> author of several authoritative books on the Hebrew
> language, could not make out its simple message.
> Furthermore, every word on the plaque save one could
> be found in some form in the Bible. However, the
> Hebrew on the plaque was not pointed or in a
> biblical
> setting and therefore threw the American professor
> off-kilter. He was used to and quite capable at
> dissecting Hebrew into components for analysis, but
> not used to just reacting to it as a living language
> which can be absorbed and utilized naturally. His
> is
> not an isolated case.
>
> On another occasion Dr. Buth was at an SBL
> conference.
> He ran into a German man who had recently written
> an
> article on some aspect of the Hebrew language and
> published it in JBL. When Dr. Buth began conversing
> with the man, it became clear that the German
> academic's English was not quite up to snuff to
> discuss certain points. After several unsuccessful
> tries in rusty German, it dawned on Dr. Buth that
> they
> both had a common language in biblical Hebrew.
> However, when he tried just a few sentences he
> realized that the man was staring at him
> dumbfounded.
> "What language was that that you were speaking?,"
> asked the German man. The author of the article on
> Hebrew could not even recognize the language he was
> such an expert in. Why? Because the German man,
> like
> so many of us, was used to reading it as a dead
> language, but could not converse-- much less think--
> in Hebrew as a living language.
>
> My first two weeks in Hebrew class under Dr. Buth
> were
> spent in a garden without a notebook. My class
> practiced TPR (total physical response) and acquired
> a
> "feel" for the language, internalizing vocabulary
> and
> grammar before we ever started analyzing Hebrew. We
> graduated to skits, then texts. Then paradigms and
> grammar.
>
> I guess I say all this to illustrate what Trevor
> mentions above: "living writing systems
> are...developed by and for native speakers and work
> because they presume a certain level of oral
> competence with the language." Few of us on this
> list
> are native (modern) Hebrew speakers. None of us
> were
> raised in an environment wherein biblical Hebrew was
> what we heard in the kitchen. But we might do
> better
> pedagogically to treat biblical Hebrew as a real
> language, to be heard and spoken BEFORE we ever
> teach
> students to read and write it. Much less analyze
> it.
>
> B'SHALOM,
> -- Michael Millier
>
>
>
>
>
>
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