Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Yigal:

Again I can point to other examples.

In Germany, there were many dialects that diverged from the original 
Germanic, but after Luther developed the modern high German, most of those 
dialects disappeared except in the small villages “auf dem 
Lande”. In cities the dialectal use gave way to high German.

In China, I heard the complaint of an intellectual: he was Manchurian. He 
commented that his people conquered China and ruled it for a few hundred 
years. But in that time, they lost their language and culture. What sort of 
trade is that?

As for when, others on this list indicate that it could have started already 
during the Assyrian period, and like the German example above, starting with 
the cities, merchants and intellectual classes, gradually spreading 
throughout the whole society.

As for the dating of Daniel, I have no problem with agreeing to differ.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
> 
> Karl,
> 
> All of the example that you mentioned are of what was originally a common
> language diverging and splitting into distinct dialects over time, as the
> people who speak it spread over a wide area (and in a pre-telecommunication
> world). That would be like saying that both Acadian and Aramaic are
> descended from a common "protosemitic" ancestor. This may be true, but
> certainly by the early 1st millennium they were quite distinct. What you are
> proposing, is that at least on the spoken level, they "merged" and became
> indistinguiable. I suppose that's possible, but most of the examples that I
> can cite are of one language "losing ground" to another. This is certainly
> what happened in Mesopotamia: Akkadian was eventually replaced by Aramaic.
> my question is when it happened.
> 
> As far as Daniel, I suppose that we'll have to agree to difer.
> 
> Yigal
> 

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