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  • From: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
  • To: "b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] QNH-BSM
  • Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 09:00:14 -0700 (PDT)

Herman Meester wrote, quoting first:

2006/5/21, tladatsi at charter.net > > Even if QNH did refer to Cannabis,
why would the Greeks need to borrow a > word from a foreign language for a
plant they were well acquainted with? > When Herodotus (450 BCE) and
Dioskarides (70 CE) refer to Kannabis, Hebrew > was already a dying
language. > Whence this sweeping supposition? If Hebrew had been "dying"
as early as 450 BCE, or even only 70 CE, why did it continue to develop into
the Hebrew we have in a.o. the Mishna, midrash collections, etc.? The latter
form of Hebrew is clearly a language that has developed as a result of being
spoken (even if it had not been, languages mainly used for writing aren't
dead languages at all). The fact that some late-biblical texts such as
Daniel or Ezra are (partly) in Aramaic, only points to the bilingual nature
of those editing it. Qohelet is a late work too, judging language and
content, and it's Hebrew. Ben Sira wrote in Hebrew in Hellenistic times,
centuries after
450 BCE; and so on. The fact that Hebrew continued to develop
syntactically, semantically, and phonologically all this time up to late
Antiquity has been well documented by modern linguists. It has to be pointed
out that Modern Hebrew is, syntactically, a continuation of the form of
Hebrew found in Mishna,Tosefta, midrashim etc., not of B-Hebrew. Herman,
Rotterdam "



While Herman is broadly correct above, I would like to correct

the last sentence:



Modern Hebrew is based on Biblical, Mishnaic, Rabbinical, and

other components. By and large it maintains the Biblical

language, syntactically and otherwise, much more than the

Mishnaic forms. Just two examples:

the modern language maintains the -im endings for the Masculine

plural, rather than Mishnaic -in. Lexically the modern use

prefers biblical nouns like Shemesh or 'Etz where Mishnaic

equivalents such as H(.)ama or Ilan exist. The latter are used

more in literary or festive contexts.



It needs to be added that modern Hebrew would not be

recognizable to a Hebrew speaker from the 8th BCE century,

unless perhaps such a speaker had a pocket transistor=

translator available, and, further, had a pocket to store it

in.



Uri









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>From peter AT qaya.org Sun May 21 16:33:07 2006
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Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 21:33:03 +0100
From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] QNH-BSM
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On 21/05/2006 01:04, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Peter Kirk wrote:
>
>
>> How about Greek KANNA and KANWN (W = omega; cf English "cane" and
>> "canon") from Hebrew QANEH, or at least from its Semitic cognates? ...
>>
>
> The word qaneh and its cognates has only one /n/ in the word. ...

I know. But Greek loans from Semitic languages do not always preserve
single and double consonants, as is clear for example from Hebrew names
in LXX. An example that comes to mind immediately is Hebrew RIBQAH >
Greek REBEKKA. Anyway, the Greek word appears as KANH (h=eta) as well as
KANNA, and in the apparent derivative KANWN in which the second N is
probably a suffix, and so the doubling of the N is probably a change
within Greek. Also, this etymological link is not something speculative
and certainly not something which derives from cannabis lovers, but is
clearly stated in reputable dictionaries, e.g. American Heritage, see
http://www.answers.com/cane&r=67, cf. also the Online Etymology
Dictionary at
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=cane&searchmode=none, also
BDB s.v. QANEH. If you want to disprove this etymology, you will need to
find a convincing reason why the same thing was called QANEH in Hebrew
and KANH in Greek if there was no etymological link.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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