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  • From: dwashbur AT nyx.net
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew as a spoken language
  • Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:52:50 -0700



On 26 Oct 2007 at 0:28, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

> On 10/25/07, Dave Washburn wrote:
> > And I'm not sure when we agreed that Hebrew did "survive in
> > some small cities that people could visit to learn Hebrew." I have never
> > suggested such a thing; all along I have said that Hebrew "survived" as
> > a religious language, which is to say it fell into narrowly specialized
> > use.
> > In this regard it "died out" just the same as Latin did at the end of the
> > Roman period. It only "survived" as a religious language, restricted to
> > specialized usage. That's not survival in the linguistic sense.
>
> Perhaps you should reread what I wrote?
>
> I wrote, in part:
>
> > Both Eastern and Western varieties of Aramaic still survive
> > in various communities in Arab countries, despite the lingua franca having
> > been Arabic for a thousand years. Can we deny that Hebrew did not
> > similarly survive, slowly dying out over centuries in various communities?
>
> You wrote:
>
> > This appears to be a straw man argument, because I don't know of
> > anyone who actually claims it died out *completely*.
>
> Just in case it is not clear, Neo-Aramaic survives as a spoken living
> dialect
> of various towns, not restricted to simply a religious language.

I confess I'm really not sure what this has to do with what I wrote. I said
nothing at all about
Neo-Aramaic, or any other kind of Aramaic. Last I heard, we were talking
about Hebrew.

Dave Washburn
Why do it right when you can do it again?




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