Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 10/29/07, Isaac Fried wrote:

> Being fluent in both Hebrew and Yiddish I know that Zuckerman's claim
> is inherently wrong. Also your claim that Hebrew owes "a lot of debt
> to Yiddish" is not, in my knowledge, even remotely substantiated. And
> what is "a lot", does this constitute a measure for something?

Hello Isaac,

We are treading on the boundary of the acceptable subject matter for the
list.   One of the reasons it is still somewhat relevant is that you often do
use Modern Hebrew as if it can tell us anything about Biblical Hebrew.

You may be fluent in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish, but in the end, I have to
pick between two people who know both Modern Hebrew and Yiddish --
you and Zuckerman.  You tell me that you know that Zuckerman's claim is
inherently wrong.  Why so?  What makes it so?  I gave you some
representative examples of Zuckerman's own work (a scholar who
provides public access to his articles!), particularly a very basic review of
issues of phonology, morphology, and syntax.  I also offered a link where
Biblical scholars and others interested in Biblical studies weighed in on
Zuckerman's work.  I understand you read these.  What is wrong with his
examples?  (Again, I think we are treading the boundaries of the list's 
matter,
so  perhaps dealing with some select specific examples where he compares
Biblical and modern Hebrew as against European models)

Yitzhak Sapir