Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 6:43 PM, Bryant J. Williams III wrote:
> Dear Yitzhak,
>
> If the statement is wrong then produced the evidence that it is wrong. Or 
> are
> you disagreeing with the premise? Flat denials don't work.

The above regards the statement "History shows that idiom does not cross the
language barrier, so if two languages pretty much have absolutely
interchangeable idioms then they must have the same source not too far
removed."

There's so much nonsense on this list, that it is simpler to just agree to 
those
statements made here that are in line with standard linguistics.  For example,
he quoted a webpage with all kinds of various expressions in "Hebrew."  The
Hebrew is very broken Hebrew that misses gutturals and sometimes whole
words, and misplaces vowels, and is later than the 13th-14th centuries CE.
The author uses "idiom" in a very wide sense.  Here is a definition of "idiom"
according to standard linguistics:
http://books.google.com/books?id=3JtAOHLtlHoC&pg=PA225
Not to mention comparative linguistics, which is simply not done this way!
There's even no explanation of why standard methods of comparative
linguistics have been abandoned.

Criticism of the whole attempt at comparing English and Welsh is available
here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=4geGv5N8AUoC&pg=PA88

It is interesting though, that you chose to ask me for the evidence,
rather than
to ask Mr "GuerrillaVille" for evidence of his statement that his given as a
blanket assertion with no proof.

Yitzhak Sapir