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  • From: dwashbur AT nyx.net
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Survey Question about use of Biblical Hebrew in class
  • Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:27:34 -0700

I believe it was William Chomsky who said that modern Hebrew has more in
common with
Indo-European languages than it does with any Semitic language, including
ancient
Hebrew. While I'm not fluent in modern Hebrew, I have studied and read
enough of it to
believe he was correct. That can be a major disadvantage. When I was
studying Koine
Greek back in college, a fellow student was from either Crete or Cyprus (I
forget which) and
he found that his fluency in modern Greek kept tripping him up. I can easily
see the same
thing happening with Hebrew.

On 15 Jun 2009 at 8:14, Moshe Shulman wrote:

> At 06:17 AM 6/15/2009, you wrote:
> >--- On Sun, 6/14/09, Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no> wrote:
> > > Because of their modern Hebrew background, it was
> > > not as easy for them to learn Biblical Hebrew (the
> > > subtleties of the language)
> >I would strongly disagree that modern Hebrew is any sort of obstacle
> >to learning BH. I may or may not be alone in the following opinion,
> >but Hebrew scholars who are not fluent in the modern Hebrew are at a
> >serious disadvantage in this field.
>
> Tony, I can only assume that you are not familiar with Modern Hebrew
> or Biblical Hebrew. The differences are significant enough to be
> problematic. I challenge anyone who knows only Biblical Hebrew to
> read an Israeli paper (or one who knows only modern Hebrew to read a
> Biblical or rabbinic text.) The problem is obvious and is much more
> then just vocabulary. The only advantage is that you already know the
> letter and vowel sounds, and feel 'comfortable' with them.


Dave Washburn

http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur




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