Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Stoney:

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:25 AM, Stoney Breyer <
stoneyb AT touchwoodcreative.com> wrote:

> Respecting Randall Buth's suggestion that loss of the Hebrew names for the
> months reflect outside contact and influence  from strata of power in a
> society, Karl Randolph writes
>
>  Things like this tend not to cross linguistic lines except
>  when one language falls out of daily usage. I take this as just one of
>  several clues that lead to my conclusion that the daily use of the Hebrew
>  language was lost.
>
> Neither English nor German has ever "fallen out of daily usage", yet the
> month names in both are of Latin origin.
>
>
> Modern English is a creole, a mixture of Old English and medieval French,
with a massive dollop of Latin with other languages mixed into the mess.
Only a fairly small percentage of modern English is from Old English, mainly
words that are in the most common spoken use.

German is a better example, why I used the word “tend” instead of saying
“never”. Even there, does this represent a change over from a lunar month
system to a solar one?

Karl W. Randolph.