Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Stoney:

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 1:19 PM, Stoney Breyer <
stoneyb AT touchwoodcreative.com> wrote:

>   Karl:
>
> You write:
>
> 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?
>
>
>
> I reply:
>
> Nobody knows. But if it does, again, so what? Is the change a grassroots
> movement?
>

If this is a replacement of a solar month system for a previous lunar
system, then there can be a system similar to what is found in many places
today, where a local lunar calendar with its names co-resides with the
international solar calendar with its Latin based names. If the German
example is similar with that, then as international trade became more
important, the local lunar calendar could have been forgotten. The same
thing is happening around the world—the local calendar is maintained for
religious and/or social customs, but the day to day life is lived in the
Latin calendar. I live in one such milieu.


> You write:
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> I reply:
>
> So what? The “native” name was replaced by a foreign name; it doesn’t
> really matter whether the new name derived from the clergy or the Conqueror,
> in either case it exemplifies what Randall suggested.
>
>
>
It isn’t “so what?” because the majority of English vocabulary is either
directly from Latin or mediated through French. A far smaller percentage is
Old English. Since the French used the Latin names for the month as their
“native” names, for them it was not a replacement. Because a creole is a
mixing of languages, and because the Latin/French portion is larger than the
Old English, this is not an example of what Randall suggested.

Another reason could be the same as I suggested for German above.

>
>
> Stoney Breyer
>
> Writer/Touchwood Creative
>

But the Hebrew example is neither a replacement of one calendar by another,
nor a creole, therefore for the names to be replaced within Hebrew raises
questions.

Karl W. Randolph.