Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

will,

i completely agree with you, but i did not pursue this direction 
since it might be irrelevant to the goals of this forum. in a nutshell, modern
hebrew (in some of its manifestations) makes a claim to SUBSUME 
old hebrew, and in particular biblical hebrew. whether correct or incorrect,
possible or impossible (and this depends largely on whom you ask), 
this claim has no parallel in the case of latin, nor in the case of
swedish/norwegian. i believe that modern english has a similar claim w.r.t. 
the work of shakespere, german w.r.t. the luther bible translation, 
and modern standard arabic w.r.t. classical arabic.

nir cohen

On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:33:56 -0500 (EST), Will Parsons wrote
> On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:23:30 -0800, K Randolph 
> <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
> > Nir:
> > 
> > On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 8:28 AM, Nir cohen - Prof. Mat.
<nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>wrote:
> > 
> > > dear colleagues,
> > >
> > > i avoided anexing the extensive debate over the burial of the
> > > hebrew language during the last few days, due to its length.
> > > …
> > > best
> > > nir cohen
> > >
> > > Much of this depends on how one defines a “dead language”.
> > 
> > If a living language is one that is spoken and written, where there 
> > develop
> > dialectal differences, in which there is continuous change and 
> > development,
> > then Hebrew never ceased to be a living language.
> > 
> > In that same way, Latin is still a living language.
> > 
> > If the definition is of a language where there are no native speakers of 
> > the
> > language, rather it is a second language of all who use it, then Latin is 
> > a
> > dead language, and Hebrew died and was resurrected. And in its 
> > resurrection,
> > it is not the same language as what the prophets spoke.
> > 
> > Other living/dead languages include Esperanto and Klingon (a language made
> > up for a dumb TV show).
> 
> These are better classified as artificial languages, since they were 
> never
 living languages in the first place.
> 
> > If we are talking about a specific dialect of Hebrew, namely that found in
> > Tanakh, then that dialect “died” during and shortly after the Babylonian
> > Exile. The language that developed from it has a different grammar,
> > different spelling, and many words have different meanings as well as many
> > neologisms not found in Tanakh. There are more differences between 
> > Biblical
> > and modern Hebrews than between Norwegian and Swedish, which are 
> > recognized
> > as separate languages.
> > 
> > I think we need to define terms before confidently announcing the “death” 
> > of
> > Hebrew.
> 
> Quite right.  The usual definition of a "dead" language is one that 
> has no
 native speakers, and that would apply to both Hebrew and 
> Latin in Mediaeval
 times.  Nevertheless, there are important 
> differences between languages that
 are used (as Hebrew and Latin 
> were) and languages that have completely gone
 out of use (such as 
> ancient Egyption).  Furthermore, different levels of use
 can be 
> recognized between languages whose use is purely liturgical (I think
>  Coptic may fall into this category) and languages in which people 
> create new
 works (e.g., Hebrew and Latin), or even use it for oral 
> communication.  (The
 latter applies to Latin, which was used as a 
> language of instruction long
 after it had ceased to be actually 
> spoken as a native language.  I don't know
 if it would apply to 
> Mediaeval Hebrew or not.)
> 
> -- 
> Will Parsons


--
Open WebMail Project (http://openwebmail.org)