Biblical Hebrew Forum

["R. Lehmann" <lehmann AT uni-mainz.de>]

Not at all.
There is sufficient evidence that at least Old Testament times Hebrew and 
Aramaic were incompatible foreign languages to each other, and in my opinion 
it is well-proven that the phonemic repertory of both languages was well 
distinct and different throughout Old Testament times.
However, the tricky point is the specification "Biblical", and the question 
whether we deal with "languages" at all. Is there "a" Biblical Hebrew 
language, or are there some and more Biblical Hebrew languages, and, what is 
more, is Biblical Hebrew a language at all (? See for the last question the 
important papers of the late Edward Ullendorf,  Is Biblical Hebrew a 
Language?, in: Is Biblical Hebrew a Language? Studies in Semitic Languages 
and Civilizations. Wiesbaden 1977.3-17,
and Ernst Axel Knauf, War "Biblisch-hebräisch" eine Sprache? Empirische 
Gesichtspunkte zur linguistischen Annäherung an die Sprache der 
althebräischen Literatur: ZAH 3 (1990) 11-23.
The same can be debated with Biblical Aramaic.

BIBLICAL Hebrew and BIBLICAL Aramaic look so similar and contiguous only 
because they both were, as being "Biblical", encoded by the same system (the 
masoretic) and in a time (9th-10th century CE) when both languages in Jewish 
tradition had melted to a certain extent. 


¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨¨
Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann
Academic Director
Research Unit on Ancient Hebrew & Epigraphy
FB 01/ Faculty of Protestant Theology
Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz
D-55099 Mainz
Germany
lehmann AT uni-mainz.de
http://www.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de
http://www.ev.theologie.uni-mainz.de/297.php
Subsidia et Instrumenta Linguarum Orientis (SILO):
http://www.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de/182.php
10th  Mainz International Colloquium on Ancient Hebrew (MICAH):
http://www.micah.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de/204.php



> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2011 12:42:34 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Similar to......
> To: George.Athas AT moore.edu.au
> Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Message-ID: <20110604.124234.120454042.wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
> Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> On Fri, 3 Jun 2011 10:30:35 +0000, George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au> 
> wrote:
>> French and Italian. Clearly related, and yet still morphologically and
>> phonetically different enough to sound very distinct.
> 
> That's probably a reasonable comparison with respect to morphology and
> vocabulary, but is it true on a phonetic level?  I rather think that once
> Hebrew became replaced by Aramaic as a native tongue, it is unlikely there
> could have survived a native Hebrew phonemic system distinct from that of
> Aramaic.  So, in this respect Hebrew and Aramaic would be closer to each 
> other
> than to even such closely related languages as Spanish and Portuguese (or
> since the original question came from [I believe] a Catalan speaker, Spanish
> and Catalan).
> 
>> From: Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com<mailto:pporta7 AT gmail.com>>
>> Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 11:39:50 +0200
>> To: B-Hebrew 
>> <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org<mailto:b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>>
>> Subject: [b-hebrew] Similar to......
>> 
>> Dear b-hebrew listers,
>> 
>> I need to know some answer to this question:
>> 
>> The relation between the biblical Hebrew and the biblical Aramaic.... what
>> is it like, compared with today languages?
>> 
>> Is it similar to the relation, say, between English and German?
>> Is it similar to the relation between Spanish and Portuguese?
>> Is it similar to the relation between French and Italian?
>> Is there a better comparison than these?
>> 
>> What do you think?
> 
> 
>