Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Pere Porta <pporta7 AT gmail.com>]

So, Reinhard, you feel that no answer can be truly given to my original
question, namely (a little changed now):

*Which is/are the pair/s of today current languages whose relation to each
other would be similar -at least at, say, an extent of 80 %--  to the
relation between biblical Hebrew and biblical Aramaic?*

Would you deny that French/Italian is a suitable pair?  Or, as Yigal
suggested, French and Catalan?

Kind regards from

Pere Porta
(Barcelona, Catalonia, Northeastern Spain)

2011/6/5 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?
> >
> >
> >
>
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-- 
Pere Porta