Chavoux:
On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Chavoux Luyt<chavoux AT gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Karl
You wrote:
…
We find the statement in Nehemiah 13:24 that the mixed marriages resultedage
in children who did not understand Hebrew. That would not have been
necessary if this had been a Hebrew speaking milieu—even if the children
spoke the other languages at home, they would pick up Hebrew at a young
from the street. But this does become an issue in an Aramaic speakingI must say that I doubt it that a language (and its pronunciation)
milieu where the women from mixed marriages taught their children their
native tongues at home, possibly as a second language, where speaking
Hebrew was something to be taught as a second language, necessary because
of its religious and civic uses (similar to medieval Latin).
could disappear in a single generation.
The Babylonian Exile itself lasted over two generations, and the events
listed in both Nehemiah and Ezra were a few generations after that. I think
Nehemiah opens in 417 BC and Ezra slightly after that.
Those who have worked with immigrants and their children find that the
children generally have but a smattering of their parents’ languages, the
grandchildren almost none, unless the language is systematically taught as
a second language. In the latter case, the children’s primary language that
they speak in their everyday usage is the language of their milieu, their
ancestors’ language the second language.
Yes some of the mixed children
could not understand Hebrew. But there certainly must have been enough
native speakers of Hebrew to keep the language alive (there were still
some old men alive who remembered the first temple!), especially in
Israel itself among the returnees.
See above.
…
Shalom
Chavoux Luyt
Karl W. Randolph.
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