Modern Hebrew Language

The dual curriculum model ubiquitous to Orthodox Jewish day schools in North America typically bifurcates into religious (Judaic) studies and general studies. While most classes generally fit into one of those two halves of the curriculum, some classes are not intuitively categorized as wholly belonging to one part over the other. One of those classes is Ivrit (Modern Hebrew). This study aims to describe Ivrit’s place in the dual curriculum model and the various factors that contribute to that reality by exploring the context in which Ivrit emerged as a subject-matter for Orthodox schools and seeking to identify trends in the ways Ivrit is taught. This paper lays out the theories behind how ideology influences curriculum formation and documents how Hebrew has fit into the curriculum of Jewish Education throughout the ages. It also provides a picture of the particular context of North American Orthodox Jewry that this study focuses on, as well as a review of the different theories behind Hebrew education (heritage language vs. communicative language). With this theoretical background in hand, this dissertation surveyed 36 Orthodox high schools in North America to better understand how they viewed Ivrit’s place and shows that ultimately this subject’s place in the dual curriculum model remains ambiguous. Documenting how Ivrit is taught and examining the reasons as to why Ivrit is taught helped shed light on Ivrit’s precarious place in the dual curriculum model, as some of those policies/techniques/motives seem to line up with the aims of the Judaic studies curriculum, while others seemingly reflect the goals of the general studies curriculum.

Unlike written Hebrew, the analytic form of the possessive pronoun dominates in Modern Hebrew. The cases in which the synthetic form is used are described in this paper from three points of view: lexicosemantic, syntactic and sociolinguistic. The synthetic form is usually chosen with abstract nouns defining periods of time, opinions, feelings, social status and relations, while the analytic form is normally used with concrete nouns, especially names of objects and animals. The two exceptions are names of body parts and names of family relationship, which appear relatively often with synthetic possessive pronouns, especially in the speech of eldery people and Israelies from Yemenite families. Insertedclauses of various kinds, as well as direct address are always used with the synthetic pronoun.

לצד שיריה פרסמה דליה רביקוביץ במשך כיובל שנים רשימות ומאמרים בעיתונים ובכתבי עת, במגוון נושאים: החל בביקורות ספרים, עבור בתגובות על אירועים אקטואליים ופוליטיים וכלה ברשימות אישיות על ילדותה ועל משפחתה.
הרשימות שניתנו בספר זה מביאות קול מרתק שלה, המפתיע בידענותו, בסמכותיותו ובגילוי לבו.
מֵעֵבֶר לַהיכרות המחודשת עם המשוררת הנודעת, מזמנות הרשימות שנאספו כאן גם מסע בתרבות העברית והישראלית מבעד לעיניה של יוצרת דעתנית ומעורבת.

Academic Reference:

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad & Monaghan, Paul (2012). "Revival linguistics and the new media: Talknology in the service of the Barngarla language reclamation", pp. 119-126 of Foundation for Endangered Languages XVI Conference: Language Endangerment in the 21st Century:Globalisation, Technology & New Media. Auckland, New Zealand.

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Revival Linguistics and the New Media:
Talknology in the service of the Barngarla Language Reclamation


Ghil‘ad Zuckermann

Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, SA Adelaide 5005, Australia
[ghilad.zuckermann@adelaide.edu.au]


Paul Monaghan

Mobile Language Team
School of Humanities, University of Adelaide, SA Adelaide 5005, Australia
[paul.monaghan@adelaide.edu.au]


Abstract

Revival Linguistics is a new branch of linguistics, currently being established at Adelaide. It analyses comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (see Zuckermann 2009), and local peculiarities on the other hand, apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world (see Zuckermann & Walsh 2011). A branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning (language reclamation is the most extreme case of Second Language Learning).

The study: The Barngarla language (spelled Parnkalla by Schürmann 1844) is a no-longer spoken Thura-Yura Pama-Nyungan Aboriginal language of the Lakes Cultural Region of South Australia. Most recently Zuckermann, Monaghan and the Barngarla community have launched a reclamation of this sleeping beauty in three major rural/urban centres on the Eyre Peninsula, namely Port Lincoln, Whyalla, and Port Augusta. The presence of three Barngarla populations several hours drive apart presents the revival linguist with a need for a sophisticated reclamation involving ‘talknological’ innovations, such as online chatting, newsgroups, photo and resource sharing through a Barngarla wiki. This paper also examines the tensions accompanying the creation of a Barngarla ‘community of practice’ (cf. Wenger 1998) in a post-traditional Aboriginal context. In important ways, the new talknology poses a direct challenge to existing authority structures relating to the everyday management of knowledge, collaboration and participation. We predict that how the broader Barngarla community negotiates these issues will have an important bearing on the ultimate results of the reclamation project.




Revival Linguistics

Revival Linguistics is a new branch of linguistics, currently being established at Adelaide. It analyses comparatively and systematically the universal constraints and global mechanisms on the one hand (see Zuckermann 2009), and local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies on the other hand, apparent in revival attempts across various sociological backgrounds, all over the world (Zuckermann & Walsh 2011). A branch of both linguistics and applied linguistics, it combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning (language reclamation is the most extreme case of Second Language Learning).

Revival Linguistics complements the established field of documentary linguistics, which records endangered languages before they fall asleep. Revival Linguistics ought to revise the fields of grammaticography (writing grammars) and lexicography (writing dictionaries): Grammars and dictionaries ought to be written for language reclamation, i.e. in a user-friendly way, for communities, not only for linguists. For example, juxtapose Lutheran missionary Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann’s 1844 spelling of the Barngarla word nunyara ‘recovery’, which ignores the English environment, thus resulting in the pronunciation nanYAra rather than NOONyara.

Closely related to contact linguistics, Revival Linguistics changes the field of historical linguistics, e.g. by weakening the Family Tree model, which implies that a language ought to have only one parent. Assisting Aboriginal communities in a realistic, non-purisitic way, without selling them myths, Revival Linguistics promotes efficiency and efficacy in language reclamation.

Certainly Australia has been made the ‘Unlucky Country’ through the historical processes of linguicide (language killing) and glottophagy (language eating). These twin forces were in operation from the early colonial period. In her detailed study of the role missionary language practices in the early years of the South Australian colony, Scrimgeour quotes the following colonial language ideology: ‘Mr Forster afterwards adverted to the present mode of teaching the children in their own language. He, with all respect to the Missionaries, would say, on several grounds, that this was wrong. The natives would be sooner civilized if their language was extinct. The children taught would afterwards mix only with whites, where their own language would be of no use – the use of their language would preserve their prejudices and debasement, and their language was not sufficient to express the ideas of civilized life.  He gave the Missionaries full credit for their talents and zeal, but he thought it would be better to teach the children in English’ (from Report on a public meeting of the South Australian Missionary Society in aid of the German Mission to the Aborigines, Southern Australian, 8 September 1843; Scrimgeour, 2007: 116, italics added).

In the case of glottophagy, Governor George Grey noted: ‘The merchant in London who lays on a vessel for a certain port, regards the affair as a mere mercantile speculation, but could he trace out the results he effects in their remotest ramifications, he would stand astonished at the changes he produces.  With the wizard wand of commerce, he touches a lone and trackless forest, and at his bidding, cities arise, and the hum and dust of trade collect – away are swept ancient races; antique laws and customs moulder into oblivion.  The strong-holds of murder and superstition are cleansed, and the Gospel is preached amongst ignorant and savage men. The ruder languages disappear successively, and the tongue of England alone is heard around’ (Grey 1841: 200-201, italics added). Grey was a strong supporter of Aboriginal languages, encouraging Schürmann’s work documenting the Adelaide language (Kaurna) and Barngarla at Port Lincoln (see below).

With globalization, homogenization and Coca-colonization there will be more and more groups all over the world added to the forlorn club of the lost-heritage peoples. Language reclamation will become increasingly relevant as people seek to recover their cultural autonomy, empower their spiritual and intellectual sovereignty, and improve their wellbeing. There are various ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival: for example, social justice, diversity and employability, respectively.

Zuckermann (2012) has enthusiastically called for Native Tongue Title and linguistic human rights, suggesting that the Australian government ought to compensate Indigenous people not only for the loss of land but equally importantly for the loss of language. Zuckermann has suggested to the Australian government to define Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander vernaculars as official languages.

Furthermore, it is predicted that in the future the very insights offered by Revival Linguistics will themselves become part of Indigenous Intellectual Property, when Slovenes and Estonians come to Australia and New Zealand to ask Aboriginal Australians and Maori to assist them in their own European language resurrection.

There is an urgent need to produce perspicacious LINGUISTIC and socio-linguistic insights relevant to language reclamation. Otherwise, linguists or language workers would not be able to offer, if asked by Indigenous people, efficient and efficacious advice. There are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists and First Nations leaders to work more efficiently; for example, to focus more on basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than on sounds and word order – see Zuckermann (2009: http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Hybridity_versus_Revivability.pdf.

Revival linguistics would assist revivalists to be more realistic and to abandon discouraging slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!" The following are among the basic principles that the revival linguist encourages in Aboriginal communities:

i. If your language falls asleep: stop, revive, survive!
ii. If you revive a language, embrace the hybridity of the emerging tongue; and
iii. If your language is healthy, assist others in linguistic need.

One day we may invent devices to “inject” a language into our brains. But until then, any attempt to reclaim a hibernating language will result in a hybrid that combines components from the revivalists' and documenters' mother tongues and, of course, the target language. In the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld: "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"

The Study


Figure 1: Map of Traditional Aboriginal Country after Norman Tindale (adapted from Hercus 1999)

The Barngarla language reclamation project has arisen through partnerships between the University of Adelaide (Linguistics and the Mobile Language Team) and the Barngarla people. Although still in its infancy, consultations began in September 2011, a number of very significant steps have been made towards reclaiming this ‘sleeping beauty’. Without doubt, the key challenge has been to develop a strategy for the reclamation of the language simultaneously and without favour in three major regional centres. In ways that will be elaborated below, this multi-sited, regional or peripheral reclamation makes demands that are very different to those often found in metropolitan reclamation contexts (e.g. Kaurna, cf. Amery...

"Here in the Holy Land one must speak Hebrew only:"
The Revival of Hebrew as a Spoken Language as Reflected in Films on the First Aliya
This paper presents the development of the cinematic representation of Hebrew speech during the first Aliya in three Israeli feature films, revealing two processes which this representation underwent from the beginning of Israeli cinema (1932) to the present (2011): (a) The weakening of the monolingual ideology which rejected foreign languages as an obstacle to the revival of Hebrew speech; (b) The weakening of the normative approach which strongly prefers the "correct" use of the language over the existing usage. The cinematic dialogues are very dissimilar in terms of their linguistic characteristics, indicating that they do not constitute first Aliya natural speech, but rather representations thereof. Representations naturally reflect choice. Choices made by filmmakers are influenced by the period in which they live, contemporaneous norms, their world views, personal tastes, and target audience.
The development of the cinematic representation of Hebrew speech reflects broader social and cultural processes. The norm of representing Hebrew-exclusive speech is subject to the monolingual ideology and to "Negation of the Diaspora" and the reinvention of the Jew in general. As Hebrew had come to be the everyday spoken language in Israel, the Monolingual ideology lost much of its power, along with the linguistic norm which it dictated. The new freedom from the norms of formal, literary, "correct" language is associated with Hebrew becoming the dominant spoken language among Jews and the transition from the generation of the pioneers to the generation of the Sabras (Israeli-born). For the Sabras, speaking Hebrew is natural, and they have no need or desire to represent Hebrew speech as it presumably ought to be. The weakening of the normative approach is also associated with the shift of focus in Israeli society from the collective to the individual and from nation building to personal life.

The present paper offers an overview of Jewish and Hebrew education in French schools across urban communities in Morocco during the 1920s. By analyzing reports written by Jewish education inspectors in those schools, I show that Jewish and Hebrew studies in those institutes covered Hebrew language, religious instruction, and Jewish history. Three new developments can be found in the early twentieth century that effected change in Hebrew studies in Morocco after years of traditional Jewish education: the opening up of the curriculum and the addition of new subjects, the introduction of textbooks, and the inclusion of girls in the circle of Hebrew and religious studies in Morocco. The changes to Hebrew studies in Morocco were influenced by many factors, including the community leadership, the educators, the Alliance israélite Universelle headmasters and the teaching staff, the students  and parents. I posit that in the period in question, education continued to exist as traditional, but for the first time, Hebrew-Jewish repertoire components of different tones started to appear next to the extant cultural repertoire. Those different tones are the product of cultural interactions between the Jewish communities of Morocco and Jewish communities elsewhere.

Огласовки в современном иврите — система диакритических знаков, созданная масоретами Тверии в первом тысячелетии нашей эры в рамках деятельности по кодификации библейского текста и претерпевшая ряд изменений в ходе развития языка. Знаки огласовок позволяют и сегодня правильно прочитать текст, записанный согласными буквами, однако значение рассматриваемой в этой книге системы гораздо больше, потому что она отражает закономерности словообразования и словоизменения, фактически являясь формализованным способом описания всей морфонологии нормативного иврита. Знакомство с темой, которой посвящено данное пособие, позволит лучше понимать грамматическое устройство современного иврита и будет полезно любому человеку, изучающему этот язык.
(Ver. 2.10)

David Grossman’s book "Someone to Run With" features a colorful, fascinating and dynamic plot while enabling a meaningful gaze into the inner world of the leading characters.  The transition to the cinematic medium preserved the colorfulness as well as a strong sense of authenticity. This paper examines the representation of the spoken language in "Someone to Run With": Which phenomena of the spoken language are represented in the book as well as in the film that was produced following it, how different are they in respect to the two artistic media and how can the differences be explained. 
In the book spoken language is presented by means of a written medium, whereas in the film by means of a spoken medium. In both genres different phenomena of spoken language are represented – in phonetics, morphology, syntax and discourse – and in both of them the language has a major role in shaping the characters and the situation. This difference significantly affects the representation of the spoken language in both works.
In the film there is a sense of urgency, expressed through non-verbal means unique to the cinematic medium, as well as through phonetic means of reduction of vowels and consonants. By contrast, in the book the representation of the phonetic component is significantly lower due to the difficulty to represent it in writing. Despite the scant representation of the phonetic phenomena in the book, it is clear that Grossman is aware of the phonetic component, using it to emphasize certain features of characters or situations. In literature in order to represent the phonetic element the author's awareness – and explicit effort – is required, because of the transition from the spoken medium to the written medium. In the cinema, which is an oral medium, the actors naturally produce phonetic aspects of the spoken language, and an actual awareness of the  phonetic component is not required in order to represent it.
Another difference in the representation of the spoken language which contrasts the written and the spoken medium is reflected in the realm of discourse.  In the book cut-off is usually marked by expressions such as "no matter" or "not important", while in the film in most cases these phenomena are not marked verbally. This difference exists because in the written medium it is necessary to mark the language as spoken language, while in the spoken medium there is much less need for it.
In the book a wider range of non-standard linguistic morphological and syntactical phenomena are represented, from both sides of the spectrum: super-standard on the one hand and sub-standard on the other. The wider representation may be attributed to several factors: first, the writer's ability to plan and edit is much greater in writing prose than in making a movie; second, a literary text is longer than a cinematic text; third, the traditional conservatism of films compared to literature; and finally, the linguistic dimension is the major tool in literature whereas in the cinema there are additional, non-verbal means of designing the characters and the situations.
This study shows that both in the book and in the film spoken language has a major role. However, both media use different aspects of the spoken language – phonetics, morphology, syntax and discourse – to fashion the images and features of characters and situations.

In written Hebrew, the final tsere plene <-ֵי> as in <בְּנֵי> ‘sons of’ is the graphemic masculine plural construct marker, but throughout the history of Hebrew until the pre-revival period this morphogram has had no specific linguistic counterpart. This is valid not only for the morphophonology of Classical Hebrew, but also for all non-vernacular communitarian Hebrew orthoepies (reading traditions) throughout the Jewish diaspora. In D. Bolinger’s (1946) terms, the final <-ֵי> graphemic unit is a visual morpheme. With the advent of spoken Hebrew, however, the Ashkenazi dictum “tsere alef → ey”, though unfit vis-à-vis Sephardic ideal Hebrew, was maintained in colloquial Hebrew in instances of open syllable tsere plene, whence the final morpheme +ey as in /bney/ (Sephardic /bene/). This new colloquial Hebrew morpheme has originated ex scripto.

The entire beginning of revernacularization of Hebrew was far from being planned by any public authorized body. It was rather on an individual and sporadic basis. Only later came attempts at the organization of some fragmentary "planning", especially in the areas of pronunciation, spelling, and lexicon, made by some semi-public bodies.

The originator of the international language Esperanto, Dr. Lazar Ludwig Zamenhof, was a Jew whose knowledge of Hebrew undoubtedly played a role in the successful development of the only devised language to make the transition from a desk project to a living tongue. Although the Esperanto vocabulary is largely derived from the Romance, Germanic and Slavic families, it is likely that Zamenhof's profound knowledge of Hebrew contributed to the logical structure of what most linguists will agree is the easiest language to learn.

The paper surveys the state of research of Hebrew syntax from approximately the mid-20th century onward. It indicates the themes which have already received the attention of scholars to varying extents and points out areas of research which deserve the attention of scholars in the future. Among the topics discussed are the syntactic roles of word classes; the main syntactic functions, viz. subject, predicate, object, attribute, and adverbial; syntactic relations, viz. the predicative relation, the attributive relation, and the object/adverbial relation; verb government and valency; grammatical agreement; annexation; clause patterns, parataxis and hypotaxis; verbal moods, copulas and auxiliary verbs, and negation.

"Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), ed. Jonatan Meir, Three volumes, Mosad Bialik, Jerusalem

Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), first published in Vienna in 1819, is one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis, and it presents a dark picture of  avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again. In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.


The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megaleh Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megaleh Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megaleh Temirin. It is based on the first edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published several articles on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.


Contents

Volume 1  - Critical Edition

Concerning this edition
Key personalities
Sefer Megale Temirin – Critical Edition


Volume 2 - Appendixes:
1. Glossary, Abbreviations, Acronyms
2. Explanation of the Speaking Names
3. Perl’s Hasidic Sources
4. Manuscripts of Sefer Megale Temirin
5. Yiddish Introduction to Sefer Megale Temirin
Bibliographic Abbreviations

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Reviews:
(1) Dan Meron, 2013, ‘Megaleh Temirin’, Kivunim Hadashim 29, 55 pages (Hebrew)
(2) David Assaf, 2014, ‘Hasidim will not Read it but Tear it’, Haaretz, Tarbut ve-Sifrut, p .6 (Hebrew) http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/blog-post_18.html
(3) Eliezer Brodt, 2014, 'New book Announcement- Megale Temirin', The Seforim Blog http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-book-announcement-megale-temirin.html
(4) Matan Hermoni, 2014,  הסבתא המופקרת של הספרות העבריתHaaretz, Sfarim (Hebrew) http://www.haaretz.co.il/.premium-1.2382365
(5) Shinichi Yamamoto, 2015, 山本　伸一, "ヨナタン・メイール編著『想像のハシディズム』", ユダヤ・イスラエル研究　第28号  http://www.waseda.jp/assoc-jsjs/jistudies.html
(6) David Biale and David Assaf,, 2015, 'Revealer Revealed', Jewish Review of Books, pp. 17-21  http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1454/revealer-revealed/
(7) Hillel Halkin, 2015, "Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption- and the First Hebrew Novel', Mosaic Magazine,  http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/05/sex-magic-bigotry-corruption-and-the-first-hebrew-novel/
(8) Tomer Persico, 2015, "Interview", Lula'at haEl Blog, http://tomerpersico.com/2015/08/10/meir_perl/

Instances of the vowel /e/ in Modern Hebrew phonological sequences may be divided into two classes: (1) the vowel /e/ displaying variation with the diphthong /ey/, such as /téša/ alongside /téyša/ ‘nine’ and (2) the vowel /e/ displaying no variation with the diphthong /ey/, e.g. /šéva/ ‘seven’. This classification may be traced back to the Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew, where the distribution of /ey/ vs. /e/ in the reading tradition of Hebrew concords with that of the ṣere vs. segol; in the Hebrew lexical component of spoken Yiddish, only an open-syllable ṣere corresponds to /ey/. The Ashkenazi vernacular pronunciation of Hebrew being the point of departure for the morphophonology of Hebrew speech, the evolution of non-native spoken Hebrew towards General Israeli Hebrew entailed the gradual (partial) readjustment of /ey/ vs. /e/ distribution to yod presence or absence occurrences in spelling. Thus, variation could remain when warranted by a yod in the spelling but was gradually reduced to invariable /e/ in the absence of what users perceive as orthographic legitimacy. Words whose regular spelling is non-phonemic, namely logograms: <9>, <ה> and <פ>, have escaped the process of /ey/ → /e/ simplification. Thus, the absence of a yod in תשע <TŠʿ> ‘nine’ has had no impact on the literate speakers’ phonemic representation and therefore this numeral still displays /ey/~/e/ variation.

Résumé :
Les manifestations de la voyelle /e/ dans la séquence phonologique de l’hébreu israélien peuvent être divisées en deux classes : (1) la voyelle /e/ qui varie avec la diphtongue /ey/, comme dans /téša/ à côté de /téyša/ ‘neuf’ et (2) la voyelle /e/ qui ne varie pas avec la diphtongue /ey/, ex. /šéva/ ‘sept’. Cette classification remonte à la prononciation traditionnelle ashkénaze de l’hébreu, où la distribution entre /ey/ et /e/ dans la lecture traditionnelle reproduit celle des graphèmes ṣere et segol ; dans la composante lexicale hébraïque intégrée en yiddish vernaculaire, seul le ṣere des syllabes ouvertes correspond à /ey/. La prononciation vernaculaire ashkénaze de l’hébreu étant le point de départ pour la morphophonologie de l’hébreu revernacularisé (« ravivé »), l’évolution de l’hébreu parlé pré-natif en voie de devenir l’hébreu israélien général entraînait l’alignement progressif (partiel) de la distribution de /ey/ vs. /e/ sur la présence ou l’absence d’un yod dans l’orthographe. Ainsi, la variation /ey/~/e/ pouvait être maintenue quand elle était mandatée par un yod dans l’orthographe mais reculait progressivement en faveur d’un /e/ invariable en l’absence de ce que les usagers percevaient comme une légitimité orthographique. Mots dont le pendant graphémique régulier n’est pas phonémique, à savoir les logogrammes <9>, <ה> and <פ>, ont échappé au processus de simplification /ey/ → /e/. Ainsi, l’absence d’un yod dans תשע <TŠʿ> ‘neuf’ n’a pas eu d’impact sur la représentation phonologique chez les locuteurs littérés, et c’est ainsi que ce numéral fait toujours apparaître la variation /ey/~/e/. En plus de l’effet phonologique, ce processus a eu pour effet morphologique l’apparition d’un suffixe ey marquant l’état construit au masculin pluriel.

This paper aims at a fresh revaluation the poetry of Raḥel Bluwstein (1890-1931). Although many critics have labeled her verses as a “pure and innocent example of feminine poetry”, a closer scrutiny reveals a quite different poetic world. Her poetry is at odds with the heroic and
brave world of the halutzim, for they want to express both the humble contribute of a woman to the Zionistic enterprise and the deep relationship with the Mother Earth of Israel seen thought
her nature. These realities will be seen through the lens of the illness and of the impending death as well as of the feelings of being aside from the world and of the labors for an unfulfilled love and maternity. For expressing these thoughts, the poetess will often recur to the biblical voiceof the matriarch Rachel, who will become a sort of her poetic “alter-ego”

The Cinematic Representation of Hebrew Speech in the 1930s

As a starting point to a broader study on the development of the representation of Hebrew speech in Israeli cinema, this paper examines the way Hebrew speech is represented in the first two full-length Israeli feature films, produced in 1932, one of them a silent film and the other with synchronized sound. Modern Hebrew, which had been revernacularized only a few decades before, was still far from linguistic stability at that time, though it was already a spoken language, with notable differences from Classical Hebrew. Cinema was a new medium which, unlike written media, could represent spontaneous spoken Hebrew in recorded sound. One would expect that the new Hebrew-language films would provide a reliable representation of the new Hebrew speech; yet this expectation is not borne out, as this paper shows. In fact, the language presented in these films was influenced to a large extent by the normative approach which strongly preferred the "correct" use of the language over the existing usage. Though cinema was not a national institute, filmmakers, struggling to produce their films without a local cinematic infrastructure, seem to have had strong affinity with the Zionist project and believed in the significance of Hebrew as the national language. Their films apparently played a didactic role of demonstrating how Hebrew ought to be spoken ideally, rather than reflecting contemporaneous Hebrew speech.

As the other Moroccan Arabic speakers, Jews from Morocco use different kind of curses and profanities, some very common and others more specific. Alongside the ones they share with their Muslim neighbors, they’re used to borrowing words and concepts to the Jewish texts, mostly from the Bible and the Talmud. From those words, both in Hebrew and Aramaic, are
formulated innovative and peripheral sentences such as
imsī kəppāṛa ˁlīna: “may he give his life for our sake”
where imsī and ˁlīna is Arabic but kəppāṛa is Hebrew.
or
’a l-ḥrāmi l-mamzīr,
where the two words have the same
meaning (“bastard”) but ḥrāmi is Arabic and mamzīr is Hebrew.
Hebrew words are integrated in an Arabic syntax.
Today most of this community has left Morocco and lives in the state of Israel. Those curses and profanities are still used in this very new context, sometimes just the way they were and sometimes in the middle of Hebrew sentences and therefore now integrated into Hebrew syntax. That situation leads to the production of new bilingual curses and even to darija
swearing hinged with Hebrew morphology.

Für alle, die mit dem Neuen Testament Neuhebräisch lernen und gleichzeitig Bibelhebräisch vertiefen möchten – oder umgekehrt.
Parallel zum Wortschatz des (neu-)hebräischen Matthäusevangeliums (Israelische Bibelgesellschaft) werden wurzelverwandte Wörter aufgeführt – auch mit häufigen Hinweisen zum Gebrauch im TANACH. Der breite Gebrauch mancher Wort-Wurzel im Neuhebräischen ist höchstspannend.
Man beachte die Einführung auf den Seiten 3–5 (u. a. zum Unterschied zwischen Bibelhebräisch und Neuhebräisch).

The military weapons of Israeli army includes a wide array arms, armored vehicles, tanks, artillery, plans, helicopters, missiles, and warships. Many of their names are from ancient origin, especially from Biblical Hebrew. During the process of the Hebrew language revival at the end of 19 th century and the beginning of 20 th century, the restorers of the language were aware of the inadequacy of its vocabulary as existing in classical texts. They looked upon their work as a means of closing the gap between Ancient Hebrew vocabulary and contemporary needs. In field of military vocabulary as in other fields of basic vocabulary were adapted Biblical or Mishnaic words, which no longer functioned in their original meaning in the generation of revival or were unknown before the revival. In this paper will be described some modern military weapons in their Biblical context and the process of their adaptation to the modern use. The following nouns will be described: gun (rove), revolver (ekdah), cannon (totah), mortar (margema), mine (mokesh), shell, cannonball (pagaz), bombe (petzatza). Can it be said that at the time of establishment of the State of Israel and of IDF in 1948, Hebrew speech was already a complete fact, and the revival process was no longer a process of creation, but a process of expansion. The fact is that the military terminology, as other fields, were not fulfilled until the sixties of the 20 th century and even later. For example, the term for "flight of airplanes" (matas) was created only in 1964.

Zuckermann, Ghil'ad and Walsh, Michael 2011. ‘Stop, Revive, Survive!: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures’, Australian Journal of Linguistics 31.1: 111-127.

LINK TO THE ARTICLE: http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Revival_Linguistics.pdf

Final version:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a932426202~frm=titlelink

DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2011.532859

Australian Journal of Linguistics (AJL)
Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2011, pages 111 - 127

Stop, Revive, Survive: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures

GHIL‘AD ZUCKERMANN and MICHAEL WALSH

University of Adelaide and University of Sydney


ABSTRACT

The revival of Hebrew is so far the most successful known reclamation of a sleeping tongue and is a language movement that has been in progress for more than 120 years. By comparison, language revival movements in Australia are in their infancy. This article provides comparative insights and makes information about the Hebrew revival accessible to Australian linguists and Aboriginal revival activists.

Needless to say, the first stage of any desire by professional linguists to assist in language reawakening must involve a long period of thoroughly observing, carefully listening to the people, learning, mapping and characterizing the specific indigenous community. Only then can one inspire and assist. That said, this article proposes that there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would be useful to endangered languages in general and to Aboriginal linguistic revival in particular.

This article contributes towards the establishment of Revival Linguistics, a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. Zuckermann`s term Revival Linguistics is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (<language contact). Revival linguistics inter alia explores the universal constraints and mechanisms involved in language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over the globe.


Keywords: Revival Linguistics, Language Revival, Aboriginal Studies, Hebrew, Social Empowerment, Hybridity and Multiple Causation, Purism versus Compromise, Language and Identity, Contact Linguistics, Yiddish, Aboriginal English, Anthropological Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language Endangerment, Resilience Linguistics, Revitalization, Renewal.


Dedicated to Professor Michael Clyne z"l



ARTICLE

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

(John Adams, 1735–1826, second president of the United States)


The main aim of this article is to suggest that there are perspicacious lessons applicable from the relatively successful Hebrew revival to the reclamation, maintenance and empowerment of Aboriginal languages and cultures. 'Language is power; let us have ours', wrote Aboriginal politician Aden Ridgeway on 26 November 2009 in the Sydney Morning Herald. Previous revival efforts have largely failed (for obvious reasons, we are not going to single out specific failures here). While there have been some good results from several projects since 1992 (e.g. Kaurna, see below), Aboriginal people overall do not see as many positive outcomes from revival programmes as they would like. In large part this is the result of shortage of sufficient (continuity of) funding, lack of technical expertise, and lack of integration of school-based programmes with community language programmes. However, there are purely linguistic reasons too: Many revival efforts were not supported by a sound theoretical understanding of how successful language revival works. As pointed out by Thieberger (2002), decisions about the appropriate target for language maintenance programmes are too often driven by structural linguistics, where the supposed ideal is intergenerational transmission of the language with all its original structural complexity retained, thus creating unrealistic expectations among the Aboriginal community.

This article is the first of its kind as it will innovatively draw crucial insights from 'Modern Hebrew' (henceforth, Israeli – see Zuckermann 1999), so far the most successful known reclamation attempt of a sleeping tongue. Zuckermann's (2008a, 2009, 2010, 2011) research on Israeli demonstrates which language components are more revivable than others. Words and conjugations, for example, are easier to revitalize than intonation, discourse, associations and connotations. We should encourage revivalists and Aboriginal leaders to be realistic rather than puristic, and not to chastise English loanwords and pronunciation, for example, within the emergent language. Applying such precious conclusions from Hebrew will closely assist Australian revivalists in being more efficient, urging them not to waste time and resources on Sisyphean efforts to resuscitate linguistic components that are unlikely to be revivable.

While the results the endeavors we are proposing here have considerable value as a research enterprise, one can also consider them in terms of a cost-benefit analysis (Mühlhäusler and Damania 2004, Walsh 2008): Language revitalization contributes to social reconciliation, cultural tourism (Clark and Kostanski 2005), capacity building, and improved community health for Indigenous peoples (Walsh forthcoming B). In the process of language revival, some Aboriginal people will go from being dysfunctional (cf. Sutton 2009) to well-balanced, positive people. The benefits to the wider community and to Australian society are immense.

Reversing language shift (RLS) (Fishman 1991, 2001, Hagège 2009, Evans 2010, Walsh 2005a, Zuckermann 2011) is thus of great social benefit. Language revival does not only do historical justice and address inequality but can also result in the empowerment of people who have lost their heritage and purpose in life.

Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership. There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it: its name. Consequently, some Indigenous Australians do not find it important to revive their comatose tongue. We, on the other hand, have always believed in Australia’s very own roadside dictum: ‘Stop, revive, survive!'


Background: The Hebrew Revival

I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so. (Haldane 1963: 464)

'Hebrew' is the most quoted example of a successful language revival. On the other hand, if we are to be brutally truthful with ourselves, the modern-day vernacular spoken in downtown Tel Aviv is a very different language – both typologically and genetically – to that of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) or of the Mishnah, the first major redaction of Jewish oral traditions.

Hebrew was spoken since approximately the 14th century BC. It belonged to the Canaanite division of the northwestern branch of the Semitic languages, which constitute a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Following a gradual decline, it ceased to be spoken by the second century AD. The failed Bar-Kokhba Revolt against the Romans in Judea in 132-5 AD marks the symbolic end of the period of spoken Hebrew. We believe that the Mishnah was codified around 200 AD because Hebrew was then dying as a mother tongue. Rabbi Judah haNasi and his collaborators might have realized that if they did not act then to redact the oral tradition, it would soon have been too late because Jews were already speaking languages other than Hebrew. (In fact, the Gemara, the other component of the Babylonian Talmud, which was codified around 500 AD, was written in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew.)

For approximately 1,750 years thereafter, Hebrew was ‘clinically dead’. A most important liturgical and literary language, it occasionally served as a lingua franca – a means of communication between people who do not share a mother tongue – for Jews of the Diaspora, but not as a native language.

Fascinating and multifaceted Israeli, which emerged in Palestine (Eretz Israel) at the end of the nineteenth century, possesses distinctive socio-historical characteristics such as the lack of a continuous chain of native speakers from spoken Hebrew to Israeli, the non-Semitic mother tongues spoken by the Hebrew revivalists, and the European impact on literary Hebrew. Consequently, it presents the linguist with a unique laboratory in which to examine a wider set of theoretical problems concerning language genesis, social issues like language, identity and politics, and important practical matters, such as whether it is possible to revive a no-longer spoken language.

The genetic classification of Israeli has preoccupied scholars since its genesis. The still regnant traditional thesis suggests that Israeli is Semitic: Hebrew revived. The revisionist antithesis defines Israeli as Indo-European: Yiddish relexified; that is, Yiddish, the revivalists’ mother tongue, is the 'substratum', whilst Hebrew is the 'superstratum' providing the vocabulary (cf. Horvath and Wexler 1997). According to Zuckermann's mosaic (rather than Mosaic) synthesis, Israeli is not only multi-layered but also multi-parental. A Semito-European, or Eurasian, hybr...

Der Wortschatz bezieht sich primär auf den TANACH, doch werden neuhebräische Bedeutungen der betroffenen Begriffe ebenfalls eingefügt, insofern das betroffene Wort bzw. die Wurzel in Gebrauch ist. Dabei werden „bekannte“ Wörter oft nur beim ersten Erscheinen oder auch noch ein paarmal zusätzlich aufgeführt, während weniger bekannte Begriffe, die möglicherweise beim Erlernen der hebräischen Sprache nicht begegnet sind, häufiger aufgeführt werden. Meine Dateien mit dem Wortschatz des gesamten TANACHs sowie des hebräischen Neuen Testaments findet man ebenfalls auf diese „Academia“-Seite im Internet: https://sthbasel.academia.edu/JacobThiessen/Drafts. Den Text aller Bücher der Bibel (auch mit Audio-Dateien) findet man u. a. unter dem folgenden Link: http://haktuvim.co.il.
Man beachte auch die Einführung mit vielen Link auf den Seiten 3–5 in meinen Dateien zum Wortschatz des (neu-)hebräischen Matthäusevangeliums (mit über 600 Seiten am ausführlichsten), zum Römerbrief und zu den zwei Korintherbriefen (u. a. zum Unterschied zwischen Bibelhebräisch und Neuhebräisch sowie verschiedene Links, die hilfreich sein können).
Ich weise darauf hin, dass ich kein Philologe, sondern Exeget (Neutestamentler) bin. Das ist beim Gebrauch dieser Unterlagen zu beachten. Gleichwohl werden Experten und andere durch diese Unterlagen zu sehr spannenden philologischen Erkenntnissen gelangen.

On the margins of Israeli society, in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, there is a lively and fierce debate over the status of Modern Hebrew. At the beginning of the resistance , the reservations and opposition concerning Hebrew formed part of the reaction to the innovative activities of secular Zionists. Despite the fact that it was taken as a continuation of the beloved " Holy Tongue " of the Bible, the Ultra-Orthodox viewed it as a modernist innovation. This paradoxical situation produced an extensive literature rejecting Modern Hebrew on ideological and educational grounds. Later, during the second stage of the resistance, opposition to Hebrew also acquired a pseudo-halakhic tone. This article describes the various opinions of members of the Ultra-Orthodox community regarding Modern Hebrew, the different stages of their resistance to it, and the reasons given for this resistance. The changes that occurred in the attitude of Ultra-Orthodox society toward Hebrew are not only of interest in their own right but also provide an interesting case study on the emergence of a binding norm that quickly became phrased in halakhic terminology.

Jewish languages contain a component derived from Hebrew and Aramaic, the earliest languages Jews used. We offer a historical comparative analysis of the structure and use of adjectives of Hebrew and Aramaic origin in the diverse spoken and written registers of Judezmo (Ladino, Judeo-Spanish) and Yiddish, the two major Jewish languages of the Sephardim and Ashkenazim of Europe. Attention is paid both to adjectives whose forms are entirely of Hebrew or Aramaic origin, as well as those constructed of bases of Hebrew and Aramaic origin, and derivational morphemes of Hispanic and Turkish origin (Judezmo), and Germanic and Slavic origin (Yiddish). The incorporation of the adjectives within the syntactic and semantic systems of Judezmo and Yiddish is examined , and comparisons made between the relative quantity and function of the adjectives in the two languages. It is meant as a model for the comparative study of the linguistic structures of Jewish languages.