Google Israel Honors Eliezer ben Yehuda: Father of Modern Hebrew

Jacob Richman has a page of Cool Google Doodles 2013 -- and being that this is the beginning of 2013, the page right now is kind of empty.

Except for this:

In addition, Richman has links --

Video: Whatever Else, Hebrew IS Easier Than Klingon

Someone commented on my post Research Indicates That Arabic Is Harder To Learn Than Hebrew about the harsh sound of Arabic--which reminded me of this episode of Frasier:



Technorati Tag: Hebrew and Klingon and Arabic.

Research Indicates That Arabic Is Harder to Learn Than Hebrew

Thinking of learning Arabic on a whim? Think again:

Haifa University’s Professor Zohar Eviatar and neuropsychologist Dr. Rafik Ibrahim of Rambam Medical Center have shown that the complexities of the Arabic language impede the right brain from taking part in learning to read it. This is largely because of the graphic complexities of the language, in which very similar shapes stand for different letters, while the same letter is depicted in a variety of ways depending on whether it is in the beginning, middle, or end of a word.

...Asked why Hebrew-speakers do not have the same difficulty, Eviatar told Israel National News, “It’s true that many Hebrew letters are built around similar square shapes. However, only five Hebrew letters change their shape depending on whether they end a word or not, while many Arabic letters do so, and even take on different shapes in other parts of the word.”

While this difference may not matter to you and me, it may matter to more and more students in Israel since Arabic to become compulsory in Israeli schools:

Arab Writers Set To Fight The Influence Of Hebrew

Apparently, these Arab writers mean business:

The Arab Writers Union formed a Damascus bureau meant to prevent the infiltration of Hebrew terms into Arab culture, Israel Radio reported on Sunday, adding that the new group said it would prevent the "normalization" of cultural ties with Israel.

Hebrew Is Alive And Well--Among The Arabs

An article in Haaretz about Hebrew Renaissance notes that

Hebrew is alive and well. At least in the Arab and Druze communities. For students from those sectors, the Hebrew language has become the new business administration - a social and professional catapult to get ahead and succeed in life. The sticklers add Hebrew literature, too. It's a triumph of practicality over ideology. The traditional attitude that language is part of national identity and that to study Hebrew is to cross the line, has given way to the quiet conquest of the Hebrew Language Department - at the University of Haifa by Arabs from the north and at Ben-Gurion University by Bedouin from the south. The graduates are almost always assured of a teaching job, which brings with it a livelihood, honor and prestige, relatively speaking. Hebrew is obligatory in every Arab and Bedouin elementary and high school, and good teachers are in high demand.

We are not talking about a casual understanding to Hebrew either--the article mentions Masters theses being done by Arabs on topics such as "connective clauses in spoken Hebrew discourse" and "predicative complements."

This is a general overall trend among Israeli Arabs as a whole. Back in May, an article in The Forward mentioned another article in Haaretz that indicated that while Israeli Arabs might not accept the idea of a Jewish state, they were slowly absorbing Hebrew words--possibly unconsciously--into their everyday speech:

What are the Hebrew words that creep most commonly into the speech of Israeli Arabs? They seem to divide between everyday expressions of social intercourse on the one hand, and words for things or situations that are associated by Arabs with Israeli culture on the other. Haaretz lists some words that belong to the second category, such as ramzor (traffic light), mah.som (checkpoint), g’lidah (ice cream), lah.maniyah (bakery roll) and sulamit (the hash sign on telephone dials). Belonging to the first category are words like b’seder (all right, okay), b’vakasha (please) and me’anyen (interesting).

The Forward article suggests the possibility of the linguist assimilation by Israeli Arabs of the Hebrew language--but while that appears to be a positive development, what are we to make of the opposite trend manifesting itself among Jews?

Hillel Halkin wrote in Commentary Magazine back in June about The Translator's Paradox:

Here, then, is a great historical irony. As long as Hebrew was the first language of no educated Jew in the world, it was the second language of every educated Jew; now that it has become the mother tongue of millions of Jews in the state of Israel, it has largely ceased to be studied by Jews elsewhere. It has in effect been demoted to a Judeo-Israeli, a new Jewish regional speech. In both relative and absolute numbers, far more Israeli and Palestinian Arabs now have a working command of it than do American Jews.

As an example of how the status of Hebrew has declined, take a look at the book How the Hebrew Language Grew, written in 1960 by Edward Horowitz. On the back cover, there is a bio of the author that indicates how popular the study of Hebrew in New York City public schools used to be:

Edward Horowitz was one of the pioneer teachers of Hebrew in the public high schools of New York. He was influential in spreading the study of Hebrew within the junior and senior high schools. Dr. Horowitz was president of the American Association of Teachers of Hebrew and served for twenty years as Chairman of the Hebrew Department at Thomas Jefferson High School. He is the author of Sippurim Kallim and Sippurim Latalmid, collections of simple Hebrew stories widely used throughout this country.

I find the fact that Hebrew was taught in public schools, and in New York City starting in 1930--before the re-establishment of the state of Israel--pretty amazing. Even today, the American Association of Teachers of Hebrew is still around, but I don't know if there are any public schools in New York--or in the US--that still teach Hebrew.

We Jews are spoiled by success. Who needs Hebrew when you have Artscroll and even when in Israel everyone speaks English.

Actually, Hebrew is not doing so well in Israel either. According to the Hebrew Renaissance article in Haaretz quoted earlier:

At all the country's universities, Hebrew studies are in decline. "The humanities are in a bad way," says Prof. Chaim Cohen, head of the Hebrew Language Department at Ben-Gurion University, "and the departments of Bible studies and Hebrew language are at the top of the list." But it's the same at all the country's universities. These departments are rapidly shrinking, with enrollment standing at less than 1 percent of all humanities students, at most, as in Haifa. They are surviving as best they can.

This is all part of a developing disdain for studying the humanities in general. Prof. Chaim Cohen, head of the Hebrew Language Department at Ben-Gurion University laments:

Everyone wants biotechnology, business administration and economics, and this is something new. But I cannot imagine that a department of Hebrew language or Bible will be shut down. It is inconceivable that people should complete a first degree in Israel without knowing anything about their heritage.

From the article, it appears there is a realization of the negative trend and an attempt in Israel to reverse it--assuming Israelis can deal with the stiff competition from Israeli Arabs.

The remaining question is what will be the future of Hebrew--and of Jews--here is Golus.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Hebrew.

Arabic Vs Hebrew: Memorizing Vs. Understanding

Elder of Zion had a post a few days ago about Memorization versus understanding, comparing the memorizing of the Koran with the International Bible Contest--centering on the idea of chiddush.

It is an interesting post, as are the comments (to which I added about a comparison of the Arabic understanding of Classic Arabic vis-a-vis Israeli understanding of Biblical Hebrew).

Read the post.

Technorati Tag: Koran and International Bible Contest.

Why Is Arabic Preferred Over Hebrew?

I just started reading "Tactical Hudna and Islamist Intolerance" by Denis MacEoin, and I just wanted to blog about the first paragraph before going any further. MacEoin writes:

The use by Westerners of the word hudna highlights an anomaly. Whenever journalists, diplomats, or commentators covering the Middle East use a non-English word, it will almost always be Arabic or perhaps Persian; seldom do they use any Hebrew words. Never has a U.S. or British newspaper, for example, used the Hebrew word for cease-fire (hafsakat esh). This is odd as Israel is the other side to these cease-fires. The majority of Arabic terms reproduced in Western language newspapers are concerned with either military topics (jihad, mujahideen, fida'iyin, shahid) or religious affairs (fatwa, mulla, ulema, ayatollah, Shari‘a, Allahu akbar). There is nothing wrong with borrowing Arabic words. However, doing so without understanding the word's nuance and historical development will render deficient any understanding of that word's true meaning.

Read the whole thing (I plan to after this post).

Come to think of it--he's right. But is it all that surprising? Just as the history is written by the victor, so too the terminology used would be that of the aggressor. Even the Arabic terms above pertaining to religious affairs have a militant context to them in the news. Hebrew words in general have not really penetrated the English vernacular. Yiddish of course is another story--and I imagine there are not too many popular Yiddish terms for military topics.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Arabic.

Hebrew And Sanskrit

In both cases, it brings a reaction from Muslims:

Knesset Hawks Move To Strip Arabic of Official Status in Israel
Israeli Arab Lawmaker: Effort Will Harm Minority’s Ties to the State

Actually, I'm not so crazy about the idea--as I commented here.

Meanwhile...

Summer Camps Revive India's Ancient Sanskrit
Effort Is Part of Bitter Debate Over the Role of Hindu Language in a Diverse Society

And of course, when reviving religious and cultural pride is a threat to a 'diverse' society

Their endeavors are viewed with suspicion by many scholars here as part of an increasingly acrimonious debate over the role of Sanskrit in schools and society. The scholars warn against exploiting Indians' reverence for Sanskrit to promote the supremacy of Hindu thought in a country that, while predominantly Hindu, is also home to a large Muslim population and other religious minorities.

I wish them luck--it's one thing to relegate another language to secondary status; it is another to try to revive your ancient language.

Technorati Tag: Hebrew and Arabic and Sanskrit.

Has The Slow Process Of Israeli Arab Assimilation Begun?

Go take a look at an interesting article Philologos has written at The Forward on Israeli Arabs and Hebrew. He refers to an article in the English edition of Haaretz that notes how Hebrew words and phrases are making their way into the Arabic of Israeli Arabs, possibly unconsciously.

What are the Hebrew words that creep most commonly into the speech of Israeli Arabs? They seem to divide between everyday expressions of social intercourse on the one hand, and words for things or situations that are associated by Arabs with Israeli culture on the other. Haaretz lists some words that belong to the second category, such as ramzor (traffic light), mah.som (checkpoint), g’lidah (ice cream), lah.maniyah (bakery roll) and sulamit (the hash sign on telephone dials). Belonging to the first category are words like b’seder (all right, okay), b’vakasha (please) and me’anyen (interesting).

Philologos comments on the apparent lack of a word for 'interesting' in Arabic and after some research concluded that indeed, there is no such corresponding word in Arabic.

Is this just a linguistic oddity, or is it indicative of a deeper feature of Arab culture — the absence, perhaps, of the very concept of “interesting” that is so basic to the Western mind, since what isn’t unusual enough or noteworthy enough to arouse curiosity is not considered worthy of attention?

He concludes by taking the phenomenon to its logical conclusion, asking whether the assimilation of Hebrew words and phrases into Arab is a possible sign of a larger overall assimilation of Hebrew into Arabic:

Is increased code switching to Hebrew among Israeli Arabs a first harbinger of what may one day become their wholesale adoption of Hebrew as their native language? Although it may seem remote at the present moment, it is not inconceivable that, if Arabic-Hebrew code switching continues to grow, such a development could start to take place a generation or two from now — at first among the best-educated and most integrated Israeli Arabs, and subsequently, among the Israeli Arab population as a whole. This has happened over and over with minority groups in the course of history, and although there are strong forces working against it in this particular case (for example, Israeli-Arab enmity, the universality of Arabic in all the countries bordering on Israel, the special connection between Arabic and Islam, etc.), it is not something that can be totally ruled out. It will be very interesting — me’anyen k’tir — to see how things stand when Israel has its 120th birthday 60 years from now.

Considering the episodes in our history of Jewish assimilation, it is novel to see this assimilation of Israeli Arabs, regardless of how low a level.

[Hat tip: David Hazony]

Technorati Tag: Israeli Arabs and Hebrew.

A Caroline Glick Essay Without Reference To Olmert Or Palestinians

Caroline Glick writes once a month for The Jewish Press. In The Luckiest Jews In The World, she starts off writing about the Hebrew language:

Writing in Hebrew is a qualitatively different experience than writing in English. Hebrew is a more compact language than English. It has fewer words and the words it has are denser and more flexible than English words. A 1,200-word essay in Hebrew will be 1,800 words in English.

This is a mechanical difference. But there are deeper distinctions as well. One level beyond the mechanics is the multiple meanings of Hebrew words. The density of meaning in Hebrew is a writer’s dream. Nearly anyone can imbue a seemingly simple sentence with multiple, generally complementary meanings simply by choosing a specific verb, verb form, noun or adjective. These double, triple and even quadruple meanings of one word are a source of unbounded joy for a writer. To take just one example, the Hebrew word “shevet” means returning and it also means sitting. And it is also a homonym for club – as in billy club – and for tribe.

In 2005, the IDF named the operation expelling the Israeli residents of Gaza and Northern Samaria “Shevet Achim,” or returning or sitting with brothers. But it also sounded like it was making a distinction between tribesmen and brothers. And it also sounded like “clubbing brothers.”

As this one example demonstrates, one joyful consequence of the unique density of the Hebrew language is that satirical irony comes easily to even the most dour and unpoetic writers.

For a Jew, knowing, speaking and writing Hebrew is an intimate experience. This is particularly so for those of us whose mother tongue is not Hebrew – because as the secrets of the language slowly reveal themselves to us we feel we are discovering ourselves.

Hebrew encapsulates the entirety of the Jewish story. Modern Hebrew in particular is an eclectic amalgamation of classical Hebrew, Yiddishisms, and expressions from the Sephardic Diaspora experience. Greek, Roman, Aramaic, Turkish, Arabic and English expressions meld seamlessly into the stream of words. It is not simply that it is the language of the Bible. Hebrew is also an expression of the unique culture of a small, proud, often besieged, often conquered and permeable people.

Its power to explain that cultural experience and that historical baggage is something that often leaves a newly initiated member of the Hebrew-speaking world gasping in a mixture of disbelief and relief. It is unbelievable that a language can be so immediately and unselfconsciously expressive of feelings that have traversed millennia. Understanding its power as a tool of expressing the Jewish condition is one of the most gratifying discoveries a Jew can make.

But the experience of speaking in Hebrew and of living in Hebrew is incomplete when it is not experienced in Israel. It is one thing to pray in a synagogue in Hebrew or even to speak regular Hebrew outside of Israel. The former is a spiritual duty and a communal experience. The latter is a social or educational experience. But speaking Hebrew in Israel is a complete experience. Hebrew localizes the Jewishness, Judaism and Jews. It anchors us to the Land of Israel. Taken together, the Hebrew language and the Land of Israel stabilize a tradition and make the Jewish people whole.

I write all of this as a means of explaining why a Jew in the Diaspora, particularly the United States, would want to live in Israel.

Read the whole thing.

Glick touches on some aspects of Hebrew that David Hazony wrote about last year, on the occasion of the 150th birthday of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda:

Although every language is unique, there is something especially intriguing about Hebrew. Part of it is the lingual leverage: It is a compact tongue in which prepositions become one-letter prefixes, possessives become one-letter suffixes, and the word “is” does not exist. As a result, you can say in just a few words things that in English may take long sentences. The words of the prophets are both more powerful and more intimate when read in the original. And modern Israelis are constantly referring back to Old-Testament idioms and ideas.

But what is especially beguiling is the story of the language. When the founder of modern Hebrew, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, was born (150 years ago this week!), the language was essentially an ecclesiastical one, like Latin: Restricted to the Bible, the synagogue, and scholarly texts, used in conversation only when Jews of distant lands had to communicate. Of all the achievements of the Zionist movement, the re-establishment of modern Hebrew is one of the most impressive and enduring. Today, an entire country thrives on an ancient tongue, which has modernized and developed to cover every aspect of life, from sex to sports to politics to art.

Hazony links to an article by Meir Shalev, which--unlike Glick and Hazony--refers to the battle that Hebrew faces:

Yet Hebrew is also a battlefield of words and expressions, existence and survival. It rapidly goes through painful processes that other languages underwent slowly. Without intending to do so, Ben-Yehuda embarked on a process that in the future will see Hebrew split into a modern language and a classic language. At this point already, many Biblical allusions are not being understood by readers, while ancient idioms are forgotten. We also use others idioms without recognizing their origin. Should we be sorry about this ignorance? Not necessarily. When an idiom becomes detached from its origin, we know it has achieved an independent and strong status. [emphasis added]

I disagree on that last point--and it brings up where I found Glick's essay lacking: her apparent dismissing the source of Hebrew in one sentence:

It is not simply that it is the language of the Bible.

True, but the source of Hebrew in the Tanakh is anything but simple--and despite Shalev's contention to the contrary, detaching from one's origins do not necessarily lead to independence and strength. Once could argue that Israel herself provides a proof of that.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hebrew.