Hebrew Language I. Introduction
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Attitudes Towards Linguistic Diversity in the Hebrew Bible
Many Peoples of Obscure Speech and Difficult Language: Attitudes towards Linguistic Diversity in the Hebrew Bible The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Power, Cian Joseph. 2015. Many Peoples of Obscure Speech and Difficult Language: Attitudes towards Linguistic Diversity in the Hebrew Bible. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845462 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA MANY PEOPLES OF OBSCURE SPEECH AND DIFFICULT LANGUAGE: ATTITUDES TOWARDS LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY IN THE HEBREW BIBLE A dissertation presented by Cian Joseph Power to The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2015 © 2015 Cian Joseph Power All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Peter Machinist Cian Joseph Power MANY PEOPLES OF OBSCURE SPEECH AND DIFFICULT LANGUAGE: ATTITUDES TOWARDS LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY IN THE HEBREW BIBLE Abstract The subject of this dissertation is the awareness of linguistic diversity in the Hebrew Bible—that is, the recognition evident in certain biblical texts that the world’s languages differ from one another. Given the frequent role of language in conceptions of identity, the biblical authors’ reflections on language are important to examine. -
Language of the Old Testament: Biblical Hebrew “The Holy Tongue”
E-ISSN 2281-4612 Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol 4 No 1 ISSN 2281-3993 MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy March 2015 Language of the Old Testament: Biblical Hebrew “The Holy Tongue” Associate Professor Luke Emeka Ugwueye Department of Religion & Human Relations, Faculty of Arts, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, PMB 5025, Awka- Anambra State, Nigeria Email: [email protected] phone - 08067674763 Doi:10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n1p129 Abstract Some kind of familiarity with the structure and thought pattern of biblical Hebrew language enhances translation and improved ways of working with the language needed by students of Old Testament. That what the authors of the Scripture say also has meaning for us today is not in doubt but they did not express themselves primarily for us or in our language, and so it requires training on our part to understand them in their own language. The features of biblical Hebrew as combined in the language’s use of imagery and picturesque description of things are of huge assistance in this training exercise for a better operational knowledge of the language and meaning of Hebrew Scripture. Keywords: Language, Old Testament, Biblical Hebrew, Holy Tongue 1. Introduction Hebrew language is the language of the culture, religion and civilization of the Jewish people since ancient times. It belongs to the northwest ancient Semitic family of languages. The word Semitic, according to Kitchen (1992) is formed from the name Shem, Noah’s eldest son (Genesis 5:32). It is an adjective derived from ‘Shem’ meaning a member of any of the group of people speaking Akkadian, Phoenician, Punic, Aramaic, and especially Hebrew, Modern Hebrew and Arabic language. -
Saudi Dialects: Are They Endangered?
Academic Research Publishing Group English Literature and Language Review ISSN(e): 2412-1703, ISSN(p): 2413-8827 Vol. 2, No. 12, pp: 131-141, 2016 URL: http://arpgweb.com/?ic=journal&journal=9&info=aims Saudi Dialects: Are They Endangered? Salih Alzahrani Taif University, Saudi Arabia Abstract: Krauss, among others, claims that languages will face death in the coming centuries (Krauss, 1992). Austin (2010a) lists 7,000 languages as existing and spoken in the world today. Krauss estimates that this figure could come down to 600. That is, most the world's languages are endangered. Therefore, an endangered language is a language that loses her speakers within a few generations. According to Dorian (1981), there is what is called ―tip‖ in language endangerment. He argues that a language's decline can start slowly but suddenly goes through a rapid decline towards the extinction. Thus, languages must be protected at much earlier stage. Arabic dialects such as Zahrani Spoken Arabic (ZSA), and Faifi Spoken Arabic (henceforth, FSA), which are spoken in the southern region of Saudi Arabia, have not been studied, yet. Few people speak these dialects, among many other dialects in the same region. However, the problem is that most these dialects' native speakers are moving to other regions in Saudi Arabia where they use other different dialects. Therefore, are these dialects endangered? What other factors may cause its endangerment? Have they been documented before? What shall we do? This paper discusses three main different points regarding this issue: language and endangerment, languages documentation and description and Arabic language and its family, giving a brief history of Saudi dialects comparing their situation with the whole existing dialects. -
The Hebrew-Jewish Disconnection
Bridgewater State University Virtual Commons - Bridgewater State University Master’s Theses and Projects College of Graduate Studies 5-2016 The eH brew-Jewish Disconnection Jacey Peers Follow this and additional works at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/theses Part of the Reading and Language Commons Recommended Citation Peers, Jacey. (2016). The eH brew-Jewish Disconnection. In BSU Master’s Theses and Projects. Item 32. Available at http://vc.bridgew.edu/theses/32 Copyright © 2016 Jacey Peers This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. THE HEBREW-JEWISH DISCONNECTION Submitted by Jacey Peers Department of Graduate Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Bridgewater State University Spring 2016 Content and Style Approved By: ___________________________________________ _______________ Dr. Joyce Rain Anderson, Chair of Thesis Committee Date ___________________________________________ _______________ Dr. Anne Doyle, Committee Member Date ___________________________________________ _______________ Dr. Julia (Yulia) Stakhnevich, Committee Member Date 1 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my mom for her support throughout all of my academic endeavors; even when she was only half listening, she was always there for me. I truly could not have done any of this without you. To my dad, who converted to Judaism at 56, thank you for showing me that being Jewish is more than having a certain blood that runs through your veins, and that there is hope for me to feel like I belong in the community I was born into, but have always felt next to. -
The Semitic Component in Yiddish and Its Ideological Role in Yiddish Philology
philological encounters � (�0�7) 368-387 brill.com/phen The Semitic Component in Yiddish and its Ideological Role in Yiddish Philology Tal Hever-Chybowski Paris Yiddish Center—Medem Library [email protected] Abstract The article discusses the ideological role played by the Semitic component in Yiddish in four major texts of Yiddish philology from the first half of the 20th century: Ysroel Haim Taviov’s “The Hebrew Elements of the Jargon” (1904); Ber Borochov’s “The Tasks of Yiddish Philology” (1913); Nokhem Shtif’s “The Social Differentiation of Yiddish: Hebrew Elements in the Language” (1929); and Max Weinreich’s “What Would Yiddish Have Been without Hebrew?” (1931). The article explores the ways in which these texts attribute various religious, national, psychological and class values to the Semitic com- ponent in Yiddish, while debating its ontological status and making prescriptive sug- gestions regarding its future. It argues that all four philologists set the Semitic component of Yiddish in service of their own ideological visions of Jewish linguistic, national and ethnic identity (Yiddishism, Hebraism, Soviet Socialism, etc.), thus blur- ring the boundaries between descriptive linguistics and ideologically engaged philology. Keywords Yiddish – loshn-koydesh – semitic philology – Hebraism – Yiddishism – dehebraization Yiddish, although written in the Hebrew alphabet, is predominantly Germanic in its linguistic structure and vocabulary.* It also possesses substantial Slavic * The comments of Yitskhok Niborski, Natalia Krynicka and of the anonymous reviewer have greatly improved this article, and I am deeply indebted to them for their help. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/�45�9�97-��Downloaded34003� from Brill.com09/23/2021 11:50:14AM via free access The Semitic Component In Yiddish 369 and Semitic elements, and shows some traces of the Romance languages. -
Classical and Modern Standard Arabic Marijn Van Putten University of Leiden
Chapter 3 Classical and Modern Standard Arabic Marijn van Putten University of Leiden The highly archaic Classical Arabic language and its modern iteration Modern Standard Arabic must to a large extent be seen as highly artificial archaizing reg- isters that are the High variety of a diglossic situation. The contact phenomena found in Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic are therefore often the re- sult of imposition. Cases of borrowing are significantly rarer, and mainly found in the lexical sphere of the language. 1 Current state and historical development Classical Arabic (CA) is the highly archaic variety of Arabic that, after its cod- ification by the Arab Grammarians around the beginning of the ninth century, becomes the most dominant written register of Arabic. While forms of Middle Arabic, a style somewhat intermediate between CA and spoken dialects, gain some traction in the Middle Ages, CA remains the most important written regis- ter for official, religious and scientific purposes. From the moment of CA’s rise to dominance as a written language, the whole of the Arabic-speaking world can be thought of as having transitioned into a state of diglossia (Ferguson 1959; 1996), where CA takes up the High register and the spoken dialects the Low register.1 Representation in writing of these spoken dia- lects is (almost) completely absent in the written record for much of the Middle Ages. Eventually, CA came to be largely replaced for administrative purposes by Ottoman Turkish, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was function- ally limited to religious domains (Glaß 2011: 836). -
Estonian Yiddish and Its Contacts with Coterritorial Languages
DISSERT ATIONES LINGUISTICAE UNIVERSITATIS TARTUENSIS 1 ESTONIAN YIDDISH AND ITS CONTACTS WITH COTERRITORIAL LANGUAGES ANNA VERSCHIK TARTU 2000 DISSERTATIONES LINGUISTICAE UNIVERSITATIS TARTUENSIS DISSERTATIONES LINGUISTICAE UNIVERSITATIS TARTUENSIS 1 ESTONIAN YIDDISH AND ITS CONTACTS WITH COTERRITORIAL LANGUAGES Eesti jidiš ja selle kontaktid Eestis kõneldavate keeltega ANNA VERSCHIK TARTU UNIVERSITY PRESS Department of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Faculty of Philosophy, University o f Tartu, Tartu, Estonia Dissertation is accepted for the commencement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (in general linguistics) on December 22, 1999 by the Doctoral Committee of the Department of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Tartu Supervisor: Prof. Tapani Harviainen (University of Helsinki) Opponents: Professor Neil Jacobs, Ohio State University, USA Dr. Kristiina Ross, assistant director for research, Institute of the Estonian Language, Tallinn Commencement: March 14, 2000 © Anna Verschik, 2000 Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastuse trükikoda Tiigi 78, Tartu 50410 Tellimus nr. 53 ...Yes, Ashkenazi Jews can live without Yiddish but I fail to see what the benefits thereof might be. (May God preserve us from having to live without all the things we could live without). J. Fishman (1985a: 216) [In Estland] gibt es heutzutage unter den Germanisten keinen Forscher, der sich ernst für das Jiddische interesiere, so daß die lokale jiddische Mundart vielleicht verschwinden wird, ohne daß man sie für die Wissen schaftfixiert -
Reading Biblical Aramaic
TITLE: BS400 READING BIBLICAL ARAMAIC WORKLOAD: Duration: 4 Terms Teaching (1 hr p.w.): 26 hrs Language exercises and set reading: 30 hrs Text preparation: 40 hrs Examination preparation and writing: 24 hrs Total commitment: 120 hrs STATUS: Elective CO/PREREQUISITE(S): At least 60% in BS300 Hebrew 3, or at least 70% in BS200 Hebrew 2 if Hebrew 3 is taken concurrently. GENERAL AIM: This unit aims to build on students’ knowledge of Biblcal Hebrew by imparting a working knowledge of biblical Aramaic, enabling them to read all the passages in the Old Testament where Aramaic is employed. The unit focuses on building a comprehensive vocabulary of biblical Aramaic, understanding its grammar and syntax, and applying this knowledge to the translation of the relevant texts in Daniel and Ezra. The purpose of this unit is not only to enable students to work from the original language in all parts of the Old Testament, but also to lay a linguistic foundation for any subsequent study involving Aramaic texts. LEARNING OUTCOMES: At the end of this course students should be able to: • Recognise and distinguish biblical Aramaic from biblical Hebrew; • Translate all biblical Aramaic texts into good, accurate English; • Parse and reproduce regular forms of the biblical Aramaic verbal system; • Analyse and explain most grammatical and phrase-level syntactical constructions. CONTENT: Part 1: Biblical Aramaic Grammar • Introduction to biblical Aramaic: occurrences; name; relationship to Hebrew; vocalization and phonology • Aramaic Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives • Prepositions and conjunctions • The Aramaic verbal system & conjugations • Strong verbs • Weak verbs • Syntax • Numerals Part 2: Reading of set texts • Reading of Daniel 2 – 7 • Reading of Ezra 4 – 7 TEACHING AND Classroom teaching and tutorials; LEARNING METHODS: Private preparation of homework assignments, reviewed in class; Class tests and oral participation; Strong emphasis on peer learning and collaborative group work. -
Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki: Language Names and Language Policies
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Department of Anthropology Papers Department of Anthropology 2012 Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki: Language Names and Language Policies Brian Spooner University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers Part of the Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons, and the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation (OVERRIDE) Spooner, B. (2012). Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki: Language Names and Language Policies. In H. Schiffman (Ed.), Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and Its Neighbors: The Changing Politics of Language Choice (pp. 89-117). Leiden, Boston: Brill. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/91 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Persian, Farsi, Dari, Tajiki: Language Names and Language Policies Abstract Persian is an important language today in a number of countries of west, south and central Asia. But its status in each is different. In Iran its unique status as the only official or national language continueso t be jealously guarded, even though half—probably more—of the population use a different language (mainly Azari/Azeri Turkish) at home, and on the streets, though not in formal public situations, and not in writing. Attempts to broach this exclusive status of Persian in Iran have increased in recent decades, but are still relatively minor. Persian (called tajiki) is also the official language ofajikistan, T but here it shares that status informally with Russian, while in the west of the country Uzbek is also widely used and in the more isolated eastern part of the country other local Iranian languages are now dominant. -
Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions
Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures Hornkohl and Khan (eds.) Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Studies in Semitic Vocalisation Reading Traditions and Reading Traditions Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan (eds.) EDITED BY AARON D. HORNKOHL AND GEOFFREY KHAN This volume brings together papers rela� ng to the pronuncia� on of Semi� c languages and the representa� on of their pronuncia� on in wri� en form. The papers focus on sources representa� ve of a period that stretches from late an� quity un� l the Middle Ages. A large propor� on of them concern reading tradi� ons of Biblical Hebrew, especially the vocalisa� on nota� on systems used to represent them. Also discussed are orthography and the wri� en representa� on of prosody. Beyond Biblical Hebrew, there are studies concerning Punic, Biblical Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic, as well as post-biblical tradi� ons of Hebrew such as piyyuṭ and medieval Hebrew poetry. There were many parallels and interac� ons between these various language Studies in Semitic Vocalisation tradi� ons and the volume demonstrates that important insights can be gained from such a wide range of perspec� ves across diff erent historical periods. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found here: www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: Detail from a bilingual La� n-Punic inscrip� on at the theatre at Lepcis Magna, IRT 321 (accessed from h� ps://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inscrip� on_Theatre_Lep� s_Magna_Libya.JPG). -
Biblical Hebrew: Dialects and Linguistic Variation ——
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HEBREW LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS Volume 1 A–F General Editor Geoffrey Khan Associate Editors Shmuel Bolokzy Steven E. Fassberg Gary A. Rendsburg Aaron D. Rubin Ora R. Schwarzwald Tamar Zewi LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 © 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 978-90-04-17642-3 Table of Contents Volume One Introduction ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Contributors ............................................................................................................ ix Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... xiii Articles A-F ......................................................................................................................... 1 Volume Two Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Articles G-O ........................................................................................................................ 1 Volume Three Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Articles P-Z ......................................................................................................................... 1 Volume Four Transcription Tables ........................................................................................................... vii Index -
Pdf Israelian Hebrew in the Book of Amos
ISRAELIAN HEBREW IN THE BOOK OF AMOS Gary A. Rendsburg 1.0. The Location of Tekoa The vast majority of scholars continue to identify the home vil- lage of the prophet Amos with Tekoa1 on the edge of the Judean wilderness—even though there is little or no evidence to support this assertion. A minority of scholars, the present writer included, identifies the home village of Amos with Tekoa in the Galilee— an assertion for which, as we shall see, there is considerable solid evidence. 1.1. Southern Tekoa The former village is known from several references in Chroni- cles, especially 2 Chron. 11.6, where it is mentioned, alongside Bethlehem, in a list of cities fortified by Rehoboam in Judah. See also 2 Chron. 20.20, with reference to the journey by Jehosha- to the wilderness of Tekoa’.2‘ לְמִדְב ַּ֣ר תְקֹ֑וע phat and his entourage The genealogical records in 1 Chron. 2.24 and 4.5, referencing a 1 More properly Teqoaʿ (or even Təqōaʿ), but I will continue to use the time-honoured English spelling of Tekoa. 2 See also the reference to the ‘wilderness of Tekoa’ in 1 Macc. 9.33. © 2021 Gary A. Rendsburg, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0250.23 718 New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew Judahite named Tekoa, may also encode the name of this village. The name of the site lives on in the name of the Arab village of Tuquʿ and the adjoining ruin of Khirbet Tequʿa, about 8 km south of Bethlehem.3 1.2.