From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Oct 25 07:10:26 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 25 Oct 2007 07:10:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1Il3Pm-0004Un-BJ for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Thu, 25 Oct 2007 07:10:26 -0700 Received: from mail.bcpl.net ([204.255.212.10]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1Il3Pj-0004Ud-Kb for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 25 Oct 2007 07:10:26 -0700 Received: from webmail.bcpl.net (webmail.bcpl.net [204.255.212.24]) by mail.bcpl.net (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id l9PEAIVa003286; Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:10:19 -0400 (EDT) X-WebMail-UserID: turnip Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:10:18 -0400 From: turnip To: "Yoav Nir" , lojban-beginners X-EXP32-SerialNo: 00002700 Subject: [lojban-beginners] OT: Talmud and Hebrew Message-ID: <4723AFC2@webmail.bcpl.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 1.4 X-Spam-Score-Int: 14 X-Spam-Bar: + X-archive-position: 5613 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: turnip@bcpl.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners >===== Original Message From "Yoav Nir" ===== >Something like that, although I think the bible is more similar to modern >Hebrew than Shakespere is to modern English. This is somewhat intentionally >so. Ben Yehuda and his followers began from the biblican language and >rejected much of the early-CE development of the language that was heavily >influenced by Aramaic and Greek. >In fact, the 2500-year old bible looks much more familiar than the merely >1600-year-old talmud. Well, hold on a sec (sorry about the offtopicness), but while the Mishnah was written in Hebrew, the Gemorah (i.e. the majority of the Talmud)was written unabashedly in Aramaic (basically except where they are quoting mishnayot, baraitot, and tanakh). And it's full of phrases that are shorthand phrases that stand for complex concepts (ex. "p'sik reisha" (literally, "cut off its head") to mean "An activity, that while in and of itself is not a violation of the Sabbath, would inevitably lead to a violation", or "lo shanu ela" ("They did not teach but...") to explain qualifications to halacha). So of course an Israeli who doesn't have a background in the specialized technical use of the Aramaic would have great difficulty understanding a page picked at random, just as a native speaker of English would difficulty understanding a modern day law book or medical text, unless that was their field. By comparison, as Yoav said, reading Biblical Hebrew is much easier (for an Israeli). There are certain grammatical differences, like the vav hahipuch and the habit of Biblical Hebrew to agglutinize the objective pronouns onto the verb, but those are very easy to learn. As far as Ben Yehuda goes, another extremely importnat point to understand that his generation wasn't necessarily the most fluent in Hebrew, but since they spoke nothing but that tongue around the children of the settlement, those children picked it up naturally. It remains to be seen whether children could do the same with lojban (sorry, my kids are all too old for fluent language acuisition, and none of them are that interested in lojban anyhow (my 10yo gave me a coupon on my birthday for "1 hour of lojban teaching", showing that he had to be "forced" into it :-) (My 15yo prefers Japanese, my 12yo Latin, and all five of them are learning Herbrew (and the older three Aramaic) My dog, on the other hand, seems patient with learning lojban.... > >It's definitely more familiar than anything written in the British isles >1600 or 2500 years ago. > >On 10/24/07, Jared Angell wrote: >> >> My understanding was that my friends did have a hard time reading >> ancient Hebrew as much of the grammar is dissimilair. That is just >> what I heard from at least half a dozen people, perhaps it is not much >> different than modern American English and Elizabethan English??? >> >> --gejyspa