Comments on: Hebrew As She Is Spoke

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:57:21 +0000

New You Tube videos featuring Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann, author of the bestseller “Israeli, a beautiful language: Hebrew as myth”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9pFBmKLsrs&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow1vgl6JiD8&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjU1rnaONG8&feature=channel

Jim

By: Joel Katz

Joel Katz — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:38:39 +0000

Haim, you have a mistake, as they say in Yiddish, as well as in what Prof. Zuckermann calls “Israeli”. Zuckermann is the first ever Israeli linguist who argue that a language is an abstract ensemble of idiolects, sociolects, ethnolects, dialects etc. Thus, he would never reject any form/register/-lect of “Israeli”, puristic -lects included. What he rejects is the coercion by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, as well as the common myth that Israelis speak the language of Isaiah (with mistakes). You should simply read his insightful articles, as I have done. Many of them are written in English – see http://www.zuckermann.org/articles.html

By: Haim Watzman

Haim Watzman — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:09:39 +0000

Dan, I think your analysis is incorrect. Zuckerman, it seems (and again I note that I haven’t read his book yet, just the reviews and some stuff on his website), wants to replace one essentialist position with another. That is, he commits the same sin that Hebrew purists do, by insisting that there is one single correct form of the language Israelis speak today and that all other versions are substandard and should be dismissed. My whole point in this discussion is to assert linguistic pluralism–which means accepting the legitimacy of spoken Hebrew (Zuckerman’s “Israeli”) but also of formal literary Hebrew. Choosing to align or identify the modern language with the Hebrew of the Bible, Mishna, and Middle Ages is a legitimate cultural decision and has nothing to do with the facts of the language itself.

By: dan

dan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:44:45 +0000

It seems that underlying this debate, apart from any after-the-event agendas, is a philosophical debate between two positions with mutually exclusive assumptions. Hitron is essentially a Platonist, that there is some perfect “form” of Hebrew floating out there that we can aspire to, and that Israeli is a poor reflection of. Zuckerman is a reductionist that “all there is is all there is” and will not have truck with any airy-fairy talk of something existing out there which in some sense does not. The problem with the argument is that the two belief sets have different axioms underlying them, that you can either accept or not. If you believe in forms then Hitron makes sense, if you don’t Zuckerman does. And that’s all there is really.

By: Joel Katz

Joel Katz — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:22:58 +0000

So after all what you think is similar to some of Prof. Zuckermann’s arguments. Perhaps you should read the book. It is beautifully written.

By: Haim Watzman

Haim Watzman — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:31:48 +0000

“Youse” isn’t a mistake in New York spoken English but it certainly would be in North Carolina, where I lived for some years, and where the correct spoken term would be “Y’all.” So we’re not talking about absolutes but about what’s appropriate for where and when we’re speaking, what context we are in, who we are trying to influence, and what register we choose. So it’s no less legitimate or correct to choose to write literary Hebrew than it is to write or speak spoken Hebrew!

By: Joel Katz

Joel Katz — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 07:18:58 +0000

Native speakers can’t err of course in their mother tongue itself. So YOU’S (you guys, atem), for example, is not at all a mistake in English. But whenever we discuss linguistic concepts (such as the name of the language), then we should ignore what native speakers think and listen to professional linguists such as Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann. Our job is to speak and their job is to analyse our speech.

By: Haim Watzman

Haim Watzman — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 06:53:09 +0000

corrected. Thanks!

By: Conservative apikoris

Conservative apikoris — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 02:49:46 +0000

“It’s that native speakers cannot err; therefore, if a word or grammatical form comes into common usage, it should be accepted and even celebrated even if it is ungrammatical or incorrect according to the rules laid down by various guardians of linguistic purity, like the Academy of the Hebrew Language, literary figures, and high school English teachers.”

Somehow, I don’t think that high school English teachers (even Israeli ones) spend a lot of time being “guardians of linguistic purity” for Hebrew.

By: Naomi Libicki

Naomi Libicki — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:04:21 +0000

For a descriptive linguist, the best way to find out what a language is called is to find out how its native speakers refer to it.

I think if Prof. Zuckerman were to conduct this simple study, he would find that the language is called “Hebrew.”