In addition to the other suggestions, you might look into the Self <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/selfstudyhebrew/> Study Hebrew forum on yahoo.com
Cheers, Michael _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Shmouel Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 1:47 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ancient_hebrew] Re: Edenics, Ugaritic & Arabic Dear Rollin and All, Please Rollin I wrote you privately recently . I did not get any reply. I still reply upon it coming,though, I will like to ask members here too. Shlama! Fellow Hebrews and students of Torah, I humble request your assistance in an effort to support a small study group here Ghana. I will be glad if you who can help me with a beginner book--for Hebrew language. A book like Teach yourself Hebrew. I live in seclusion. I am trying to fellowship with some friends,and they are interested IN studyING basic Hebrew together with me. And I will like to help them. Its seems their interest in the group is high and the group's face is lifted when we dig into Hebrew Discovery Learning. Please kindly help us. I will be glad to hear from you. [email protected] Sincerely, Samuel Gyamfi --- On Tue, 18/5/10, Rollin Shultz <[email protected]> wrote: From: Rollin Shultz <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [ancient_hebrew] Re: Edenics, Ugaritic & Arabic To: [email protected] Date: Tuesday, 18 May, 2010, 20:09 Assalamu alaikum Abu Your welcome and my thanks to you as well. I do not know how qualified I am to answer your questions as I am only a student of Hebrew for about 14 weeks and only know a litttle of Arabic picked up from Syrian friends and Persian music. By your name I would say by birth you are closer to the se languages than I and as such have a decided advantage. I do not see anything to convince me of Hebrew or Ugaritic phonemes and how anyone can do anything but guess at them especially in the case of the cuneifornm Ugaritic. In the case of Arabic I will asssume the knowedge comes from an unbroken usage through the last 3,000 years history. I think much could be borrowed then from Arabic in the case of Hebrew to come up with Hebrew phonemes but I still think it is guesswork. "Also you completely left off addressing the issue of phonology. Hebrew phonology is very different from the original Semitic phonology, and has lost in all about 7 different letters from it's repertoire. An interesting point is that the exact same merges which occur in Hebrew, Aramaic etc. can be seen in spoken vernaculars of some Arabic countries today. thaa is merged into sin or taa and thal is merged into dal or zayin (as in Aramaic and Hebrew respectively) ." My answer to this statement is:"Another thing to keep in mind is that Arabs, even the non-Ishmaelite ones were descendants of Eber as well, so technically they were "Hebrews" as well if we are to accept that etymology of the word. Although in my opinion the word Hebrew does not come from this person's name, but from the verb in both Arabic and Hebrew (and most other Semitic languages) ayin-baa-raa which means to "cross over". As the Hebrews were the desert nomads (Arabs if you will) that "crossed over" into Canaan/Egypt and settled there, out of the original bedouin homeland of the Semitic peoples in the Arabian peninsula." I am unconvinced the name Hebrew comes from the lengthening of the name Eber. Its first mention in the Torah is after Abraham moves to the valley of the Oaks of Mamre and establishes or absorbs the city of Hebron. It is more likely surrounding residents tagged them as Hebrews for living in Hebron than anything else. Since I am just starting out on the semitic language path I have much catching up to do. I will always just as in the hard physical sciences use the Torah as my "frame of reference". I did have a problem many years ago with the creation account of the earth being created in six days but I tried to look at it different ways for different possibilities and ended up shelving it for future reference. hen science caught up and it was proven how the 15.8 billion year old universe was most likely created in six days through the implementation of Einsteins's theories of space time. All knowledge we need is in the Torah, yet we tend to ignore it for many years until one day science catches up and then we say Ohh. I think if many of our ancestors had consulted the Torah in the building of the nations we could have skipped the industrial age and made the world a much safer place. Toda, Rollin Shultz Mechanical designer Allentown, Pa 18104 Motto: Ask for help when needed, help others when asked, and remember where you came from. Happy moments, PRAISE GOD, Difficult moments, SEEK GOD, Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD, Painful moments, TRUST GOD, Every moment, THANK GOD _____ From: abur1924 <abur1...@yahoo. com.au> To: ancient_hebrew@ yahoogroups. com Sent: Mon, May 17, 2010 6:58:57 PM Subject: [ancient_hebrew] Re: Edenics, Ugaritic & Arabic Rollin Thanks for your reply. Generally languages do not add things like case systems. Also the fact the case system exists in Arabic and Akkadian and Ugaritic and remnants of it exist in the other Semitic languages tends to indicate strongly it was a feature which was slowly worn down and discarded within the languages that no longer have it. I don't think there's a single case of a language just spontaneously forming a case system. It's something which is intrinsic within the language, and which would be very difficult to integrate at a later date. And it's not even necessary for language, so generally languages do not create features that they don't need, when they got by fine without them before. It's for this reason that I also believe that language is God given, since the complexity within it could not have just evolved out of grunts and snorts as the evolutionists would have us believe. I also think it's most likely the Semitic languages were the original languages too, but Hebrew simply isn't the pristine form of a Semitic language, no matter how you look at it. It is far from it. Also you completely left off addressing the issue of phonology. Hebrew phonology is very different from the original Semitic phonology, and has lost in all about 7 different letters from it's repertoire. An interesting point is that the exact same merges which occur in Hebrew, Aramaic etc. can be seen in spoken vernaculars of some Arabic countries today. thaa is merged into sin or taa and thal is merged into dal or zayin (as in Aramaic and Hebrew respectively) . A big problem for those who consider Hebrew the original language or even original Semitic language is that once Ugaritic was discovered, the evidence was overwhelming and now corroborated, even though many Semitists already realised Arabic was much more conservative long before then anyway. Since Ugaritic agreed completely phonetically with Arabic, yet the two languages are quite distinct. Ugaritic shares much more in common with Hebrew as far as vocabulary and language style go, yet phonetically and grammatically it contains the almost the exact same range of letters and grammatical complexity we see in Arabic. Since the two languages were so far apart in time and distance, the only possible explanation is that they both retained close to the full set of Semitic sounds. Sabaean (Sheba) and other southern Semitic languages also confirm these findings. We also have the early Greek translations of the Tanakh, which tranlsliterate some words with the original sounds, exactly as they appear in Arabic and Ugaritic. For instance, in Hebrew ghayin and ayin have merged, yet at the time of the early Greek translations they must've still been pronounced separately, since the Greek transliteration of words containing the ghayin phoneme in Arabic and Ugaritic, render it as gh from Hebrew as well. Another thing to keep in mind is that Arabs, even the non-Ishmaelite ones were descendants of Eber as well, so technically they were "Hebrews" as well if we are to accept that etymology of the word. Although in my opinion the word Hebrew does not come from this person's name, but from the verb in both Arabic and Hebrew (and most other Semitic languages) ayin-baa-raa which means to "cross over". As the Hebrews were the desert nomads (Arabs if you will) that "crossed over" into Canaan/Egypt and settled there, out of the original bedouin homeland of the Semitic peoples in the Arabian peninsula. Regards, Abu Rashid. abic
