Dear Reinhard, I for one would more lean to Spanish and Portuguese. I have a niece who married a Brazilian in Lisbon. She speaks English, Portuguese and Spanish; he speaks Portuguese and Spanish and is learning English. I have had 5 years of Spanish and I found it easier to pick up the Portuguese.
I also think one has to remember the history of the OT to really get a flavor for the similarities and dissimilarities of Hebrew and Aramaic. Judging from II Kings 18-20 // Isaiah 36-39 Aramaic was still distinct from Hebrew circa 722-700 BCE. By the time of the Babylonian Exile beginning in 605, then 597 and finally, with the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, it became even more pronounced as the those exiled to Babylon were learning Aramaic by necessity; although I will grant that Hebrew was still being used. The switch to Aramaic characters for the alphabet would be an obvious clue; as well as the rise of the synagogue for the continuing reading of the Torah in Hebrew. The people who remained in the land of Israel and Judah would have still used Hebrew, but it would become more and more of a necessity to learn Aramaic. Daniel definitely reflects the use of Aramaic in the chapters 2-7 with Hebrew surrounding it. Thus, by the time of Cyrus and Darius Aramaic had pulled near even with use amongst the populace. Ezra-Nehemiah indicate that the interpretation of the Hebrew Torah was into Aramaic for the people had largely spoke Aramaic. Aramaic would definitely supplant Hebrew amongst the populace by the end of the Second Temple Period, while Hebrew was still used by the Rabbis, scribes and Temple personnel. Of course, Mishnaic Hebrew would begin during the end of the Second Temple Period and continue for centuries. One should also remember that the Maccabbean Revolt would have highlighted the use of Hebrew in the rebellion against the Seleucid Dynasty's, i.e. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, attempts to force everything Greek on the people. Rev. Bryant J. Williams III ----- Original Message ----- From: "R. Lehmann" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2011 9:28 AM Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Similar to...... Not at all. There is sufficient evidence that at least Old Testament times Hebrew and Aramaic were incompatible foreign languages to each other, and in my opinion it is well-proven that the phonemic repertory of both languages was well distinct and different throughout Old Testament times. However, the tricky point is the specification "Biblical", and the question whether we deal with "languages" at all. Is there "a" Biblical Hebrew language, or are there some and more Biblical Hebrew languages, and, what is more, is Biblical Hebrew a language at all (? See for the last question the important papers of the late Edward Ullendorf, Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?, in: Is Biblical Hebrew a Language? Studies in Semitic Languages and Civilizations. Wiesbaden 1977.3-17, and Ernst Axel Knauf, War "Biblisch-hebrisch" eine Sprache? Empirische Gesichtspunkte zur linguistischen Ann herung an die Sprache der althebrischen Literatur: ZAH 3 (1990) 11-23. The same can be debated with Biblical Aramaic. BIBLICAL Hebrew and BIBLICAL Aramaic look so similar and contiguous only because they both were, as being "Biblical", encoded by the same system (the masoretic) and in a time (9th-10th century CE) when both languages in Jewish tradition had melted to a certain extent. фии Dr. Reinhard G. Lehmann Academic Director Research Unit on Ancient Hebrew & Epigraphy FB 01/ Faculty of Protestant Theology Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz D-55099 Mainz Germany [email protected] http://www.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de http://www.ev.theologie.uni-mainz.de/297.php Subsidia et Instrumenta Linguarum Orientis (SILO): http://www.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de/182.php 10th Mainz International Colloquium on Ancient Hebrew (MICAH): http://www.micah.hebraistik.uni-mainz.de/204.php > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2011 12:42:34 -0400 (EDT) > From: Will Parsons <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Similar to...... > To: [email protected] > Cc: [email protected] > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii > > On Fri, 3 Jun 2011 10:30:35 +0000, George Athas <[email protected]> wrote: >> French and Italian. Clearly related, and yet still morphologically and >> phonetically different enough to sound very distinct. > > That's probably a reasonable comparison with respect to morphology and > vocabulary, but is it true on a phonetic level? I rather think that once > Hebrew became replaced by Aramaic as a native tongue, it is unlikely there > could have survived a native Hebrew phonemic system distinct from that of > Aramaic. So, in this respect Hebrew and Aramaic would be closer to each other > than to even such closely related languages as Spanish and Portuguese (or > since the original question came from [I believe] a Catalan speaker, Spanish > and Catalan). > >> From: Pere Porta <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> >> Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 11:39:50 +0200 >> To: B-Hebrew <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> >> Subject: [b-hebrew] Similar to...... >> >> Dear b-hebrew listers, >> >> I need to know some answer to this question: >> >> The relation between the biblical Hebrew and the biblical Aramaic.... what >> is it like, compared with today languages? >> >> Is it similar to the relation, say, between English and German? >> Is it similar to the relation between Spanish and Portuguese? >> Is it similar to the relation between French and Italian? >> Is there a better comparison than these? >> >> What do you think? > > > _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew -- Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. 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