Uzi: The question is, how much of these languages survive? Is not the largest surviving snippet of Moabite the Mesha stele? What about Ammonite?
But the question of the thread is: was Hebrew linguistically isolated? When a farmer from a small town in Judea normally didn’t hear an accent from a person living in Dan, which was merely a regional variation of his own language, what was the possibility that he would hear and be influenced by even a near cognate language? Let alone further afield, such as Aramaic? Karl W. Randolph. On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 11:06 AM, Uzi Silber <[email protected]> wrote: > Karl: > > Moabite, Ammonite, Phoenician, perhaps Geshurite? All pretty much > Canaanite family tongues. > > > On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 1:34 PM, K Randolph <[email protected]> wrote: > >> George: >> >> >> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 11:46 PM, George Athas >> <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> Karl, >>> >>> You made a claim on another thread that Biblical Hebrew was >>> linguistically isolated. Could you explain what you mean by this? >>> >> >> In societies, particularly peasant ones, where the people seldom traveled >> more than about 10 miles from their homes, and all their neighbors spoke >> the same language as those people, so they never even hear of languages >> other than their own: there’s no reason to learn other languages, nor even >> other dialects of their own language. Such people are linguistically >> isolated. >> >> In reading Tanakh, such was the case for the vast majority of Israelite >> society from shortly after the time of the patriarchs until the Babylonian >> Exile. >> >> >>> What are we to do with Hebrew's close cognates? >>> >>> How close of cognates are you talking about? Even Aramaic was far enough >> different that it was not mutually understandable with Hebrew, can that be >> called “close”? >> >>> >>> *GEORGE ATHAS* >>> *Dean of Research,* >>> *Moore Theological College *(moore.edu.au) >>> *Sydney, Australia* >>> >>> Karl W. Randolph. >> >> >>
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