George: Are we using two different definitions of “isolated” in reference to languages?
On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 6:45 PM, George Athas <[email protected]>wrote: > I asked for comparison because when you say a language is 'isolated', > it begs the question, 'Isolated from what and how?' My appeal to cognates > was not to ask whether Hebrew was more isolated than these other languages, > but rather how there is a connection and commonality with these languages > at all in the first places (the fact there is one suggests anything but > isolation). I suspect that what you mean by 'isolated' is 'static', such > that Hebrew does not change at all across many centuries. Is that correct? > > No, Hebrew changed, but it changed very slowly. The Bible itself mentions one change, and a few others can be documented. But on the whole, there’s very little change that can be documented from the Bible. When I think of isolated, my reference is that, except for a small coterie of traders and diplomats, there was almost no contact of the people with other languages. As a result, there was very little pressure for change. That changed with the Babylonian Exile. I don’t know Aramaic beyond that small smattering that allows me to read those chapters of Daniel and Ezra in Aramaic, but is the grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew reflective of Aramaic? >From what little I’ve read from Mishnaic Hebrew, it is significantly different from Biblical Hebrew in both grammar and vocabulary. > > *GEORGE ATHAS* > * > * > Karl W. Randolph.
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