עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

A forum for discussion about writing in ancient Hebrew, and for practicing writing in Hebrew. If you post in this forum, you are inviting people to critique what you have written and suggest ways to improve it.

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ducky
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by ducky »

Hi Jonathan,

I agree with what you say.
but just a note...

Modern Hebrew didn't start when the state of Israel established, but it is indeed related to the age of secular Zionism.

Since Hebrew was always written in all generations and had a few "layer", the Modern Hebrew was developed through all of them. And mostly through the Biblical one (except for the WYQTL which stays only in poetry and such).
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jonathan Beck »

Thanks for clarifying. I need to nail my history down. :)
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Kirk Lowery »

Jonathan,

Here's a quick summary of historical events leading to modern Hebrew. One of the significant actors in the revival was Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922). And there's lots more in summary form in Encyclopaedia Judaica and others.

Hope this helps. I find it a fascinating history. For a "hardcore" read, take a look at Angel Sáenz-Badillos' A History of the Hebrew language. Originally written in Spanish but now in English, it's the most comprehensive end-to-end history of the language that I know of.
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by kwrandolph »

Jason Hare wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:Let me quote you,
Jason Hare wrote:Given how different our perspectives are with regard to Hebrew, I don't think you'd get what I was pointing out if I posted two paragraphs of Hebrew text at you.
If that doesn’t mean in its context that you claimed that I don’t know Biblical Hebrew, what does it mean? (The context was quoting Bible passages.)
I said specifically what I meant: if I quote long passages in Hebrew, you will not see what I'm trying to stress from the passage.
Here’s where I misunderstood your English. I took that statement to mean that you didn’t think I knew Biblical Hebrew.

Let’s translate that into a more understandable way—because you learned and teach medieval Hebrew, while I work with Biblical Hebrew, that we two may come to very different understandings of the same passage. In other words, I may disagree with you.
Jason Hare wrote:It's obvious that reading large passages and getting the sense of them is more natural in your native tongue (as it is for me in mine). That doesn't mean that you cannot read and understand biblical Hebrew. I never made that claim. It was about you understanding what I was trying to demonstrate in the quotation.
Actually, no. Over the years I’ve become so familiar with Biblical Hebrew that usually I can read a passage without looking up a single word. I’ll do more checking in discussion just to make sure I have it exact, but I do the same thing in my native tongue too.
Jason Hare wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:No, I decided that I’d better not participate in this exercise. I found that even just reading your attempts was corrupting my feel for Biblical Hebrew. It’s not your fault. It’s just the milieu in which you live and work would stump even the greatest expert who ever lived, and I am not that expert.
That's fine. I'm not trying to force you to participate in something that would damage your knowledge and feelings with regard to biblical Hebrew. I don't think it's as bad as you would have me or us believe, but you're free to your opinion. Good luck in your future endeavors.
No, I don’t feel forced. I thought it would be fun. But it’s turned out different from what I expected, which is why I’m dropping out.
Jonathan Beck wrote:Well-known curse? Maybe you don't know how the modern Israeli language was formed in the first place.
Probably better than you. It was started around the turn of the 20th century in Poland, based on Rabbinic, i.e. medieval, Hebrew.
Jonathan Beck wrote:It's not a curse. It's the evolution of language.
Languages change so much, that after a time the older becomes effectively a close cognate language. Or if enough time passes, a different but cognate language.

For me, reading Shakespeare is akin to me reading the Aramaic portions of Daniel and Ezra from my understanding of Biblical Hebrew—I can understand much of it from Biblical Hebrew, but there are parts that throw me for a loop because the Aramaic meanings of the same words are different from Biblical Hebrew.

Modern Israeli Hebrew is worse, I hardly understand any of it. For me, it’s easier to read Yiddish.
Jonathan Beck wrote:
Yesterday I finished reading Nehemiah, again, … His writing has the feel of a foreigner trying to speak a learned language, ….
The issue isn't that Nehemiah doesn't know the Hebrew language; the issue is later Hebrew.
Who said anything about Nehemiah not knowing Hebrew? He knew it better than the author of Esther. He just wrote his book in a Hebrew that gives indications that it was a learned, second language, not his native tongue. The same way that medieval Europeans wrote Latin.

Like medieval Latin, so Hebrew continued to develop, influenced by other languages—first Aramaic, the native tongue of Judea after the Exile, then by the Indo-European languages of Persian, then Greek, add Latin to the mix so that by the DSS era, the spoken Hebrew had a different grammar and many words had different meanings from Biblical Hebrew.
Jonathan Beck wrote:The most recent exercise that Jason wrote was written in good Biblical Hebrew.
It was weird. He was translating from English, or modern Israeli Hebrew. Basically he started with “In this time of the corona virus…” He used the word זמן. But is that how an ancient Hebrew would have said it? In Biblical times זמן referred to an appointed time, עת for time in general. Both are used in Ecclesiastes 3:1.

However, when the ancient Hebrews spoke of “In the time of …” or “In his time …” they used the word “days” as in “In his days …” or “In the days of …” so that Biblical Hebrew would have started with בימי המגפת קרנית האלה.

To show how reading his statement in Hebrew affected my thinking—I recognized immediately that זמן was not the right word, but when I thought of making a correction, the use of זמן influenced me to try to make a correction using the word “time” עת. But that just didn’t sound right. I stewed over it for a few days, until I remembered the Biblical use of the word “days” in this context. Then it fell into place. If it took me this long for just the opening, can you imagine how long it would take me to analyze the whole paragraph?

What Jason wrote was not good Biblical Hebrew.
Jonathan Beck wrote:Blessings,

Jonathan
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jason Hare »

Hello, Karl.
kwrandolph wrote:However, when the ancient Hebrews spoke of “In the time of …” or “In his time …” they used the word “days” as in “In his days …” or “In the days of …” so that Biblical Hebrew would have started with בימי המגפת קרנית האלה.
What's odd to me is that when you do attempt to construct something in biblical Hebrew, you end up making mistakes that are glaring and not simply stylistic. Since you added the ת on the word מגפה, you must intend it to be used as a construct form. However, construct forms do not bear the article (with very few notable exceptions, in which the article is functioning like a relative pronoun). You cannot write המגפת. That form is impossible. This paired with the odd transliteration קרנית (for קורונה) just makes me scratch my head. I have no idea what you're attempting to do here or why, and this comes coupled with your criticism of my own attempts at composition. I just don't see how you make basic mistakes such as these and come with negative criticism against other fellow travelers on the journey to better Hebrew.
kwrandolph wrote:If it took me this long for just the opening, can you imagine how long it would take me to analyze the whole paragraph?
Instead of analyzing my text, why not be constructive and simply write your own contribution in better form and leave notes that would correct my use without making it seem that you consider me incompetent? Indeed, in your eagerness to critique my lexical decisions, why not do your best not to make morphological or syntactic mistakes?

Regards,
Jason
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jason Hare »

kwrandolph wrote:No, I don’t feel forced. I thought it would be fun. But it’s turned out different from what I expected, which is why I’m dropping out.
Well, what do you think about the proposition of doing Weingreen's English-to-Hebrew translation exercises? We're starting in Exercise 30 of his grammar book. Is that something more appealing?
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by ducky »

Hi Karl

You said again and again that you are an expert of Biblical Hebrew
and even disrespect others.

My words do not come to insult you or even something close to that but it seems to me that your level in Biblical Hebrew is not very high.

You finished your last post with בימי המגפת קרנית האלה
and that is very bad Hebrew.

I'm not even talking about the קרנית thing which is a "funny" attempt to play with the word Corona, and doesn't fit the basis of the word, And also, the form that you used doesn't fit its place.

And to tell the truth, I don't even understand what you were trying to do here.
Adjective? Name? I can't even approach it.
If it is some sort of adjective - the sentence is written wrong.
If it is a Name - the sentence is written wrong.

But the serious problem is the fact that you wrote בימי המגפת which is bad Hebrew.
You wrote that in the form of a construct state but you gave it a definite article.
This is a very basic thing in Hebrew, and it is hard to expect an expert doing a mistake like that.

As I said, I Don't come to insult you or disrespect but only to refer to your Hebrew and to your statements about your levels in Hebrew.
you wrote this basic mistake in this post.
And before, you wrote another basic mistake (in חברי טובים as wrongly for My good friends) in another post.

And so, after seeing that, I think that your level is not as high as you think it to be, And I wouldn't have said a thing if you didn't disrespect the knowledge of others.

So I suggest that each one be more focused on himself instead of trying to put down his friends.

****
As for this project that you prefer not to do...

You said that it would ruin your Hebrew
But I don't see how.
As far as I can see, all we need to do is to translate an English sentence to a Hebrew one.
And so, how can it ruin your knowledge?

Exactly the opposite,
It is You that will create the Hebrew sentences, not someone else.
and you will express your knowledge practically and also improve yourself by writing Hebrew sentences and not just reading them.

And I don't want to tell you to do it and don't tell you not to do it.
But just saying what it is.

I want to say again that there is no attempt to insult you or hurt you - even a bit.
I don't doubt the fact that you did read the bible multiple times, and that you do study hard.
But when one studies hard while he is in a "bubble", he never finds criticism about his work and he always thinks that whatever he does is always correct.
So really, don't see this post as a disrespecting one. but I felt that I had to say these words since these "competitions" appear here again and again.
And as I am not the smartest guy in the world, and have a lot more to learn, So do you, and so any other person who opened the first page in his book or the last page in his book.
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by kwrandolph »

Jason Hare wrote:Hello, Karl.
kwrandolph wrote:However, when the ancient Hebrews spoke of “In the time of …” or “In his time …” they used the word “days” as in “In his days …” or “In the days of …” so that Biblical Hebrew would have started with בימי המגפת קרנית האלה.
What's odd to me is that when you do attempt to construct something in biblical Hebrew, you end up making mistakes that are glaring and not simply stylistic. Since you added the ת on the word מגפה, you must intend it to be used as a construct form. However, construct forms do not bear the article (with very few notable exceptions, in which the article is functioning like a relative pronoun). You cannot write המגפת. That form is impossible.
The moment you used the term “rare”, you just opened a hole big enough to drive a semi through it. Just because a use is rare does not make it wrong. Even if there’s just one example in Tanakh, that shows that the form was used.
Jason Hare wrote: This paired with the odd transliteration קרנית (for קורונה) just makes me scratch my head.
That was deliberate. I noticed early on, and especially after I stopped reading with points, how seldom matres lectiones were used in Biblical Hebrew, especially prior to the Exile. It’s very likely that the waws ו and yods י and other letters that later were considered to be matres lectiones were all consonantal in Biblical Hebrew. The use of matres lectiones exploded post-Biblical Hebrew. Therefore, to give the feeling of Biblical Hebrew, I left out the matres lectiones that probably wouldn’t have been used in Biblical Hebrew.
Jason Hare wrote:Instead of analyzing my text, why not be constructive and simply write your own contribution in better form
I thought critique is constructive.
Jason Hare wrote:Regards,
Jason

Jason Hare wrote:Well, what do you think about the proposition of doing Weingreen's English-to-Hebrew translation exercises?
I thought of that, but I want to watch a bit and see how it goes before jumping in. The reason I hesitate is because Weingreen taught medieval Hebrew, not Biblical Hebrew. (His textbook was used in the Hebrew class I attended, and I had to forget much in that book in order to understand Tanakh.)

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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by ducky »

Hi Karl,

So according to what you said, you read the Bible 10 times, and when you wanted to write a Hebrew sentence, you naturally wrote according to the rare case, and not according to the common ones that are found hundreds of times?
How does the common form didn't jump to your head while you're writing?
I never heard of anything like that.

And can you give an example for that kind of construct state form (when the construct state is an apposition construct state)?

****
So you say you just changed the קורונה to קורונית
What's the point?
you could have left it as קורונה - and if you'd like to Hebraize it, then just read it with the accent on the last syllable.
But since the word is a western word, there is no need for that.

I read a nice suggestion on the internet which one said that we should call the Corona in the name of כתרת (katteret).
From the word כתר (crown) - and in the form of illnesses such as:
דלקת, שחפת, צרעת, ספחת, בהרת, ילפת, שרטת, צרבת
Last edited by ducky on Sat May 16, 2020 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jonathan Beck »

I like that idea. LOL.
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