Where are the case endings in Hebrew?

[kwrandolph]

Do you have a different suggestion for overcoming the barrier of "foreigness"? I learnt Coptic before I learn't Middle Egyptian, and I found that recognising even 10% of the vocab was a really great help in overcoming the negative feelings of approaching something new and unfamiliar.

In learning a foreign language, I’ve found that the only way that really works to overcome the “foreignness” of that language is to get to know the target language well. Learning cognate languages doesn’t help.

For example, if one wants to learn English, he doesn’t need to learn Dutch, German, French, Norwegian as well as having studied Latin and Greek in order to know English. Once he’s learned English so well that he can dream in English, it no longer feels foreign to him. But if he has studied these other languages anyways, then English becomes easier to learn, not as “foreign” to learn. But studying these other languages in order to learn English is much more work and will actually make it harder to master English than just learning English alone, if for no other reason than by taking the time to learn these other languages, the learner has less time to study English itself.

The same way with Biblical Hebrew—the best way to get to know it is to study Tanakh in Hebrew so much that it becomes second nature. One problem with Biblical Hebrew is that there have been no native speakers of the language for about 2.5 millennia, so we don’t even know how it was pronounced and there’s no one to correct our mistakes should we try to make new sentences in Biblical Hebrew.

In conclusion, there’s no shortcut that I know of to reduce the “foreignness” of learning a new language, one just has to jump in and study it.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Ray Harder]

Stephen,

You asked straightforward questions and have yet to receive straightforward and accurate answers. Let me see if I can be of some help.

By the time of the writing of Hebrew the case endings, if they ever existed in Hebrew, have completely dropped out. Most Hebrew students learn the Bible as the main surviving textual representation of ancient Hebrew. The earliest extant biblical texts are found at Qumran and date from just before the New Testament period. (These are the so called “Dead Sea scrolls.) There are no case endings in the Hebrew biblical texts at Qumran. There are a handful of extant Hebrew texts which date earlier than Qumran but these are not biblical texts (Unless you count liturgical texts with biblical quotes as “biblical texts.” E.g. the “Nash Papyrus” which contains the ten commandments and part of the Shema and is probably a liturgical rather than biblical text and the Ketef Hinnom silver amulates which seem to contain the priestly blessing of Numbers 6). These are also personal amulates with token liturgical quotes rather than biblical texts --strictly speaking but I guess you could call that a matter of semantics. Nevertheless, these also exhibit no evidence of case endings.

There are a handful of short Hebrew inscriptions like that found in the Siloam tunnel, the Tel Dan inscription and the “Gezer calendar.” These date to the first half of the first millenium BCE. From the last half of that millenium, there are a few ostraca such as those discovered at Tel Arad and Lachish. These are all examples of ancient Hebrew found in archaeological contexts. This is important because there has been a rise in the “discovery” of Hebrew texts which turn out to be sophisticated fakes and forgeries. For example the small pomegranate which contained a couple of Hebrew words and was purported to be the only surviving artifact from the temple of Soloman (the “first temple”). None of the Hebrew found on ostraca, tablets, or inscriptions contains case endings.

I am not sure I understand your comment about the construct state in relation to this question. I don’t understand the grammatical state as being equivalent to case.

If you consider Ammonite, Edomite, and Moabite dialects of Hebrew, it can also be said that none of the extant texts in these languages/dialects contain case endings.

It can be definitively stated that there are no surviving hebrew texts that contain case endings. It may or may not have been true that Hebrew had case endings at an earlier stage of the language. There are case endings in other Semitic languages as for example your notations of Akkadian and Arabic. Of extant Northwest semitic languages like Hebrew, only Ugaritic contains case endings. Thus Melek (King) in Hebrew is the only form of the noun, but the Ugaritic cognate Malku has a Nominative Malku, a genitive Malki, and an accusative Malka in the masculine forms and Malkatu, Malkati, and Malkata in the feminine. The existence of case endings in cognate languages does not prove anything about the early stages of Hebrew but may be adduced as evidences that they MAY have existed at an earlier stage of the language.

The question is of course complicated by the fact that ancient Northwest semitic languages are generally written without vowels. A curious exception occurs in Ugaritic which exists in the mid second millenium BCE at a time when syllabic cuneiform writing systems, which represent both vowels and consonants, are beginning to coexist with the newly emerging concept of an alphabet which in the semitic world exist without vowels. The Ugaritic writing system is an alphabet that is generally consonantal and written in a cuneiform script. However, Ugaritic has three different letters for the first consonant Alpu (corresponding to Hebrew Aleph). These represent ‘u, ‘i, and ‘a. That is a consonantal Alpu joined to a the vowel u, i, or a. This makes it possible to represent the vocalic case endings in an ancient written Northwest Semitic text.

A curious observation is that classical Arabic, though late in the semitic textual tradition, tends to have an extremely conservative morphology and preserves features found in the oldest semitic texts even before they were known to modern western scholars (E.g. Akkadian and Ugaritic which were not known before the early 19th and 20th centuries respectively!). Arabic still contains features postulated/reconstructed from “proto-semitic” the earliest assumed forms of the semitic languages. This is why Arabic was widely required of serious Hebraists and Semitists. Since the discovery of Ugaritic in 1929 and its decipherment in the early 1930s, it has largely replace Arabic in importance for serious students of Hebrew.

As far as your other questions let me see if I can help. The definite article in Hebrew occurs in the earliest extant texts of Hebrew as the prefixed hey as in “biblical Hebrew.” (See above examples of earlier Hebrew texts in discussion of case endings. These texts also use a prefixed hey for the definite article.) It is defined as a true definite article and not an emphatic state from the grammars I can recall. I don’t recall a Hebrew emphatic form distinct in morphology, as I understand your question, at any stage of the Hebrew language.

I am not sure what you are referring to as nunation? The nun added to some forms of the verb but not others of the same grammatical class e.g. יִכְתְּבוּן and יִכְתְּבוּ which both are parsed as 3rd masc. plural imperfect forms? I have almost no recollection of the grammar of the so called “paragogic nun” in Hebrew. This is probably a scribal rather than grammatical phenomenon as it usually occurs grouped more frequently in such books which probably were passed down in similar fashion and thus probably shared a common scribal school history such as Judges and Deuteronomy. This probably occurred when an earlier grammatical phenomenon has generally passed from use over time or from situations where the scribe’s dialect differed from the text’s. There are examples of final nuns on nouns and adjectives too, but again, scholars are divided as to whether this reflects a living oral phenomenon (i.e. linguistic) or a scribal practice. Is this called paragogic nun in Arabic? What does it mark there? My recollections are almost non-existent and I no longer have access to a good library, but I don’t recall any relationship between a final nun and the presence or absence of the definite article in Hebrew. I also wouldn’t trust my memory and don’t have any way to check whether “nunation” in any form occurs in epigraphic Hebrew or in the non-biblical texts found at Qumran. Offhand, I do not recall examples of any form of nunation in either epigraphic or qumranic Hebrew. Perhaps others with access to a library or who have better memories could provide examples. I would check Elisha Qimron’s “The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls” published in 2009. Or one of the many grammatical studies of Qumranic Hebrew published in the last couple of decades. I generally have not read any grammar published since about 1985 except I once owned and casually read Qimron, 2009. I note from Amazon that Sandra Gogal published “A Grammar of Epigraphic Hebrew” in 1998, but I have no knowledge of this text.

Hope this is helpful,
Ray

[George Athas]

Just a clarification: the Tel Dan Inscription is not in Hebrew. It is in Old Aramaic.

Cheers!

[Ray Harder]

Yes, {{blush!}} I just did a quick search on the Internet to jog my memory of non-biblical Hebrew and saw something about Tel Dan and hadn't read it in years and misremembered it as Hebrew. Of course you are right, it is Aramaic (which also has no "case endings" by the way! Although, I vaguely recall one ancient Aramaic inscription that seemed to have some remnants of case in the morphology. Zinjerli/Sam'al perhaps?)

I appreciate the correction,
Ray

[Stephen Hughes]

In conclusion, there’s no shortcut that I know of to reduce the “foreignness” of learning a new language, one just has to jump in and study it.

I have the lowest vocabulary retention rate in Hebrew, that I have had in any language learning experience so far. The grammar seems straighforward, but it requires a lot of self- discipline to learn.

[kwrandolph]

I have the lowest vocabulary retention rate in Hebrew, that I have had in any language learning experience so far. The grammar seems straighforward, but it requires a lot of self- discipline to learn.

Don’t feel bad. You’d think that after over 20 times of reading the whole Tanakh through that I’d know the vocabulary? Every day I still have to use a dictionary, especially when reading the prophets and poetry. And with my dyslexia, can you imagine how many times I looked up the wrong words? Oy!

You can do it.

It’s reading the text through so many times that has caused me to revise my understanding of the grammar.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Stephen Hughes]

Since the discovery of Ugaritic in 1929 and its decipherment in the early 1930s, it has largely replace Arabic in importance for serious students of Hebrew.

I have always thought that - being as Hebrew is a dead language and all - a Hebraist would be a Semitic scholar specialising in Hebrew. I no pretentions of ever being a scholar, but I'd like enough background knowledge to be able to follow what scholars are saying.

Is this called paragogic nun in Arabic?

I'm not sure about grammatical terms. I learnt Modern standard Arabic mostly from an Egyptian and an Iraqi. Neither of whom could explain grammar in English. From looking online, the name of the feature seems to be التنوين . So far as I can remember the case ending had a nun added in the singular if it has the definite article on the front.

[Stephen Hughes]

It’s reading the text through so many times that has caused me to revise my understanding of the grammar.

I appreciate your encouragement, and I will continute on with my questions, but as for reading cover to cover...
Popcorn is looking good. At the rate I am reading now, I might get 1/4 through the text before the sun sets.

[Ray Harder]

Do you have a different suggestion for overcoming the barrier of "foreigness"? I learnt Coptic before I learn't Middle Egyptian, and I found that recognising even 10% of the vocab was a really great help in overcoming the negative feelings of approaching something new and unfamiliar.

I have the lowest vocabulary retention rate in Hebrew, that I have had in any language learning experience so far. The grammar seems straighforward, but it requires a lot of self- discipline to learn.

Stephen,
Let me congratulate and encourage your efforts in learning Hebrew. My experience parallels yours and I agree with your assessment that the key to learning a language which is not in the same family as your native language or one acquired later is vocabulary. I do NOT recommend the method I used 30 years ago, viz. writing tens of thousands of words on the driver’s side window of my car with erasable marker and reviewing them on my commute to school everyday for years! This was successful because I passed a dozen and a half or so language exams at the MA or PhD levels, but today I would try some more technical strategies. I have used a small application called “Anki” which will run on virtually any cell phone (or tablet, or laptop etc.). This application can be loaded with words from a number of different languages including Biblical Hebrew. The word lists for dozens of ancient and modern languages are freely available for download and use in the app.

I would recommend using it on your cell phone which allows short review sessions throughout the day which according to specialists in language pedagogy is superior to one long session during the day. This has also been my experience. In other words I think you will find that six ten minute sessions throughout the day will lead to better retention than one hour long session. Carrying the vocabulary on your cell phone is ideal for this. You can study/review for 5 minutes while in line at the supermarket or the bank leading to genuine progress. In my experience vocabulary sessions over about 1/2 an hour start to become tedious and counter productive.

There are also several excellent Flash based apps that are freely available and reviewed positively, but these will not work if you use Apple based hardware.

Keep plugging along, the simple fact is that language acquisition is very hard work and dead languages are even more problematic for the human mind. You might have better luck with taking a spoken language approach to ancient Hebrew such as the methods advocated by Randall Buth (http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/). This method is better aligned with our biological neurolinguistic hard wiring.

[kwrandolph]

Stephen,
Let me congratulate and encourage your efforts in learning Hebrew. My experience parallels yours and I agree with your assessment that the key to learning a language which is not in the same family as your native language or one acquired later is vocabulary. … Keep plugging along, the simple fact is that language acquisition is very hard work and dead languages are even more problematic for the human mind.

My approach is to read, read and read some more, let the language wash over me. Don’t get too bogged down in minutiae especially at the beginning. After all, even the experts are still debating and disagreeing on some of the more difficult passages. Don’t expect to understand everything, but keep plugging on with what you do understand. More difficult passages will come easier as you get more accustomed to the language.

You might have better luck with taking a spoken language approach to ancient Hebrew such as the methods advocated by Randall Buth (http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/). This method is better aligned with our biological neurolinguistic hard wiring.

Let me warn you that the Hebrew taught by Randall Buth is not Biblical, but medieval or possibly even a mixture of medieval and modern Hebrews. The grammar is very different from Biblical Hebrew, but it may be a way to learn the vocabulary.

Karl W. Randolph.