rylah
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- Jun 10, 2015
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And there are whole libraries of books in Europe written in Latin and Greek, a language only used by clerics and scholars, not the general populations of te countries that house them, it's another Zionist myth that "Hebrew" was widely spoken amongst the Jewish populations of Europe and elsewhere. Immigrants to the new Zionist paradise had to learn modern Hebrew from scratch. Why would Palestinians "easily and instantaneously" forget a language that hadn't been in use for centuries?
As for fusing Hebrew with local languages, please. Every language has "loan words" from other languages, English has many, many, words derived from Latin and Greek, for example.
You're fighting straw-men here. Nobody is saying Hebrew was widely spoken among the diaspora. However the Hebrew alphabet was used on a daily basis, from Yemen to Russia in writing the local languages, be it Judeo-Arabic or Yiddish.
It's not that 'every language has borrowed words', every local language Jews used was fused with Hebrew alphabet and words that didn't exist in those languages. Some Hebrew words even became the slang in the countries of the diaspora.
Here are some examples of legal documents written in both English and Hebrew, that deal with legal and financial issues:
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"A record of testimony which took place before us, the undersigned, on Tuesday, on the twenty third day of the month | 2 of Sivan of the year five thousand twenty two of the creation of the world according to the computation that we count here, in the town of Nottingham. | 3 How Abraham ben R. Jacob came before us and said to us: Be my witnesses, perform with me a qinyan, write and sign according to | 4 all the right terms of law, and give to my grandfather, R. Abraham ben Master Joseph Crespin"
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" I, Solomon ben Yose release the prior and the priests of St. Trinity | 2 of Canterbury three measures and a half of land called ‘acres’, which lie | 3 in the town of Ickham, that they have acquired from Yves de Molin and from Mabila his wife, and I and my heirs | 4 cannot claim anything on this aforementioned land, by reason of any debt that this | 5 Yves and Mabila owe to me from the creation of the world until its end."
Hebrew and Hebrew-Latin Documents from Medieval England: A Diplomatic and Palaeographical Study
Talking of strawmen, what alphabet are you using to type your posts in English? Latin. Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet but still wrote in Farsi. All languages evolve, except modern "hebrew" which is an artificial construct invented in the late 19th century.
You're trying to blur the fact that Jews throughout the diaspora kept using Hebrew, retained its' alphabet and basic form. The fact that Hebrew fused Aramaic, Arabic or Western words is irrelevant. It's what has been retained, and that is the basic Hebrew language, in structure and form.
The same documents I've presented can be read by the average Israeli kid with ease, as any other Jewish kid in the diaspora who learned both Hebrew, Aramaic AND the local language. It's just how Jews taught their kids. Even Ben-Gurion studied in a Heider like most Jewish kids in the diaspora.
It's a Jewish tradition to teach Your kids Hebrew letters using honeyץ You put some honey on a picture of a letter, and let the kid lick it after pronouncing it - on the first day of Jewish school.
Why? Because learning the Hebrew letters and alphabet is as sweet as honey.
Really rylah, I read that's how the custom originated.
I laughed and agreed because it reminded me of my teacher who used to tell us "Oh, just listen to the Hebrew words, they're so delicious, a honey to our ears."