[Multilingual Monday] Lost in translation

[aadroma]

I was very unsure why I had even gone to Shabbat services this Saturday, but I'm glad I did, as it gave me the inspiration to write this article and to pursue other phenomenon like it.

This past Saturday's Torah reading was in Deuteronomy, and discussed unclean animals.

יב וְזֶה, אֲשֶׁר לֹא-תֹאכְלוּ מֵהֶם: הַנֶּשֶׁר וְהַפֶּרֶס, וְהָעָזְנִיָּה

Comments

Re: Modern Hebrew? Wuh?

[aadroma]

I try not to make the mistake of assuming that things in Modern = things in Biblical. I shouldn't make them sound like two unrelated languages because that's not the case. Much of Modern's vocab comes from Biblical or adjustments thereof for more modern concepts. Grammatically Modern is very simplified over Bibical Hebrew, leaving a lot of of its more complex forms behind. Modern is like Bibical lite, if I had to make a comparison. :: laugh :: Also, one can't expect every word to the same meaning and use as it did 3,000 years ago -- this is true in any language.

But they are still VERY related and, even as someone who focused on MODERN Hebrew, there are quite a few parts of Biblical Hebrew that I can understand with little problem. So I'm sorry if I painted the picture that they're vastly different, as they're very similar in many regards, but not enough for this purpose.

I'm interested in knowing, certainly, on a LINGUISTIC level. I do find it fascinating!!

(And yeah, Arabic, too, is VERY similar to BH -- in some regards moreso than Modern! -- so it's quite possible that there are similar words there too!)