The glass of language can be replenished

Howard Richler

May, 2009

There are approximately 50 native languages in Canada and many linguists say that only three – Inuktitut, Ojibwa and Cree – are likely to survive this century.

But language rejuvenators take heart as language prognosticators enjoy a spotty record. Referring to the improbability of being able to revive Hebrew as a vernacular in the 20^th century, scholar Simon Bernfeld wrote at the turn of the century: “To make the Hebrew language a spoken tongue in the usual sense of the word is … impossible. It has never occurred in any language.… A broken glass can no longer be put back together.” May 14 marked the 61^st anniversary of the State of Israel, and so far the Hebrew glass shows no signs of shattering.

Bernfield was espousing “common knowledge.” Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, and Nathan Birnbaum (coiner of “Zionism”) didn’t believe the vernacularization of Hebrew was really possible in the foreseeable future. Time has proven these men wrong. How did this happen?

With the expulsion of Jews from Israel in 70 A.D., the everyday usage of Hebrew faded and was replaced by Aramaic and Greek. Although Hebrew stopped being a vernacular, it retained its position in Jewish communities as a language of study and prayer. Jews in the diaspora commonly used Ladino, the traditional language of Jews of Spanish descent, or Yiddish, for internal communication, and a non-Jewish vernacular for external communication. There were occasions when two Jews from different areas might meet who could communicate only in Hebrew. A Jew from Morocco (who didn’t speak Yiddish) might meet a Jew from Russia (who didn’t speak Ladino). These encounters, however, were rare.

The revival of a language that has ceased being used as a vernacular is a rare event, but Hebrew was not so much revived as revitalized. Hebrew was on the threshold of speech, having only lost its position as the language of the market place. There were several factors that influenced its renaissance. The Jews of Palestine wanted to break ties to the diaspora and a distinct national language was necessary to effectuate this divorce. Although English, French and German were common languages, none of them was dominant enough to stymie Hebrew’s resurgence. Hebrew’s main rival, Yiddish, never seriously challenged the predominance of Hebrew for many of the secular Yiddishists were anti-Zionist and didn’t immigrate to Israel in large numbers. Hebrew was thus able to fill a void by serving as a common vernacular to all the Jewish communities in Palestine. The Hebrew language was also blessed with many texts with varied Hebraic styles.

The person most associated with the revitalization of Hebrew was Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who left Europe in 1881 to live in the cramped quarters of Jerusalem. Both he and his wife shared a burning enthusiasm for the promotion of Hebrew. They established a policy in their home that Hebrew was the only language one was permitted to speak. Any visitor who could not speak Hebrew was forced to resort to gestures in order to communicate. Thanks in large part to Ben Yehuda’s zealousness, writer Robert St. John says it is now possible “for several million people to order groceries, drive cattle, make love and curse out their neighbours in Hebrew.”

Ben Yehuda coined the word et-on for newspaper by an adaptation of the phrase michtav-et, “a letter of the time.” A dictionary had previously been referred to as sefermillim, “book of words” and Ben Yehuda used the Hebrew word millah, (word) as a base and created the word millon to refer to a dictionary. The youth of ancient Judea lacked bouncing balls and when Ben Yehuda saw his son playing with a ball, the lad apparently uttered a sound like cadurr, hence a ball in Hebrew became kadur. He also coined the word dagdegan, “clitoris” from the root dagdeg,“to tickle.” Not all of Ben- Yehuda’s neologisms, however, caught on. For example, his word for tomato, badura, was rarely voiced outside the Ben-Yehuda kitchen, and Hebrew speakers’ word for tomato is agvania. Similarly, although the official Hebrew word for sandwich is karich, you’ll be probably served faster at a Tel Aviv restaurant if you ask for a “sendvich.”

Although other attempts at reviving a language, such as Maori and Irish, have been hampered by a lack of widespread knowledge of the written language, no case is hopeless. Linguist Kenneth Hale says even though there aren’t any speakers of Mohican, “you could take books and deeds published back in the 1600s, and from what we know about comparative Algonquin, you could figure out pretty closely what it sounded like. People could learn it and begin to use it and revive it.”

Israeli scholar Naftali Tur-Sinai stated, “even an artificial language which has never been alive, such as Esperanto, can be made to live, if only there is a recognized need for it and a stubborn will of people to make it come alive.”

Happy 61st birthday, Israel. Howard Richler’s latest book is Can I Have a Word With You?