# Is Hebrew unique in not changing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 18, 2012, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107 "2012-09-18T21:07:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/41 "2012-09-19T09:03:49Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > As if thoughts could be chained to individual words. English has no word for janteloven, yet we’re very familiar with the concept of humility. Surely that’s a poor example as the issue here isn’t concepts being different between languages, but instead the use of compound words in strictly Germanic languages. English doesn’t have a word for “Janteloven” as in English grammar dictates that it should be split into three words “Law of Jante”. I’ve had (and read) similar discussion regarding the Scandinavian languages, many people consider them to be somehow superior due to having “more words”, whereas the reality is that English uses the same constructs but throws a space in now and again (one example someone gave me was the lack of a word for a beer bottle. Because “ölflaska” (öl - beer, flaska - bottle) is so different to “beer bottle”). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/42 "2012-09-19T10:51:20Z")
Daniel Lapin is completely unreliable as an expert on languages. All living languages change. Some change a little faster than others, but they all change. By “living language,” I mean one that’s actually used as the native language of a community and is learned by children as their first language. Hebrew wasn’t a living language from sometime B.C. to about the nineteenth century. Now that it’s a living language again, it’s changing just like all languages. Some of the supposed examples of living languages not changing are exaggerations. Supposedly speakers of Icelandic can understand the Icelandic sagas, which were written down 800 years ago. This isn’t really quite true. They can only understand them in the sense that English speakers can understand Shakespeare. They need to have the texts respelled in modern spelling, they would have a hard time understanding the pronunciations of the people at that time, and they need footnotes. So Icelandic speakers can understand something from 800 years ago in the way that English speakers can understand something from 400 years ago. Icelandic has changed slower, but it’s changed. Claiming that a language doesn’t have a word for something is a common politically-charged argument, but it’s usually blatantly wrong. I wouldn’t trust Daniel Lapin on this. This sounds like someone who grabs at any tenuous argument to bolster his political beliefs. I have no idea whether Hebrew has any tendency toward any political position, but I’d wait until someone without a vested political interest who really knows Hebrew does a thorough study of the issue before I’d trust any such statement. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/43 "2012-09-19T12:29:35Z")
The language probably becomes more fixed as more and more of the influential population (ruling class, merchants, etc.) learn to read; this tends to fix words and their meanings, and as a body of written material grows, it gives a common reference point. The scriptures are just the most common and permanent of those works. With literacy comes education, based, again, on that body or works. Areas and classes may have their own dialects (cockney? Australian? Southern USA?) but to deal with the educated classes those people eventually need to make themselves capable of being understood by the central language. I suppose a major change in many languages happens when that “ruling class” is overthrown by a group who speak differently. An interesting variation is the 20th century’s ability to freeze not just the written but the spoken word. Also, mass media - that spoken word is head (and subconsciously copied) by fellow language speakers around the globe, which helps drive uniformity. Whether recorded speech will have a long term impact - music, movies, or media like speeches and news - depends on whether people will continue to watch old movies or listen to old songs the way we read classic books. We are just getting to the point where almost anything audiovisual will be available on demand. Finally, neve underestimate the value of the language’s ruling body to set the academic curicula to try and prevent the creeping changes in any language. (I suppose the most changeable part of the language is the part that does not make it into print and are not subject to the language body’s laws, the parts dealing with taboo subjects?) ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/44 "2012-09-19T12:37:02Z")
Just as a data point, Hebrew literature written in the first half of the 20th century, while certainly intelligible, reads distinctly stilted to me (learned Hebrew as a native tongue in the 1960’s), and downright _archaic_ to my children (who learned the language in the late 1990’s.) So, Hebrew **is** very definitely changing, and in fact seems to be making up for lost time… (which makes sense, when you consider we’re still working on coming up with Hebrew words / phrases for all kinds of stuff that didn’t exist in Jesus’ day.) In other words, the basic premise (Hebrew “is not changing,” rather than “did not change while it was [del]dead[/del] dormant”) is invalid. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/45 "2012-09-19T13:04:04Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Most Sanskrit readers learn Sanskrit from the Vedas, so they won’t need much help with the forms. Unlike Latin, there isn’t a large number of ancient Sanskrit texts other than the Vedas. _ **WHAT?!??!?** _ Okay, you have **got** to be whooshing me here. There is more surviving literature in ancient Sanskrit than in all of ancient Latin and Greek combined. Your statement is just **barely** plausible if by “Sanskrit” you mean exclusively “Vedic Sanskrit”. Yes, this most archaic form of Sanskrit is fully attested only in the Vedas themselves; it was already somewhat archaic by the time the Vedic canon was established, so all non-sacred texts contemporary with the oldest sacred texts had become extinct. But the number of Sanskrit texts composed after the Vedic scriptures and before, say, 500 CE is **immense**. It includes not only all the Brahmanas and Upanisads that were used to expound the Vedic scriptures, but the vast corpus of _sutra_ and other ritual texts, as well as didactic and literary works of all kinds. Here are just a few examples literally off the top of my head, without even checking names or spelling in Google: - the _Kamasutra_ of Vatsyayana; - the _Arthasastra_ on statecraft; - the great grammatical work _Astadhyayi_ of Panini, and many of its commentaries such as the one by Patanjali; - the great epics _Mahabharata_ and _Ramayana_; - the plays and poems of Kalidasa, the “Indian Shakespeare”, including the _Abhijnanasakuntala_ and the “Cloud Messenger”; - the founding texts of the Indian _ayurveda_ or medical tradition, by Caraka and others; - philosophical works; - astronomical and mathematical texts. Finally, where on earth do you get the idea that most modern Sanskrit readers “learn Sanskrit from the Vedas”? No, most of them learn Classical Sanskrit in school, from textbooks that describe the Classical form of the language more than the archaic Vedic form, with reading excerpts primarily from Classical texts. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/46 "2012-09-19T13:22:31Z")
Yes, I mean Vedic Sanskrit. Most modern Sanskrit readers are Hindu priests, who don’t learn it from textbooks. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/47 "2012-09-19T13:32:58Z")
> [@Noone\_Special](#): > > Just as a data point, Hebrew literature written in the first half of the 20th century, while certainly intelligible, reads distinctly stilted to me (learned Hebrew as a native tongue in the 1960’s), and downright _archaic_ to my children (who learned the language in the late 1990’s.)… Which nicely contrasts with English, whose literary form has scarcely changed in 150 years. Open a copy of, say, Little Women. It reads very natural for me, a native English speaker in my 30’s. There are hints here and there, such as the use of the word “gay” in a non-sexual sense as well as cultural/fashion references that mark it as taking place in a prior time, but the narration is not heavily stilted. > [@aceplace57](#): > > Question: Since Hebrew is now spoken within the Jewish population. Is Yiddish a dying language? Yiddish still seems to be a primary language for some Orthodox communities in New York, but seems to be dying outside of that. I’d consider it similar to the situation with the Pennsylvania Dutch (i.e. PA German) language in Pennsylvania. It used to be a common community language and widely spoken by people of German ancestry in the Mid Atlantic US. Now most of them speak English and PA Dutch is preserved mostly by religious fundamentalists (the Old Order Amish) who prefer to remain separate from the world around them. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/48 "2012-09-19T13:36:30Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Yes, I mean Vedic Sanskrit. Most modern Sanskrit readers are Hindu priests, who don’t learn it from textbooks. :dubious: If you mean “most modern readers of Vedic Sanskrit”, then that’s more or less so, although plenty of modern pandits have also studied Sanskrit in school. It does sound weird to me (and as you can tell from my previous post, it can seriously confuse me) to treat the default meaning of “Sanskrit” as specifically the ancient liturgical language “Vedic Sanskrit”. Generally speaking, it means the Classical form of the language, or else more broadly both the Classical and Vedic forms. The vast majority of people both in India and elsewhere who say that they’ve studied or can read some form of Sanskrit are referring to Classical Sanskrit. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/49 "2012-09-19T13:42:48Z")
Yes, but people who study Sanskrit in school do not become fluent readers (unless they specialize in it). My mother, for example, learned Sanskrit for five years (solely from Vedic texts, according to her) and can read about as much of it as I can, other than daily prayers and things she knows from memory. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/50 "2012-09-19T14:33:47Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > Surely that’s a poor example as the issue here isn’t concepts being different between languages, but instead the use of compound words in strictly Germanic languages. English doesn’t have a word for “Janteloven” as in English grammar dictates that it should be split into three words “Law of Jante”. I’ve had (and read) similar discussion regarding the Scandinavian languages, many people consider them to be somehow superior due to having “more words”, whereas the reality is that English uses the same constructs but throws a space in now and again (one example someone gave me was the lack of a word for a beer bottle. Because “ölflaska” (öl - beer, flaska - bottle) is so different to “beer bottle”). It’s all the same to me. Whether it takes you one word or 3 or a paragraph to communicate a concept is irrelevant. If I made up my own language that has no word for freedom and taught it to my child as their native language, would that child have no concept of freedom? Clearly not. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/51 "2012-09-19T15:58:30Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > There are a few radical ultra-Orthodox sects that still use Yiddish in day-to-day life, but other than them, I’d say the age of the average Yiddish-speaker is somewhere around 80. Why would “ultra radical” sects use Yiddish? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/52 "2012-09-19T16:17:12Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Why would “ultra radical” sects use Yiddish? As a means of connecting with their roots in earlier Yiddish-speaking Orthodox communities, and in some cases also to mark the special status of Hebrew as a sacred language. (Some hardcore _haredim_ even think that it defiles Hebrew to use it as an everyday medium of ordinary communication.) Most modern non-Orthodox Jews don’t feel a particularly close association with Yiddish, which not so long ago was a common vernacular of Jewish societies across Europe, North America, and elsewhere. But a lot of the ultra-Orthodox communities consider it very important both as an ancestral language and an internal social bond. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/53 "2012-09-19T16:46:59Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Why would “ultra radical” sects use Yiddish? Among other reasons, as a way of rejecting modernity and, in Israel, Zionism. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/54 "2012-09-19T16:50:48Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > But if we’re throwing around examples of languages in which modern speakers can easily read old texts–Italian speakers can still read the original Dante without any problem. In fact, a person who has taken just a couple years of Italian classes can read Dante without any problem (and with a dictionary). Now\* that’s\* consistency. Hell, I can do it and I’m not even Italian! ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/55 "2012-09-19T18:55:46Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Latin had a somewhat similar linguistic trajectory from a spoken to a learned/liturgical language, and likewise it was conservative in its changes compared to spoken languages. An educated 18th-century Latin scholar could understand texts written by Caesar and Cicero nearly two millennia earlier, for instance. Although your second sentence here is true, the paragraph as a whole is very misleading. Latin changed quite a lot between the time of Cesar and Cicero and the later middle ages, quite a bit of that change occurring during the middle ages, after the fall of the Western Empire, when, although Latin ceased to be a spoken vernacular language, it continued to be taught and to be used widely by scholars and churchmen. (In a sense, Latin remained a vernacular language for written material during this period, when very little was written in the vernaculars that people actually spoke in their everyday lives.) The reason why an 18th century Latin scholar would be readily able to read Caesar and Cicero was because there was a deliberate, sustained and successful campaign during the early Renaissance period to revive classical (and, particularly, Ciceronic) Latin, and to have it replace the “medieval” Latin that had been taught to and used by scholars up to that time. Indeed, this was one of the driving forces that got the Renaissance going, as Italian “humanist” scholars sought to revive their nation’s former glories by replacing what they saw as the “corrupt” Latin of the middle ages with the “pure” Latin that had been used when Roman civilization was at its height. Thus the Latin that was taught to educated Europeans by the 18th century (and is still taught to some today) was essentially the Latin that was in actual use in Rome in about the first century B.C., but quite a bit different from that which was taught, and was in quite widespread use amongst scholars, in say, the thirteenth century A.D. ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ The claims made by the rabbi mentioned in the OP are essentially superstitious nonsense. Although it is probably true that Hebrew changed very little over the centuries when it was kept alive almost exclusively as a liturgical language, now that it has been resuscitated as a vernacular language for the state of Israel, you can be sure that it will be changing just as fast as any vernacular does, and although it may just possibly be true (I doubt it actually) that classical Hebrew had no word for _ **entitlement** _ (in the rather special sense of that word that names something that contemporary American conservatives think is bad), you can be sure that a contemporary Israeli Hebrew speaker will have no difficulty articulating the concept, and probably has a specific word for it. Classical Hebrew speakers (i.e., people living in Old Testament times) may not have had much language available for describing a modern, liberal (or socialist) welfare state, but you can be sure that contemporary Israeli Hebrew speakers do. They live in one. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/56 "2012-09-19T19:34:00Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Question: Since Hebrew is now spoken within the Jewish population. Is Yiddish a dying language? Yiddish has been dying for a thousand years. (Old joke.) ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/57 "2012-09-19T19:39:19Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Although your second sentence here is true, the paragraph as a whole is very misleading. Latin changed quite a lot between the time of Cesar and Cicero and the later middle ages, quite a bit of that change occurring during the middle ages, after the fall of the Western Empire, when, although Latin ceased to be a spoken vernacular language, it continued to be taught and to be used widely by scholars and churchmen. (In a sense, Latin remained a vernacular language for written material during this period, when very little was written in the vernaculars that people actually spoke in their everyday lives.) I know, but I think it’s still fair to say that Latin changed slowly and conservatively by comparison with the actual spoken vernaculars, which is the point I was making. In fact, that’s fairly obvious from the fact that medieval Latin and the spoken vernaculars such as Italian and French both evolved from exactly the same starting point: namely, classical Latin itself. Late medieval French and Latin were no longer mutually intelligible, but late medieval Latin was still recognizably Latin. You’re right that I should have been more clear about the effect of the humanist classical renaissance on 18th-century Latinity, though. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/58 "2012-09-19T19:53:30Z")
If you just update Chaucer to modern spelling, it’s a lot easier to read. Contrast: This woful Cleopatre hath mad swich routhe That ther nis tonge noon that may hit telle. But on the morwe she wol no lenger dwelle, But made hir subtil werkmen make a shryne Of alle the rubies and the stones fyne In al Egipte that she coude espye; And putte ful the shryne of spycerye, And leet the cors embaume; and forth she fette This dede cors, and in the shryne hit shette. This woeful Cleopatra has made such ruth That there nis tongue noon that may it tell. But on the morwe she will no longer dwell But made her subtle workmen make a shrine Of all the rubies and the stones fine In all Egypt that she could espy And put full the shrine of spycerye And let the cors embaume; and forth she fit This deed cors, and in the shrine it shette. This is simply changing the spelling to modern usage for words that are completely and utterly obvious to me. Usage is a bit different, but obviously “there nis tongue noon” means “There isn’t tongue now”, and so on. What really trips people up with Chaucer is the nonstandard spelling, change the spelling to modern spelling but leaving the words exactly the same and it’s about as easy to read as Shakespeare. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/59 "2012-09-19T22:11:44Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > If you just update Chaucer to modern spelling, it’s a lot easier to read. > > Contrast: > > This woful Cleopatre hath mad swich routhe > That ther nis tonge noon that may hit telle. > But on the morwe she wol no lenger dwelle, > But made hir subtil werkmen make a shryne > Of alle the rubies and the stones fyne > In al Egipte that she coude espye; > And putte ful the shryne of spycerye, > And leet the cors embaume; and forth she fette > This dede cors, and in the shryne hit shette. > > This woeful Cleopatra has made such ruth > That there nis tongue noon that may it tell. > But on the morwe [morrow] she will no longer dwell > But made her subtle workmen make a shrine > Of all the rubies and the stones fine > In all Egypt that she could espy [spy] > And put full the shrine of spycerye > And let the cors [corpse] embaume [embalm]; and forth she fit > This deed [dead] cors [corpse], and in the shrine it shette. Added a few more obvious ones in brackets/red. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2012, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107/60 "2012-09-19T22:35:10Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > but obviously “there nis tongue noon” means “There isn’t tongue now”, I don’t think so. Not looking it up, I would say “noon” is “none”, not “now”. I would loosely translate it as “there is no tongue” based on a literal translation of “there is tongue none”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-hebrew-unique-in-not-changing/635107.md?page=4)