Ghil'ad started following the work of Noam Urbach, Bar-Ilan University, East Asian Studies Program.
Ghil'ad started following the work of Orel Beilinson.
Ghil'ad started following the work of 3 people.
Papers
Download (.pdf) למה כולנו לא מדברים באותה השפה
Haaretz, 15 April 2011
An article by Ghil'ad Zuckermann
למה כולנו לא מדברים
באותה השפה?
גלעד צוקרמן
ש א ל ו ת מ ה ו ת י ו ת
במונחים ביולוגיים, הלשון איננה אורגניזם
אלא קבוצה של אורגניזמים. יש שיסיקו,
אם כן, שהשאלה הנכבדה איננה "למה לא
כל בני האדם מדברים באותה שפה?"
אלא, באופן מפתיע, "למה יש בני אדם
המבינים זה את זה?"
איור: מורן ברק
נניח לרגע שגרסה עתידית של תוכנית
הטלוויזיה "האח הגדול" תכלול ניסויים בבני
אדם באופן אף יותר מרחיק לכת מהיום. ערוץ 2
יחפש למשל צעיר וצעירה דוברי ישראלית, ושום
שפה אחרת. הם ישוגרו למושבה בחלל לתקופה בלתי מוגבלת
וללא שום קשר עם בני אדם או יצורים אחרים. בהנחה שתוחלת
החיים תהיה 120 שנה ולא 1,200 , כפי שיש המנבאים, צאצאי
הזכיינים של ערוץ 2 יחזרו למושבה הזאת כעבור 2,000 שנה כדי
לבדוק איזו שפה תדובר שם.
אין לי צל של ספק שהשפה שם תהיה שונה מאוד מהישראלית
של היום, חרף העובדה שלא מדובר על השפעות זרות, כי הרי לא
היתה שום תקשורת עם דוברי לשונות אחרות. נשאלת השאלה, אם
כן, מה גרם לאבולוציה האורגנית של הישראלית ההיפותטית הזאת?
התשובה לשאלה זאת מהווה, אליבא דידי, את אחד היסודות היפים
במחקר הבלשני. אל תאמינו לאף בלשן שיגיד לכם שהוא לא עושה
הכללות. בלשנות היא הכללה מיסודה. השפה היא למעשה לקט לקטים:
אנסמבל ערטילאי של אידיולקטים. אידיולקט הוא שפה של אדם ספציפי.
לשונו האידיוסינקרטית של המאסטר שף אייל שני שונה מזו של מיכל
אנסקי. ג'קי מנחם, זוכה העונה השלישית של "האח הגדול", משתמש
בביטויים שונים מאלו של ליהיא גרינר )מקום 2 בגמר (, שדוברת אידיולקט
השונה מזה של נופר מור )שכונתה "בייגלה" בפי ג'קי (, וכו'. יתר על כן,
השפה היא גם אוסף אבסטרקטי של סוציולקטים )סוציולקט הוא לשון של
שכבה חברתית מסוימת (, דיאלקטים )של אזור גאוגרפי מסוים (, אטולקטים
)של בני גיל מסוים (, אתנולקטים )לפי מוצא אתני (, ושאר לקטים.
במונחים ביולוגיים, הלשון איננה אורגניזם אלא מין ) species (, קבוצה
של אורגניזמים. גם אם כל הזבובים נראים לנו אותו הדבר, תחת עדשת
המיקרוסקופ לכל זבוב יש שערות שונות על הבטן. יש שיסיקו, אם כן,
שהשאלה הנכבדה איננה "למה לא כל בני האדם מדברים באותה שפה?"
אלא, באופן מפתיע, "למה יש בני אדם המבינים זה את זה?"
התשובה לשאלה זו נעוצה ביכולת האדירה של יצורי האנוש
לבצע אקומודציה, הסגלה, משא ומתן לשוני. דוברי הישראלית
לא זקוקים לתרביץ ללשון הישראלית )הידוע יותר בכינויו
"האקדמיה ללשון העברית" ( או למשטרת לשון אחרת. למרות
ההבדלים הרבים בין האידיולקטים השונים, דוברי הישראלית
מסוגלים להבין זה את זה ללא שום בעיה. מי שאומר "עשרה
קילוגרמים" לבטח יתאים את לשונו ל"עשר קילו" כשיקנה
מלפפונים בשוק הכרמל בתל אביב.
המשא ומתן הלשוני, המתרחש בדרך כלל באופן טבעי
ובלתי־מודע, הוא הגורם לאבולוציה הלשונית שתוצאתה:
ישראלית חללית השונה לגמרי מהישראלית של היום.
המגע בין הלקטים השונים כולל הפריה הדדית, אורגיה
גנטית לשונית, ערבוב גנים ברבייה מינית, שכפול נגיפי
וכיוצא באלה. ממש כפי שכבר מקדמת דנא, כשחד־תא
נתקל בחד־תא אחר הוא מחדיר את הדנ"א שלו אל התא
האחר, כך נוצרות קומבינציות וקומבינות חדשות
בשפה. וכמו בביולוגיה, גם בלשון יש
מוטציות.
המילה "מהפך" חדרה לישראלית
ביתר שאת לאחר שחיים יבין השתמש
בה ב– 17 במאי 77 ' לתיאור שינוי כיוון
דרמטי בבחירות. כיום יש גם מהפך בכדורגל, וכו'. הביטוי האידיוסינקרטי
"התחת שלי במים" )אני מאושר ( של ג'קי מנחם מובן, לפחות בימים אלו, על
ידי דוברי ישראלית רבים.
נניח עתה שכתוצאה מתחרות מסחרית, ערוץ 10 לא יעמוד בפיתוי
וישגר גם הוא צעיר וצעירה, בעלי רקע דומה כשל אלו מערוץ 2,
למושבה אחרת בחלל ללא שום קשר עם יצורים אחרים. צאצאי
הזכיינים של ערוץ 10 יחזרו למושבה הזאת כעבור 2,000 שנה
כדי לבדוק אם השפה שתדובר שם תהיה שונה מהשפה שתדובר
במושבת ערוץ 2. אין לי שום צל של ספק שהשפה שם תהיה
שונה מאוד לא רק מהישראלית של היום אלא גם מהישראלית
העתידית של צאצאי ערוץ 2.
תרחישים דומים קרו בעבר ולכן הגענו עד הלום, עם
יותר מ– 6,000 שפות. סיפור מגדל בבל אכן משקף במידה
זו או אחרת את המציאות ההיסטורית לפני לכל הפחות
50 אלף שנה, גם אם לא ניתן להוכיח זאת באמצעים
הבלשניים העומדים לרשותנו כיום.
האבולוציה משפה אחת, או ממספר מוגבל של
שפות היוליות, ליותר מ– 6,000 לשונות נובעת,
אם כן, לא רק ממגע בין לשונות אלא גם ממגע
בין אידיולקטים. יחד עם זאת, בעוד שבעבר
המגמה הכללית היתה היווצרות ניבים
חדשים ולשונות שונות, העידן הטכנולוגי
והטוקנולוגי )מלשון t alk ( יצר מציאות
חדשה של צמצום מספר הלשונות וריבוי
השפות בסכנת הכחדה.
לדעתי, האינטרנט והתקשורת
ההמונית הם המהפכה הרביעית: אחרי
היווצרות השפה, הכתב והדפוס. נותר רק
לקוות, שהשאלה של מערכת "הארץ"
לבלשן התורן בשנת 3011 לא
תהיה "למה כל בני האדם
מדברים באותה שפה?" *
פרופ' גלעד צוקרמן הוא מופקד
הקתדרה לבלשנות ושפות בסיכון
באוניברסיטת אדלייד, אוסטרליה,
ומכהן גם כפרופסור מן המניין
במעמד מיוחד באוניברסיטת שנחאי
ללימודים בינלאומיים
Stop, Revive, Survive!: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures
Australian Journal of Linguistics 31.1: 111-127. (2011)
Authors: Zuckermann, Ghil'ad and Walsh, Michael
LINK TO THE ARTICLE: http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Revival_Linguistics.pdf
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad and Walsh, Michael 2011. ‘Stop, Revive, Survive!: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures’, Australian Journal of Linguistics 31.1: 111-127.
LINK TO THE ARTICLE: http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Revival_Linguistics.pdf
Final version:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a932426202~frm=titlelink
DOI: 10.1080/07268602.2011.532859
Australian Journal of Linguistics (AJL)
Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2011, pages 111 - 127
Stop, Revive, Survive: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures
GHIL‘AD ZUCKERMANN and MICHAEL WALSH
University of Adelaide and University of Sydney
ABSTRACT
The revival of Hebrew is so far the most successful known reclamation of a sleeping tongue and is a language movement that has been in progress for more than 120 years. By comparison, language revival movements in Australia are in their infancy. This article provides comparative insights and makes information about the Hebrew revival accessible to Australian linguists and Aboriginal revival activists.
Needless to say, the first stage of any desire by professional linguists to assist in language reawakening must involve a long period of thoroughly observing, carefully listening to the people, learning, mapping and characterizing the specific indigenous community. Only then can one inspire and assist. That said, this article proposes that there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would be useful to endangered languages in general and to Aboriginal linguistic revival in particular.
This article contributes towards the establishment of Revival Linguistics, a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. Zuckermann`s term Revival Linguistics is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (<language contact). Revival linguistics inter alia explores the universal constraints and mechanisms involved in language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over the globe.
Keywords: Revival Linguistics, Language Revival, Aboriginal Studies, Hebrew, Social Empowerment, Hybridity and Multiple Causation, Purism versus Compromise, Language and Identity, Contact Linguistics, Yiddish, Aboriginal English, Anthropological Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language Endangerment, Resilience Linguistics, Revitalization, Renewal.
Dedicated to Professor Michael Clyne z"l
ARTICLE
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
(John Adams, 1735–1826, second president of the United States)
The main aim of this article is to suggest that there are perspicacious lessons applicable from the relatively successful Hebrew revival to the reclamation, maintenance and empowerment of Aboriginal languages and cultures. 'Language is power; let us have ours', wrote Aboriginal politician Aden Ridgeway on 26 November 2009 in the Sydney Morning Herald. Previous revival efforts have largely failed (for obvious reasons, we are not going to single out specific failures here). While there have been some good results from several projects since 1992 (e.g. Kaurna, see below), Aboriginal people overall do not see as many positive outcomes from revival programmes as they would like. In large part this is the result of shortage of sufficient (continuity of) funding, lack of technical expertise, and lack of integration of school-based programmes with community language programmes. However, there are purely linguistic reasons too: Many revival efforts were not supported by a sound theoretical understanding of how successful language revival works. As pointed out by Thieberger (2002), decisions about the appropriate target for language maintenance programmes are too often driven by structural linguistics, where the supposed ideal is intergenerational transmission of the language with all its original structural complexity retained, thus creating unrealistic expectations among the Aboriginal community.
This article is the first of its kind as it will innovatively draw crucial insights from 'Modern Hebrew' (henceforth, Israeli – see Zuckermann 1999), so far the most successful known reclamation attempt of a sleeping tongue. Zuckermann's (2008a, 2009, 2010, 2011) research on Israeli demonstrates which language components are more revivable than others. Words and conjugations, for example, are easier to revitalize than intonation, discourse, associations and connotations. We should encourage revivalists and Aboriginal leaders to be realistic rather than puristic, and not to chastise English loanwords and pronunciation, for example, within the emergent language. Applying such precious conclusions from Hebrew will closely assist Australian revivalists in being more efficient, urging them not to waste time and resources on Sisyphean efforts to resuscitate linguistic components that are unlikely to be revivable.
While the results the endeavors we are proposing here have considerable value as a research enterprise, one can also consider them in terms of a cost-benefit analysis (Mühlhäusler and Damania 2004, Walsh 2008): Language revitalization contributes to social reconciliation, cultural tourism (Clark and Kostanski 2005), capacity building, and improved community health for Indigenous peoples (Walsh forthcoming B). In the process of language revival, some Aboriginal people will go from being dysfunctional (cf. Sutton 2009) to well-balanced, positive people. The benefits to the wider community and to Australian society are immense.
Reversing language shift (RLS) (Fishman 1991, 2001, Hagège 2009, Evans 2010, Walsh 2005a, Zuckermann 2011) is thus of great social benefit. Language revival does not only do historical justice and address inequality but can also result in the empowerment of people who have lost their heritage and purpose in life.
Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership. There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it: its name. Consequently, some Indigenous Australians do not find it important to revive their comatose tongue. We, on the other hand, have always believed in Australia’s very own roadside dictum: ‘Stop, revive, survive!'
Background: The Hebrew Revival
I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: 1. This is worthless nonsense. 2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view. 3. This is true, but quite unimportant. 4. I always said so. (Haldane 1963: 464)
'Hebrew' is the most quoted example of a successful language revival. On the other hand, if we are to be brutally truthful with ourselves, the modern-day vernacular spoken in downtown Tel Aviv is a very different language – both typologically and genetically – to that of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) or of the Mishnah, the first major redaction of Jewish oral traditions.
Hebrew was spoken since approximately the 14th century BC. It belonged to the Canaanite division of the northwestern branch of the Semitic languages, which constitute a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Following a gradual decline, it ceased to be spoken by the second century AD. The failed Bar-Kokhba Revolt against the Romans in Judea in 132-5 AD marks the symbolic end of the period of spoken Hebrew. We believe that the Mishnah was codified around 200 AD because Hebrew was then dying as a mother tongue. Rabbi Judah haNasi and his collaborators might have realized that if they did not act then to redact the oral tradition, it would soon have been too late because Jews were already speaking languages other than Hebrew. (In fact, the Gemara, the other component of the Babylonian Talmud, which was codified around 500 AD, was written in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew.)
For approximately 1,750 years thereafter, Hebrew was ‘clinically dead’. A most important liturgical and literary language, it occasionally served as a lingua franca – a means of communication between people who do not share a mother tongue – for Jews of the Diaspora, but not as a native language.
Fascinating and multifaceted Israeli, which emerged in Palestine (Eretz Israel) at the end of the nineteenth century, possesses distinctive socio-historical characteristics such as the lack of a continuous chain of native speakers from spoken Hebrew to Israeli, the non-Semitic mother tongues spoken by the Hebrew revivalists, and the European impact on literary Hebrew. Consequently, it presents the linguist with a unique laboratory in which to examine a wider set of theoretical problems concerning language genesis, social issues like language, identity and politics, and important practical matters, such as whether it is possible to revive a no-longer spoken language.
The genetic classification of Israeli has preoccupied scholars since its genesis. The still regnant traditional thesis suggests that Israeli is Semitic: Hebrew revived. The revisionist antithesis defines Israeli as Indo-European: Yiddish relexified; that is, Yiddish, the revivalists’ mother tongue, is the 'substratum', whilst Hebrew is the 'superstratum' providing the vocabulary (cf. Horvath and Wexler 1997). According to Zuckermann's mosaic (rather than Mosaic) synthesis, Israeli is not only multi-layered but also multi-parental. A Semito-European, or Eurasian, hybrid, Israeli is both Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) and (Indo-) European. It is based simultaneously on 'sleeping beauty' / 'walking dead' Hebrew and 'máme lóshn' (mother tongue) Yiddish, which are both primary contributors to Israeli, and a plethora of other tongues spoken by Jewish pioneers in Palestine in the 1880s–1930s, e.g. Russian, Polish, Arabic, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), Turkish, German, French and English.
The Success Rate of the Hebrew Revival
The vernacularization of Hebrew was partially a success and partially a failure. It is hard to provide an exact quantification for such a multi-variable enterprise, but we would roughly estimate that on a 1-10 scale, 10 being a complete success and one being a complete failure, the Hebrew revival is at seven. More specifically, we propose the following continuum approximations for the extent to which Israeli can be considered Hebrew: mindset/spirit: 1 (i.e. European); discourse (communicative tools, speech acts): 1; sounds (phonetics and phonology): 2; semantics (meaning, associations, connotations, semantic networkings): 3; constituent/word order (syntax): 4; general vocabulary: 5; word formation: 7; verbal conjugations: 9; and basic vocabulary: 10 (i.e. Hebrew).
The factors leading to the partial failure of the Hebrew revival have little to do with a lack of motivation or zealousness, or with economic or political variables – not even with the fact that the revivalists, such as the symbolic father of Israeli, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (born Perelman, 1858-1922), were not as linguistically sophisticated as contemporary linguists. It is simply the case that one cannot negate one’s most recent roots, be they cultural or linguistic, even if one is keen to deny one’s parents’ and grandparents’ heritage (diasporic Yiddish) in search of cultural antiquity (Biblical Hebrew). It is therefore most unlikely to revive a clinically-dead language without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). Thus, when most native Israeli-speakers speak Israeli, their intonation is much more similar to that of Yiddish, the mother tongue of most revivalists, than to that of Arabic or any other Semitic language. It is high time to acknowledge that Israeli is very different from ancient Hebrew. We should embrace – rather than chastise – the multisourcedness of Israeli.
That said, the Hebrew revival cannot be considered a failure because without the zealous, obsessive, enthusiastic efforts of Ben-Yehuda and of teachers, writers, poets, journalists, intellectuals, social activists, political figures, linguists and others, Israelis would have spoken a language (such as English, German, Arabic or Yiddish) that could hardly be considered Hebrew. To call such a hypothetical language 'Hebrew' would have not only been misleading but also wrong. To call today’s Israeli 'Hebrew' may be puristic but not wrong: Hybridic Israeli is based on Hebrew as much as it is based on Yiddish. So, although the revivalists could not avoid the subconscious influence of their mother tongue(s), they did indeed manage at the same time to consciously revive important components of Hebrew.
Hybridity, Camouflage and the Congruence Principle
Israeli is a new hybrid language rather than an evolutionary phase of Hebrew. Yiddish is not a 'foreign language' vis-à-vis Israeli, and the word intuítsya 'intuition' – to give but one example out of thousands of alleged loan words – is not a loan word (from Yiddish intuítsye, Russian intuítsiya, Polish intuicja etc., all meaning 'intuition') but rather an integral part of Israeli from its very beginning.
According to the Congruence Principle, the more revivalists speak contributing languages with a specific linguistic feature, the more likely this feature is to prevail in the emergent language. Based on feature pool statistics, this principle weakens August Schleicher’s famous Family Tree theory in historical linguistics, which may give the wrong impression that every language has only one parent. For example, most revivalists spoke languages, mainly Yiddish, that lacked that Semitic pharyngeal gulp ‘ayin (represented, for instance, by the apostrophe in Zuckermann's Christian – actually Jewish – name Ghil‘ad). Naturally, their children – the ones who, in fact, shaped the real character of Israeli – could not buy the argument 'do as I say, don’t do as I do!' The result is that most Israelis do not have this sound in their speech.
Similarly, má nishmà, the common Israeli 'what’s up?' greeting, looks like a calque – loan translation – of the Yiddish phrase vos hért zikh, usually pronounced vsértsekh and literally meaning 'what’s heard?' but functioning as a common greeting. However, a Romanian-speaking immigrant to Israel might have used má nishmà because of Romanian ce se aude, a Polish-speaker Jew because of Polish co słychać, and a Russian-speaker Что слышно chto slyshno, all meaning the same and functioning in the same way.
The distinction between forms and patterns is crucial here as it demonstrates multiple causation. In the 1920s and 1930s, gdud meginéy hasafá, 'the language defendants regiment' (cf. Shur 2000), whose motto was ivrí, dabér ivrít 'Hebrew [i.e. Jew], speak Hebrew,' used to tear down signs written in 'foreign' languages and disturb Yiddish theatre gatherings. However, the members of this group only looked for Yiddish forms, rather than patterns in the speech of the Israelis who did choose to speak 'Hebrew.' The language defendants would thus not attack an Israeli speaker saying má nishmà. Ironically, even the language defendants regiment's anthem included calques from Yiddish.
Zuckermann (2011, forthcoming) analyzes the hitherto-overlooked camouflaged semantic networking transferred from one language to another. Whereas mechanisms as calques (loan translations such as superman, from German Übermensch), phono-semantic matches (e.g. crayfish, from Old French crevice, a cognate of crab that has little to do with fish) (Zuckermann 2003) and portmanteau blends (e.g. motel, from motor+hotel, or sprummer, from spring+summer) have been studied, there is a need to uncover concealed semantic links between words in the Target Language which reflect – often subconsciously – semantic networking in the Source Language. Consider the Israeli word gakhlilít 'firefly, glow-worm' – coined by poet laureate Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934). This word is semantically and etymologically linked to the Biblical Hebrew word gaħelet 'burning coal, glowing ember.' Morphologically, Israeli gakhlilít derives from Hebrew gaħelet plus the reduplication of its third radical [l]. However, no Israeli dictionary reveals the crucial semantic networking aspect, namely that the Israeli concoction, gakhlilít, in using an element associated with 'glow,' in fact replicates a European mindset, apparent for example in the Yiddish word glivórem, literally 'glow' (cf. gaħelet) + 'worm', or in German Glühwürmchen.
Native Israeli Speech and the Academy of the Hebrew Language
Since its conception, Israeli has been the subject of purism (the dislike of foreign words – as in Icelandic: Sapir and Zuckermann 2008) and the enforcement of 'correct' pronunciation. Brought into being by legislation in 1953 as the supreme institute for 'Hebrew', the Academy of the Hebrew Language (known in Israeli as haakademya lalashón haivrít) is funded by Israel's Ministry of Education. It superseded the (Hebrew) Language Council (váad halashón (haivrít)), which was established in 1889 – as a branch of Safá Brurá (Clear Language) – by Ben-Yehuda and colleagues. As defined in its constitution, the Academy's functions are: (1) To investigate and compile the Hebrew lexicon according to its historical strata and layers; (2) To study the structure, history, and offshoots of the Hebrew language; and (3) To direct the development of Hebrew in light of its nature, requirements, and potential, its daily and academic needs, by setting its lexicon, grammar, characters, orthography and transliteration [in fact, transcription].
The first goal is most useful, as Israeli is indeed a multi-layered language. For example, one could say both (a) khashkhú enáv, literally 'His eyes became dark,' meaning 'He saw black' (‘black’ in this context meaning ‘bad news’), and (b) niyá/naasá lo khóshekh baenáim, meaning the same, albeit structurally different. While khashkhú enáv is Hebrew, niyá lo khóshekh baenáim is a calque of the Yiddish phrase siz im gevórn fíntster in di óygn, which might in turn be an adaptation of the very Hebrew khashkhú enáv (transcribed here in its Israeli form, which would have been unintelligible for an ancient Hebrew-speaker).
Israeli has many other minimal pairs, such as asá din leatsmó and lakákh et hakhók layadáim, both referring to a person violating the law, with the latter being more colloquial; as well as lelót kayamím, literally 'nights as days' (also yamím kelelót, literally 'days as nights'), and misavív lashaón, literally 'round the clock,' both often referring to hard work.
Somewhat resembling the 'catastrophic success' of the 1928-1936 Turkish Language Revolution (see Lewis 1999), many referents have several Israeli signifiers, one of which is puristically Hebrew and the other, often more commonly used, 'foreign' (in fact, Israeli ab initio). These include many internationalisms such as opozítsya 'Opposition' (according to the Academy, the word should be negdá – cf. Hebrew néged 'against') and koalítsya 'Coalition' (according to the Academy: yakhdá – cf. Hebrew yaħad 'together').
However, goal (3), to direct the development of Hebrew in light of its nature, is oxymoronic (cf. Zuckermann 2008b: 139). If the nature of a language is to evolve in a specific direction (cf. Sapir's 'drift,' the pattern of change in which the structure of a language shifts in a determinate direction), why direct its evolution by language policing?
From the Promised Land to the ‘Lucky’ Country
The three principles of linguistic revival and survival:
(1) If your language is endangered --> Do not allow it to
die!
(2) If your language died --> Stop, revive, survive!
(3) If you revive your language --> Embrace the
hybridity of the emergent language!
Questions of this kind, albeit in an implicit and sometimes confused fashion, are being raised within the context of Australian Aboriginal languages. Current language revival activities are worthy but often under-theorized. The tendency has been to attempt to revive the language en masse despite what has been indicated about the Hebrew rate of success for take up of particular components of language. There is a need to examine a range of existing language revitalization programmes with a view to assessing the rate of success for take up of particular components of language and at the same time adduce the preferences (and sometimes the prejudices) of the group in question (cf. Couzens and Eira forthcoming).
Indigenous Australians have been living in Australia for more than 40,000 years. Today Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders make up 2.6% of Australia's population. Unfortunately, one of the main findings of the most recent National Indigenous Languages Survey Report (2005) was that the situation of Australia’s languages is grave (in both senses). Of an original number of over 250 known Australian Indigenous languages, only about 145 Indigenous languages are still spoken and the vast majority of these, about 110, are critically endangered: they are spoken only by small groups of people, mostly over 40 years old. Eighteen languages are strong in the sense of being spoken by all age groups, but three or four of these are showing some disturbing signs of moving into endangerment. So of an original number of over 250 known Australian Indigenous languages, only 6% (i.e. 15) are in a healthy condition.
Aboriginal language revival began recently – from the late 1970s (Amery and Gale 2007) – and has therefore much to learn from other revival efforts, especially that of Hebrew, which began in the late nineteenth century. There has been little coordination among the geographically-scattered language revival efforts in Australia. Most recently, language revitalization practitioners have begun to share experiences at various conferences and workshops (Hobson et al. forthcoming). There is thus an urgent need for an on-the-ground, ongoing input, creating intellectual and practical synergy and complementing the mission of the regional Aboriginal language centres and the recently-established mobile language team based at the University of Adelaide – by adding significant advice based on scholarly and universal perspectives. Practical outcomes will include a useful handbook of the best practices for language revival in Australia (Christina Eira, pers. comm.), and an improved sense of well being in the local Aboriginal community.
There is community support in some parts of the country for revival and heritage learning programmes: either in reclamation proper (e.g. extensive courses similar to Israel’s ulpaním) or only in symbolic, postvernacular maintenance (teaching Aboriginal people some words and concepts related to the dead language – cf. postvernacular Yiddish among secular Jews in the United States – see Shandler 2005). At its broadest level language revival refers to the range of strategies for increasing knowledge and use of a language which is no longer spoken fully across all generations. In practice, however, this can range from largely symbolic uses of ancestral languages like naming buildings or places through to more constant involvement with the language through school-based language instruction (Walsh 2005a).
Comparative Analysis of Hebrew and Aboriginal Language Revival
Although they too were at the beginning very few in number, and encountered great hostility and animosity (e.g. by those who saw the revival as the desecration of a holy tongue), the Hebrew revivalists had several advantages compared with Australian revivalists. Consider the following:
(1) Documentation: extensive – consider, for example, the Hebrew Bible and the Mishnah.
(2) Accessibility: Jews have been exposed to literary Hebrew throughout the generations, e.g. when praying in the synagogue or when saying the blessing over the meal. It would be hard to find a Jew who did not have access to Hebrew (unless in totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union).
(3) Prestige: Hebrew was considered a prestigious language (as opposed to Yiddish, for instance, whose Australian sociolinguistic parallel might be Aboriginal English). It is true that some Aboriginal languages are held in high regard by their owners/custodians but unfortunately usually not by the wider Australian society.
(4) Uniqueness: Jews from all over the globe only had Hebrew in common (Aramaic was not as prominent), whereas there are dozens of 'sleeping' Aboriginal languages and it would be hard to choose only one unifying tongue, unless one resorts to Aboriginal English. The revival of a single language is much more manageable than that of numerous tongues in varying states of disrepair.
(5) National self-determination: revived Hebrew was aimed to be the language of an envisioned state, where speakers of Revived Hebrew would eventually have the political power (cf. Yadin and Zuckermann 2010).
(6) Lack of ownership: Unlike in the case of Aboriginal languages (cf. Walsh 2002), anybody has the right to speak Hebrew, without getting permission from the Jews.
(7) Easy borrowing: Loanwords and foreign words are not considered theft. In fact, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda loved borrowing from Arabic, Aramaic and other Semitic languages.
(8) Lack of place restriction: Hebrew could be and was revived all over the globe – consider Haim Leib Hazan’s coinage mishkafáim ‘glasses’ in 1890 in Grodno (see Zuckermann 2003: 1-4).
(9) Multilingualism: Jews arriving in Eretz Israel in the time of the revival were used to multilingualism and did not have a ‘monolingual mindset’. For example, back in Europe many of them spoke Yiddish at home and Polish in the market, and prayed in Hebrew (and Aramaic) in the synagogue.
(10) Number: There are many more Jews than Aboriginal people in Australia.
But, as it happens, Aboriginal revivalists actually have some advantages vis-à-vis Hebrew revivalists. Consider the following:
(1) Deontological reason for the revival: As we see it, Aboriginal tongues deserve to be revived for historical, humanistic and social justice, inter alia addressing inequality (cf. Thieberger 1990). This can provide strength to the revival attempts. We hear again and again 'native title' but where is the 'native tongue title'? Is land more important than langue and (cultural) lens? And if land, langue and heritage are bound together as a trinity, then why ask for reparation only for land?
(2) Numerous utilitarian reasons for the revival: The revival of sleeping Aboriginal languages can result in personal, educational and economic empowerment, sense of pride and higher self-esteem of people who have lost their heritage and purpose in life (see concluding remarks). The Hebrew revival had many less utilitarian purposes, the main one being simply the constitution of a unifying tongue to Jews from all over the world. It would have been unfair, for example, for Ladino-speaking Sephardim if German were selected.
(3) Governmental support: Although it could obviously be greater, the Australian government does support the reclamation and maintenance of Aboriginal languages, or at least there is an obvious address to apply for money from. This has not been the case in fin-de-siècle Palestine.
(4) Similarities between Aboriginal English and Aboriginal Languages: Aboriginal English (e.g. Nunga English in Adelaide), spoken by some revivalists, contain various linguistic features – such as connotations, associations, sounds and morphological characteristics like the dual – of the reclaimed Aboriginal languages at stake. One might perspicaciously argue that Israeli semantics, which is deeply modelled on Yiddish semantics, also maintains the original Hebrew semantics after all because Yiddish, a Germanic language with Romance substratum, was deeply impacted by Hebrew and Aramaic. However, the Yiddish dialects that have been the most influential ones in Israel, e.g. Polish Yiddish, are, in fact, the ones that underwent Slavonization from the thirteenth century onwards, when Jews moved from Germany to Slavonic-speaking areas in Eastern Europe. Aboriginal English is much younger and therefore is much more likely to retain features of Aboriginal languages, than Yiddish is to retain features of Hebrew.
Universal Constraints of Language Revival
And yet, although obviously language revival attempts should be tailored to the specific contexts, needs and desires of each community, there are some universal constraints that should be recognized. As we have already seen, Hebrew revivalists, who wished to speak pure Hebrew, failed in their imprisoning purism prism, the result being a multifaceted and fascinating fin-de-siècle Israeli language, both multi-layered and multi-sourced. Most relevantly, some Australian interest groups (cf. Tiwi in Dorian 1994: 481-4) get hung up on misled views akin to the slogan ‘Give me authenticity or give me death!’ (cf. ‘Give me Liberty, or give me Death!’, the famous quotation attributed to Patrick Henry from a speech he made to the Virginia Convention in America on 23 March 1775), where the death, of course, ends up being the Indigenous language they wish to save from ‘contamination’! (On authenticity and language revival, see also Wong 1999 and Hinton and Ahlers 1999.)
Why should we encourage revivalists and Aboriginal leaders to be realistic rather than puristic? Purism creates unrealistic expectations that may discourage learners from acquiring the emerging language. A revived language should not be viewed negatively if it is seen to be influenced by a neighbouring language or by English. The use of words from a neighbouring language should not discredit the revived language. There might be some rare occasions when it is more appropriate for revivalists to favour purism – see Harlow (1993) on Maori. However, in the case of reclamation proper (i.e. the revival of a language that has no native speakers such as Hebrew), one must learn to embrace, celebrate and champion – rather than chastise – the inevitable hybridity of the emerging language.
One might argue that the difference between the conditions that surround Aboriginal languages and Israeli are so large that it is impossible to learn across these contexts. But denying universal traits or constraints in human language in general, and in reversing language shift in particular, is counter-productive. Linguistic reality lies between relativism and universalism. No progress will be made by turning a blind eye to any of these extremes. Based on a critical analysis of Israeli, one can predict accurately the situation in various reclaimed Aboriginal languages such as Kaurna [ga:na], a resurrected language spoken around Adelaide, which is the result of one of the most successful revival attempts in Australia – cf. Gumbaynggirr (Ash et. al. forthcoming), Ngarrindjeri, Walmajarri and Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay.
There are scholars, e.g. Dalby (2003: 250), who scoff at some attempts at reviving the use of an endangered language: 'this is no longer a language, any more than musicians are speaking Italian when they say andante and fortissimo. These are simply loanwords used in a special context'. A more balanced view is manifested in Crystal's (2000: 162) comments on Kaurna:
The revived language is not the same as the original language, of course; most obviously, it lacks the breadth of functions which it originally had, and large amounts of old vocabulary are missing. But, as it continues in present-day use, it will develop new functions and new vocabulary, just as any other living language would, and as long as people value it as a true marker of their identity, and are prepared to keep using it, there is no reason to think of it as anything other than a valid system of communication.
The impact of English (Aboriginal or Australian English) on reclaimed Kaurna is far-reaching. Consider the following:
* At the level of phonology, there are often spelling pronunciations, especially for sequences of er (as in yerlo ‘sea’ and yerta for instance), ur (as in purle or purlaitye). In classical Kaurna, the r in these words belonged with the consonant (it was be retroflex) but many times we hear an er vowel as in English slur or sir. The original vowel was /a/ in yerlo and yerta, and /u/ in purle and purlaitye. Stress is often placed on the second syllable rather than on the first (Amery 2000: 121-122; Amery and Rigney 2004: 2-3).
* At the level of vocabulary, there are many calques – see Amery 2000: 124, as well as Chapter 12 Wodlingga 'In the Home' (pp. 63-70), Chapter 15 Tidnaparndo 'Football' (pp. 81-84) and Chapter 16 Kuya Pirri-wirkindi 'Fishing' (pp. 85-88) in Amery (2007), where a range of calques have been developed – especially evident in the names of AFL football teams such as Kuinyunda Meyunna (lit. 'sacred men') for the St Kilda Saints. Knowingly – and jocularly – cricket (the sport game) was replicated as yertabiritti (the term for the insect with the same name in English) (Amery 2003: 86). It should be noted, however, that in reclaimed Kaurna there are relatively few loanwords/foreignisms from English per se, far less than we see in any ‘strong’ language such as Pitjantjatjara or Yolngu Matha.
* Constituent/word order is free in classical Kaurna as in other Aboriginal languages, though it tended to be SOV (Subject-Object-Verb). Naturally, there are contemporary users of Kaurna who tend to produce more SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) sentences, replicating English (Amery and Rigney 2004: 5).
* English semantics tends to carry through to Kaurna words (Amery and Rigney 2004: 5-7).
* The most pervasive influence from English is at the level of discourse. Almost everything said or written is translated from English. Thus, the turn of phrase and the idiom are from English (Amery 2001a: 190-194; Amery 2001b; see also Amery and Rigney 2006).
And still, the impact of English on Kaurna is less than in many other revived languages in Australia – cf. the neighbouring Ngarrindjeri, where published texts are practically English calques: an isomorphic 1 to 1 translation of English, including the use of interrogative ‘where’ for ‘were’ and ‘thus’ for ‘the’. Case suffixes are used as prepositions – see p. iii of Reviving Languages: warranna purruttiappendi: tumbelin tungarar: renewal and reclamation programs for indigenous languages in schools (1999), as well as Rhonda Agius in Proctor and Gale (1997: 4-6).
We predict that any attempt to revive an Aboriginal language will result in a hybrid, combining components from Australian English, Aboriginal English, Kriol, other Aboriginal languages and the target Aboriginal tongue. But we are going to assist Aboriginal revivalists to make their efforts more efficient and to embrace hybridity.
Concluding Remarks
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. (Nelson Mandela)
This article contributes towards the establishment of Revival Linguistics, a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. Zuckermann`s term Revival Linguistics is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (<language contact). Revival linguistics inter alia explores the universal constraints and mechanisms involved in language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over the globe.
There is a need to map the revival attempts throughout Aboriginal Australia by (1) assessing the success of the revival so far; and (2) categorizing the specific need on a continuum of revival efforts, e.g. reclamation (e.g. Kaurna), renewal (e.g. Ngarrindjeri) and revitalization (e.g. Walmajarri) – cf. other RE-terms to be defined such as restoration, resurrection, resuscitation, reinvigoration, reintroduction, regenesis, revernacularization, reawakening, rebirth and renaissance.
Needless to say, even if there is eventually a sound understanding and awareness of the linguistic/sociolinguistic issues involved and even if the endeavour is well-theorised, language revival efforts may well still fail. Internal factional politics are likely to be far more influential in deciding the fate of a language revival movement that any linguistic theory or lack of one. There is no doubt that the first stage of any desire by professional linguists to assist in language revival involves a long initial period of carefully observing, listening, learning and characterizing each indigenous community specifically. Only then can we inspire and assist. That said, this article proposes that there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would be most useful to endangered languages in general and to Aboriginal linguistic revival in particular.
While we know that language revitalization can have numerous beneficial effects, we also know that some revival efforts are more successful than others (see Walsh forthcoming A). A better understanding of success in this arena by surveying numerous language reinvigoration efforts in Australia, and by drawing on lessons from the Hebrew revival, will enable less waste of resources and better outcomes. Besides significant scholarly impact and intellectual benefits, the results of such endeavours will also improve substantially the future of Australia's Indigenous communities, promoting and maintaining their physical, spiritual and cultural good health through:
(1) Transformation of disturbed individuals;
(2) Capacity building: Some Aboriginal people will undertake training only because they are interested in language(s). However, what they will learn in the process are useful generic skills such as literacy, computer literacy, conducting research and giving speeches in public;
(3) Improved sense of well being in the local Aboriginal community;
(4) Reconciliation and potential decrease in racism towards Aboriginal people in some country centres;
(5) Promoting cultural tourism to Aboriginal areas in order to learn about their cultures and languages.
Regaining language is a life-changing experience for many Aboriginal people. One Aboriginal person has told us that he used to be angry, often drunk and in trouble with police and his home life was a mess. Two years later, when he had regained his language, his situation had turned around and his family life had greatly improved.
Through this and other experiences we became convinced that a small investment in language revitalization could yield very significant dividends. Language revival can result in the saving of vast amounts of money and resources going into housing, social services and health intervention to little effect. A small investment into language revitalization can make an enormous difference to society. Public health can benefit from language intervention.
To date such money as has been devoted to Aboriginal language revival and maintenance has not been well targeted. This is partly because Australian Indigenous language policies have been piecemeal and un-coordinated at best or otherwise non-existent or implicit (Liddicoat 2008, McKay 2007, 2009, Truscott and Malcolm forthcoming; see also http://www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/ aust/policy.html – accessed 6 July 2010). We aim at a better informed Indigenous language policy at the national level, as well as in particular institutional contexts. For instance, in considering Indigenous policies of Australian universities, Gunstone (2008: 107) complains: ‘it is apparent that universities are still largely failing to adequately address the educational needs of Indigenous staff, students and communities.’
As cellist Yo Yo Ma said on 28 November 2000 at the White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy:
A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.' We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.
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Walsh, Michael [forthcoming B]. 'The link between language revitalization and Aboriginal health: mental, physical and social' (to be submitted to Medical Journal of Australia)
Walsh, Michael and Troy, Jakelin 2005c. 'Languages Off Country? Revitalizing the 'Right' Indigenous Languages in the South East of Australia', in Nigel Crawhall and Nicholas Ostler (eds.) Creating Outsiders: Endangered Languages, Migration and Marginalization. (Proceedings of Ninth Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 18-20 November 2005). Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages, 71-81.
Walsh, Michael and Troy, Jakelin 2004. 'Terminology planning in Aboriginal Australia', Current Issues in Language Planning Vol. 5 (2): 151-165.
Walsh, Michael and Troy, Jakelin 2008b. 'Terminology planning in Aboriginal Australia' in Anthony J. Liddicoat and Richard B. Baldauf Jr. (eds) Language Planning and Policy: Language Planning in Local Contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 156-170.
Wong, Laiana 1999. ‘Authenticity and the Revitalization of Hawaiian’. Anthropology and Education Quarterly (Authenticity and Identity: Lessons from Indigenous Language Education, March 1999) 30.1: 94-115.
Yadin, Azzan and Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2010. 'Blorít: Pagans' Mohawk or Sabras' Forelock?: Ideologically Manipulative Secularization of Hebrew Terms in Socialist Zionist Israeli,' pp. 84-125 (Chapter 6) of Tope Omoniyi (ed.), The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change, Conflict and Accommodation. London – New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 1999. Review Article of Nakdimon Shabbethay Doniach and Ahuvia Kahane (eds), The Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary. Oxford – New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. International Journal of Lexicography 12: 325-46.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2003. Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. London – New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2005. 'Abba, why was Professor Higgins trying to teach Eliza to speak like our cleaning lady?: Mizrahim, Ashkenazim, prescriptivism and the real sounds of the Israeli language.' Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 19, pp. 210-231.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2008a. Israelít safá yafá (Israeli – A Beautiful Language). Tel Aviv: Am Oved.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2008b. '"Realistic Prescriptivism": The Academy of the Hebrew Language, its Campaign of "Good Grammar" and Lexpionage, and the Native Israeli Speakers.' Israel Studies in Language and Society 1.1: 135-154.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2009. 'Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns.' Journal of Language Contact, Varia 2: 40-67.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2010. 'Do Israelis Understand the Hebrew Bible?', The Bible and Critical Theory 6.1-6.7. DOI:10.2104/bc100006
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2011. 'Hebrew Revivalists’ Goals vis-à-vis the Emerging Israeli Language' in Joshua A. Fishman and Ofelia García (eds), Volume II of The Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity: The Success and Failure Continuum, Oxford University Press.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad (forthcoming). Language Revival and Multiple Causation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brief Bios:
Prof. Ghil'ad Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics of Endangered Languages and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow at the University of Adelaide, and 211 Professor at Shanghai International Studies University. He is the author of Language Revival and Multiple Causation (Oxford Univ Press, forthcoming), Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli - A Beautiful Language) (Am Oved, 2008) and Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). He has been Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, has taught e.g. at the Univ of Queensland, Univ of Cambridge and National Univ of Singapore, and has been research fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center (Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy), Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (UT Austin) and Japan's National Language Research Institute. www.zuckermann.org
Ghil'ad Zuckermann's EMAIL: gzuckermann@gmail.com.
Since 1972 Dr Michael Walsh has conducted fieldwork in the Top End of the Northern Territory, mainly in the Darwin-Daly region. This has been a mixture of academic endeavours as well as consultancies since 1979 mainly relating to Aboriginal land issues. From 1999 he has participated in the revitalization of Aboriginal languages in NSW. From 1982 until 2005 he was part of the teaching staff of the Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney. Since then, he has continued his research interests especially through a large ARC grant involving a team of linguists and musicologists running from 2004 to 2010. http://azoulay.arts.usyd.edu.au/mpsong/
Michael Walsh's EMAIL: michael.walsh@sydney.edu.au
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Language Contact and Globalisation: The Camouflaged Influence of English on the World’s Languages – with special attention to Israeli (sic) and Mandarin
Cambridge Review of international Affairs 16.2: 287-307 (2003)
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2003. ‘Language Contact and Globalisation: The Camouflaged Influence of English on the World’s Languages – with special attention to Israeli (sic) and Mandarin’. Cambridge Review of international Affairs 16.2: 287-307.
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Cultural Hybridity: Multisourced Neologization in “Reinvented” Languages and in Languages with “Phono-Logographic” Script
Languages in Contrast 4.2: 281-318 (2004)
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2004. ‘Cultural Hybridity: Multisourced Neologization in “Reinvented” Languages and in Languages with “Phono-Logographic” Script’. Languages in Contrast 4.2: 281-318.
"Abba, Why Was Professor Higgins Trying to Teach Eliza to Speak Like Our Cleaning Lady?”: Mizrahim, Ashkenazim, Prescriptivism and the Real Sounds of the Israeli Language
Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 19: 210-31
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2005. ‘“Abba, Why Was Professor Higgins Trying to Teach Eliza to Speak Like Our Cleaning Lady?”: Mizrahim, Ashkenazim, Prescriptivism and the Real Sounds of the Israeli Language’. Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 19: 210-31.
אבא, למה פרופסור היגינס לימד את אליזה לדבר כמו העוזרת שלנו?
New Vision for "Israeli Hebrew": Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5.1: 57-71
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2006. 'A New Vision for "Israeli Hebrew": Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language'. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5.1: 57-71.
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Direct and Indirect Speech in Straight-Talking Israeli
Acta Linguistica Hungarica 53: 467-481
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2006. 'Direct and Indirect Speech in Straight-Talking Israeli'. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 53: 467-481.
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Seen by: Di Yisroeldike shprakh: Hebreish Lebt Vider, Yidish Lebt Vayter (The Israeli Language: Hebrew Revived, Yiddish Survived)
Afn Shvel 337-338: 24-27
Zuckermann, Ghil`ad 2007. "Di Yisroeldike shprakh: Hebreish Lebt Vider, Yidish Lebt Vayter" (The Israeli Language: Hebrew Revived, Yiddish Survived). Afn Shvel 337-338: 24-27.
די ישראלדיקע שפראך: העברעיש לעבט ווידער, יידיש לעבט וייטער
גלעד צוקערמאן
אויפן שוועל
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Seen by: Comparative Constructions in "Israeli Hebrew"
Melilah 2006/2: 1-16
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2007. 'Comparative Constructions in "Israeli Hebrew"'. Melilah 2006/2: 1-16.
“Realistic Prescriptivism”: The Academy of the Hebrew Language, its Campaign of “Good Grammar” and Lexpionage, and the Native Israeli Speakers
Israel Studies in Language and Society 1.1: 135-154. (2008)
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2008. ‘“Realistic Prescriptivism”: The Academy of the Hebrew Language, its Campaign of “Good Grammar” and Lexpionage, and the Native Israeli Speakers' Israel Studies in Language and Society 1.1: 135-154.
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Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns
Journal of Language Contact, Varia 2: 40-67. (2009)
Author: Zuckermann, Ghil'ad
LINK TO THE ARTICLE:
http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Hybridity_versus_Revivability.pdf
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2009. 'Hybridity versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns. Journal of Language Contact, Varia 2: 40-67.
LINK TO THE ARTICLE:
http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/Hybridity_versus_Revivability.pdf
The aim of this article is to suggest that due to the ubiquitous multiple causation, the revival of a no-longer spoken language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). Thus, one should expect revival efforts to result in a language with a hybridic genetic and typological character. The article highlights salient morphological constructions and categories, illustrating the difficulty in determining a single source for Israeli grammar. The European impact in these features is apparent inter alia in structure, semantics or productivity. Being an article rather than a long book, this paper does not attempt to be grammatically exhaustive but rather to cast new light on the partial success of language revival in general and on the genetics of Israeli in particular.
Multiple causation is manifested in the Congruence Principle, according to which if a feature exists in more than one contributing language, it is more likely to persist in the emerging language. This article discusses multiple causation in (1) constituent order, (2) tense system, (3) copula enhancement, (4) calquing, and (5) phono-semantic matching in ‘Israeli’ (Zuckermann 1999, somewhat misleadingly a.k.a. ‘Revived Hebrew’ / ‘Modern Hebrew’). It suggests that the reality of linguistic genesis is far more complex than a simple family tree system allows. ‘Revived’ languages are unlikely to have a single parent.
Generally speaking, whereas most forms of Israeli are Semitic, many of its patterns are European. It is proposed that (1) Whereas Hebrew was synthetic, Israeli – following Yiddish etc. – is much more analytic; (2) Israeli is a habere language (cf. Latin habere ‘to have’, taking the direct object), in stark contrast to Hebrew; (3) European languages sometimes dictate the gender of Israeli coinages; (4) The (hidden) productivity and semantics of the allegedly completely Hebrew system of Israeli verb-templates are, in fact, often European; (5) In Hebrew there was a polarity-of-gender agreement between nouns and numerals, e.g. ‘éser banót ‘ten girls’ versus ‘asar-á baním ‘ten (feminine) boys’. In Israeli there is a simpler – European – system, e.g. éser banót ‘ten girls’, éser baním ‘ten boys’; (6) Yiddish has shaped the semantics of the Israeli verbal system in the case of inchoativity; (7) Following ‘Standard Average European’, the Israeli proclitics be- ‘in’, le- ‘to’ and mi-/me ‘from’, as well as the coordinating conjunction ve- ‘and’, are phonologically less dependent than in Hebrew; (8) Word-formation in Israeli abounds with European mechanisms such as portmanteau blending.
Israeli possesses distinctive socio-historical characteristics such as the lack of a continuous chain of native speakers from spoken Hebrew to Israeli, the non-Semitic mother tongues spoken by the revivalists, and the European impact on literary Hebrew. Consequently, it presents the linguist with a fascinating and multifaceted laboratory in which to examine a wider set of theoretical problems concerning language genesis and hybridity, social issues like language vis-à-vis politics, and practical matters, e.g. whether it is possible to revive a no-longer spoken language. The multisourced nature of Israeli and the role of the Congruence Principle in its genesis have implications for historical linguistics, language planning and the study of language, culture and identity.
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Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad. 2003. Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad. 2004. ‘Cultural Hybridity: Multisourced Neologization in “Reinvented” Languages and in Languages with “Phono-Logographic” Script’. Languages in Contrast 4.281-318.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad. 2005. ‘“Abba, why was Professor Higgins trying to teach Eliza to speak like our cleaning lady?”: Mizrahim, Ashkenazim, Prescriptivism and the Real Sounds of the Israeli Language’. Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 19.210-31.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad. 2006a. ‘Complement Clause Types in Israeli’, pp. 72-92 (Chapter 3) of R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (eds), Complementation: A Cross-Linguistic Typology (Explorations in Linguistic Typology, vol. III), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad. 2006b. ‘Direct and Indirect Speech in Straight-Talking Israeli’. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 53.4: 467-81.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad. 2006c. ‘A New Vision for Israeli Hebrew: Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language’. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5.1: 57-71.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad. 2008a. Israelít safá yafá (Israeli, a Beautiful Language: Hebrew as Myth). Tel Aviv: Am Oved.
Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad. 2008b. ‘“Realistic Prescriptivism”: The Academy of the Hebrew Language, its Campaign of “Good Grammar” and Lexpionage, and the Native Israeli Speakers’. Israel Studies in Language and Society 1.1: 135-154.
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"Etymythological Othering" and the Power of "Lexical Engineering" in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. A Socio-Philo(sopho)logical Perspective
Pp. 237-58 (Chapter 16) of Tope Omoniyi and Joshua A. Fishman (eds), Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture series). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2006. ‘"Etymythological Othering" and the Power of "Lexical Engineering" in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. A Socio-Philo(sopho)logical Perspective’ pp. 237-58 (Chapter 16) of Tope Omoniyi and Joshua A. Fishman (eds), Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture series). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Complement Clause Types in Israeli
Chapter 3 (pp. 72-92) of Complementation: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, edited by R. M. W. Dixon and A. Y. Aikhenvald, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2006. 'Complement Clause Types in Israeli', pp. 72-92 of Complementation: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, edited by R. M. W. Dixon and A. Y. Aikhenvald, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Icelandic: Phonosemantic Matching
Co-authored with Yair Sapir; pp. 19-43 (Chapter 2) (References: 296-325) of Judith Rosenhouse and Rotem Kowner (eds), Globally Speaking: Motives for Adopting English Vocabulary in Other Languages. Clevedon - Buffalo - Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
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Blorít: Pagans' Mohawk or Sabras' Forelock?: Ideologically Manipulative Secularization of Hebrew Terms in Socialist Zionist Israeli
Pp. 84-125 (Chapter 6) of Tope Omoniyi (ed.), The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change, Conflict and Accommodation. London - New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; co-authored with Azzan Yadin.
Yadin, Azzan and Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2010. "Blorít: Pagans' Mohawk or Sabras' Forelock?: Ideologically Manipulative Secularization of Hebrew Terms in Socialist Zionist Israeli", pp. 84-125 (Chapter 6) of Tope Omoniyi (ed.), The Sociology of Language and Religion: Change, Conflict and Accommodation. London - New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Icelandic: Phonosemantic Matching
Co-authored with Yair Sapir; pp. 19-43 (Chapter 2) (References: 296-325) of Judith Rosenhouse and Rotem Kowner (eds), Globally Speaking: Motives for Adopting English Vocabulary in Other Languages. Clevedon - Buffalo - Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Sapir, Yair and Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2008. ‘Icelandic: Phonosemantic Matching’, pp. 19-43 (Chapter 2) (References: 296-325) of Judith Rosenhouse and Rotem Kowner (eds), Globally Speaking: Motives for Adopting English Vocabulary in Other Languages. Clevedon - Buffalo - Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
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"ben ivrit leisraelit" (Between Hebrew and Israeli)
Hed HaUlpan HaKhadash 95: 89-103 (co-authored with Ido Bassok and Tamar Sovran)
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad, Sovran, Tamar and Bassok, Ido 2009. 'ben ivrit leisraelit' (Between Hebrew and Israeli) . Hed HaUlpan HaKhadash 95: 89-103. (in Israeli)
בין "עברית" ל"ישראלית": רב שיח בהשתתפות פרופ' גלעד צוקרמן, פרופ' תמר סוברן ועידו בסוק
.הד האולפן החדש, גיליון 95
תאריך פרסום: אביב תשס"ט - 2009
http://cms.education.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/105FFD62-E387-46FE-89F2-D0DBA6841829/96091/BeinIvritLeisraelit12.pdf
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Toponymy and Monopoly: One Toponym, Two Parents – Ideological Hebraization of Arabic Place Names in the Israeli Language
Onoma 41: 163-184. (2011)
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2011. ‘Toponymy and Monopoly: One Toponym, Two Parents – Ideological Hebraization of Arabic Place Names in the Israeli Language’, Onoma 41: 163-184.
ABSTRACT
אם איננה חדשה– הגדולה שבמעלות למלה חדשה
‘The greatest virtue of a new word is that it is not new’
(Pínes 1893: 61)
אַ קלוגער פֿאַרשטייט פֿון איין וואָרט צוויי
‘A wise man hears one word and understands two’
(Yiddish proverb, cf. Bernstein 1908: 243)
In 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of Israel, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (born Grün) founded the Geographical Names Committee for the Hebraization of Arabic toponyms in the Negev, the southern part of Israel. The committee worked for 6 months and suggested 537 names.
Analysing The Government Year-Book of 1950-1, I have found that the Committee used three main methods for suggesting Israeli replacements:
1. Phonetic matching of the Arabic toponym with a pre-existent Hebrew item.
2. Literal translation of the Arabic toponym into ‘Hebrew’ (in fact, Israeli – see Zuckermann 2008).
3. Linking the place to a site mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures, especially the Old Testament, and suggesting the ancient Hebrew toponym.
Of the 537 neologisms suggested by the Committee, 175 were phonetic matches, 167 literal translations and 124 ancient Hebrew toponyms linked to the present sites. The remaining 71 included other kinds of neologization such as euphemistic enantiosemic translation. For example, the semantically positive Hebrew-descent toponym en yáhav, lit. ‘The Spring of Hope’, replaced the semantically negative Arabic toponym `ajn alwabá', lit. ‘The Spring of Plague’. Similarly, the Arabic toponym bi:r ħíndis ‘The Well of Darkness’ was translated as beér orá ‘The Well of Light’. However, the initial name for this place – coined by the soldiers of the Israeli Army Engineering Corps who stayed there while building the road to Eilat in 1949-50 – was beér handasá, lit. ‘The Well of (the) Engineering (Corps)’, a phonetic matching of the Arabic bi:r ħíndis.
Based on such examples from Israel’s efforts in building and defining itself as a nation – as well as from rejective and adoptive lexical engineering by Jews throughout history – this paper explores the intricate and fascinating relationship between names and identity.
Concluding Remarks
Juliet: What’s in a name?
Answer: A lot!
Juliet: That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
Retort: Not in the Middle East!
References
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Bar-Itzhak, Haya 1996. polín – agadót reshít: etnopoétika vekorót agadatiím (Legends of Origin of the Jews of Poland: Ethnopoetics and Legendary Chronicles). Tel Aviv: Poalim. (in Israeli)
Blanc, Haim 1989. leshón bney adám (Human Language). Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute.
Gordon, Judah Leib 1883. kol shiréy górdon (All Judah Leib Gordon’s Poems), vol. i. (in Hebrew)
Gordon, Judah Leib 1956. kitvéy yehudá leyb górdon – shirá (Judah Leib Gordon’s Works – Poetry). Tel Aviv: Dvir. (Gordon lived between the years 1831-92) (in Hebrew)
Jastrow, Marcus 1903. A Dictionary of the Targumim, The Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. Jerusalem: Horev.
Klausner, Joseph G. 1949. halashón haivrít – lashón khayá: hakhyaatá shel halashón haivrít al yesodót madaiím (The Hebrew Language – A Living Language: The Revival of the Hebrew Language on Scientific Foundations). Jerusalem: Va’ad HaLashon HaIvrit – Bialik Institute. (2nd Edition) (in Israeli)
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Saddan, Dov 1955. ‘dilúg rav vekhayotsé baéle (bisuméy lashón)’ (dilúg rav ‘telegraph’ (lit. ‘big leap’) etc.). Leshonenu La’am 6 (54-5): 33-43. (in Israeli)
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Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet.
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Shnatón HaMemshalá h.t.sh.y.. (The [Israel] Government Year-Book 1950-1) 1951. (in Israeli)
Singh, Rajendra 1987. ‘Well formedness Conditions and Phonological Theory’. Phonologica1984 (Proceedings of the Fifth International Phonology Meeting, Eisenstadt, 25-28 June 1984). in Wolfgang U. Dressler et al. (eds), Cambridge University Press, pp. 273-285.
Tazkír HaVáad HaLeumí lememshélet érets yisraél al shitát haktív behaatakát hashemót hageográfiim vehapratiím (Memorandum of the National Committee to the Government of Eretz Yisrael on the Spelling Method of Copying Geographical and Personal Names) 1932. Lešonénu 4, Supplement to No. 3, pp. 1-12.
Vilnay, Zev (born Vilensky) 1940. ‘shemót lishuvím ivriím halekukhím mishemót arviím’ (Names of Jewish Settlements taken from Arabic Names). Lešonénu 10 (4): 323-31. (in Israeli)
Yule, Henry and A. C. Burnell 1903. Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms (Etymological, Historical. Geographical and Discursive). London: John Murray. (1st Edition: 1886)
Weinreich, Uriel 1955. ‘Yiddish Blends with a Slavic Element’. Word 2: 603-10.
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Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad 2003. Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. London – New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Introduction
הגדולה שבמעלות למלה חדשה – אם איננה חדשה
Hagdolá shebamaalót lemilá khadashá – im enená khadashá.
“The greatest virtue of a new word is that it is not new.”
(Pínes 1893, 61)
אַ קלוגער פֿאַרשטייט פֿון איין וואָרט צוויי
A klúger farshtéyt fun eyn vort tsvey.
“A wise man hears one word and understands two.”
(Yiddish proverb, cf. Bernstein 1908, 243)
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet”, says Juliet to Romeo (or Yael to Ram, as per
a fin-de-siècle translation to Modern Hebrew) in a piece by the famous
164
playwright referred to by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi as
“Sheikh Zubeir”. There are cases in which the name is extremely
important because it determines the way people perceive the thing it
stands for. Just as thought influences language, language can shape
thought. It was Confucius who said 2,500 years ago that the first thing
a politician has to do is to rectify names!
Indeed, in 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of
Israel (1948), Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion—Ben-Gurion being
a Hebraization of his original surname Grün—founded the Geograph-
ical Names Committee for the Hebraization of Arabic toponyms in the
Negev, the southern part of Israel. The committee worked for six
months and suggested 537 names.
This article consists of three parts: it will first explore mecha-
nisms of neologization involving more than one source; it will then
analyse examples of such mechanisms throughout Jewish history, and
it will finally propose that these mechanisms were prevalent in the
ideological hebraization of Arabic toponyms requested by Ben-Gurion.
Talking about names, I use the term Israeli )see Zuckermann
1999) to refer to the language otherwise known as Modern Hebrew.
The reason is that the beautiful language spoken in today’s Israel is a
multifaceted and fascinating fin-de-siècle hybrid, based not only on
“sleeping beauty” (or alternatively, “walking dead”) Hebrew but also
on the revivalists’ mother tongues such as Yiddish.
1. Etymythological nativization
Onomastics is sometimes separated from the field of lexicography.
But in Israeli many mechanisms of lexical expansion occur in the case
of toponyms—and anthroponyms (see Grün → Ben-Gurion above)—
exactly as they do in “normal” lexical items. Consider the numerous
neologisms deriving from more than one source (one toponym, two
parents), a phenomenon of lexical enrichment referred by Zuckermann
(2003) as multisourced neologization. An example of such multi-
sourced neologization is the widespread process of etymythological
nativization. But before describing it, let us first define etymythology.
Etymythology (i.e. mythological etymology) is also known as
popular etymology, folk-etymology, fake etymology, synchronic ety-
mology and even para-etymology (cf. paretimologia – cf. paretimolo-
gia, the usual Italian term for it. However, despite its having so many
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Toponymy and
monopoly
165
names, it has not been paid enough attention—as scholars such as
Coates (1987) rightly assert. Definitions of etymythology vary. Some
emphasize the subconscious (erroneous, nincompoopish) nature of the
derivation (see Bolinger 1975, 406–407; Crystal 1993). Others focus
on the reshaping of the word/phrase (see Trask 1993, 105). The phe-
nomenon usually involves the fallacy that phonetic similarity means
genetic relationship.
Figuratively speaking, the etymythologizer applies his/her Apol-
lonian tendency (cf. la tendenza apollinea in Pisani 1967, 160). Gen-
erally, the Apollonian tendency is the wish to describe and create
order, especially with unfamiliar information or new experience. An
updated, albeit frivolous, example of this general tendency is the story
of the South Dakotan who went to Athens and was happily surprised
to find out that the Greeks are NASA fans: wherever he went, he saw
the name Apollo. As this anecdote shows, the Apollonian tendency
would also seem to include a significant dimension of ethnocentricity.
Specifically in linguistics, the “Apollonian tendency” is mani-
fested in justifications for the use of a word and in the craving for
meaningfulness. Consider the perception of naïve young Israeli read-
ers of the name dóktor sus (cf. Dr Seuss [‘dækt¢(r) su:s]), the pseud-
onym of Theodore Seuss Geisel, American author and illustrator of
children’s books (1904–1991). Many Israelis are certain that he is
“Dr Horse” since the Israeli word sus means ‘horse’. Note the seren-
dipitous prevalence of animals in Dr Seuss’s stories.
Most importantly, our understanding of etymythology would be
enhanced by providing a clear-cut distinction between (1) merely pas-
sive derivational-only etymythology, i.e. cases of mistaken derivation,
where there is rationalization ex post facto, and (2) active, creative gen-
erative etymythology. The distinction is crucial, although often deriva-
tional-only etymythology is the first stage of generative etymythology.
One of the most common mechanisms of generative etymythol-
ogy is etymythological nativization: a camouflaged borrowing in
which a foreign lexical item is matched with a phonetically (and
sometimes also semantically) similar pre-existent native word/root. In
other words, “etymythological nativization” is a multi-sourced neolo-
gism that preserves the (approximate) sound of the parallel expression
in the source-language, using pre-existent target-language elements
(and that sometimes has a similar meaning to the source-language
expression).
166
Unlike morphemic adaptation, which only uses target-language
grammatical morphemes such as noun-patterns, etymythological
nativization is a kind of neologization that makes use of pre-existent
full target-language lexical items to replace the source-language word.
There are three types of etymythological nativization—according to
the degree of semantic affinity between the source-language expres-
sion and the original target-language expression—before the latter
undergoes etymythological nativization. This degree of affinity is on
a continuum.
1. Phonetic matching (PM)—where the target-language material is
originally similar to the source-language lexical item phonetically
but not semantically.
2. Semanticized phonetic matching (SPM)—where the target-lan-
guage material is originally similar to the source-language lexical
item phonetically, as well as semantically albeit in a loose way.
3. Phono-semantic matching (PSM)—where the target-language
material is originally similar to the source-language lexical item
both phonetically and semantically.
An example of the latter, phono-semantic matching, is the Israeli word
dibúv ‘dubbing’, concocted in the late twentieth century to domesticate
the English word dubbing with the pre-existent Hebrew word [dib’bub]
‘inducing (someone) to speak; speech’. See the figure below:
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
English
dubbing
Israeli Hebrew
דיבוב
dibúb/divúv
‘dubbing’
(Medieval) Hebrew
דבוב
[dib’bub] ‘speech’
‘inducing someone to speak’
(in Israeli Hebrew)
cf. דובב שׂפתי ישנים
(Song of Songs, 7:10)
An older phono-semantic matching, officially proposed on 27 April
1890 in the Hebrew newspaper HaZefira (published in Warsaw) is
mishkafáim ‘glasses’. The coiner, Chaim Leib Hazan, from Hrodna,
chose the (Biblical) Hebrew root √Òqp (the root of mishkafáim) “because
Toponymy and
monopoly
167
of its similarity to the Greek word skopéw skopéo (‘I look at’), which
appears in the names for all glass lenses in the languages of Europe:
telescope, microscope, kaleidoscope and the like” (see Zuckermann
2003, 1). See the figure below:
Ancient Greek
skopéw
skopéo
‘I look at’
cf. Yiddish שפאַקולןshpakúln
‘spectacles’ (Lithuanian
Yiddish ספאַקולןspakúln);
English spectacles
Israeli
משקפיים
mishkafáim
‘glasses,
spectacles’
(Biblical) Hebrew
שק״פ
√Òqp
‘look out/through’
Phono-semantic matching is widespread inter alia in the following
language categories:
1. “Reinvented”, standardized and puristically-oriented languages,
in which language-planners attempt to replace undesirable loan-
words, e.g. Israeli, Revolutionized Turkish (Zuckermann 2003) and
Icelandic.
2. Languages using “phono-logographic” script, e.g. Chinese and Japa-
nese, in the latter to the extent that kanji are used (Zuckermann 2003).
3. Pidgins and creoles, where owing to the high number of languages
involved in the hybridization, lexical conflation occurs naturally,
e.g. Tok Pisin and Jamaican Creole (Zuckermann 2003).
Phonetic matching is common in secret argots, where speakers camou-
flage lexical items to make them unrecognizable to outsiders, e.g.
Judaeo-German, Jewish secret languages and thief argots (Zuckermann
2003). It can be found in minority languages, where attempts are made
to create pure identity and sometimes to prevent outsiders from under-
standing key utterances, e.g. Romany. It is widespread in migrants’
languages—consider American Italian bimbo (‘child’) ‘beam’, giuro (‘I
swear’) ‘Jew’ and grasso (‘fat, greasy’) ‘gas’ (Livingston 1918, 225).
But given the widespread, natural Apollonian tendency, phonetic
matching is obviously common in numerous other languages. A simple
example of phonetic matching in English is mayday, which nativizes
168
French m’aider ‘(to) help me!’ (according to the Radio Telegraph
Convention in 1927; Oxford English dictionary [OED]) or Dialectal/
Colloquial French m’aidez ‘help me!’ (in contrast to Standard French
aidez-moi) or French venez m’aider ‘come to help me!’ (cf. OED).
The meaning of the pre-existent English lexical items May and day
have nothing to do with ‘help’. Note that the currently common calls
for help in French are au secours ‘help!, assist!’ and aidez-moi ‘help
me!’
The first Spanish sailors who encountered Nahuatl (Aztec)
ahuakatl ‘Persea gratissima, avocado’ (lit. ‘testicle’), adapted it pho-
netically as aguacate (this is the current Spanish word for ‘avocado’
and may have been influenced by Spanish agua ‘water’). However, in
some places this adaptation was matched phonetically with Old Span-
ish avocado, lit. ‘advocate’ (cf. Contemporary Spanish abogado
‘advocate’, cf. Spanish evocado ‘recalled, evoked, invoked’), although
of course, ‘advocate’ has nothing to do with the large testicle-shaped
fruit. Note that Spanish avocado entered English in the late seven-
teenth century as alligator (pear), again a phonetic matching.
The Apollonian tendency is the reason for phonetic matching
being prevalent also in the case of toponyms. Consider the following:
• Tamil [amba†’†a∞] (/ampa†’†a∞/), lit. ‘barber’ (also a Hindu caste
traditionally of hairdressers), the name of a bridge in Mylapore, an
old cultural citadel of Madras (currently Chennai): a phonetic
matching—perhaps via Ambuton (Yule and Burnell 1886, cf. 1903,
67a)—of Hamilton, the name of the engineer who built it. Intrigu-
ingly, the Tamil name was later re-adopted in English as Barber’s
Bridge.
• Latin unguentum Neapolitanum, lit. ‘Neapolitan ointment’ was
nativized in German as umgewendten Napoleon, lit. ‘turned around
Napoleon’ (cf. Schleicher 1860, 116).
• French Château-Thierry was referred to by American soldiers in
1918 as Shadow Theory (cf. Anttila 1989, 93).
• Geras ‘old people’ (cf. Greek gòras ‘old age’), the name of a
Roman town in Jordan (Jarash) entered Arabic as ‘[ جرشd”®araÒ]
‘crop, grinding’.
• Nahuatl (Aztec) cuauhnahuac, lit. ‘near the trees, beside the forest’
(a place currently in Mexico) > Spanish Cuernavaca (cuerna ‘horn,
glass made of horn’ + vaca ‘cow’.
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Toponymy and
monopoly
169
Besides the universal Apollonian tendency, one of the main moti-
vations for toponymic phonetic matching might have been iconicity,
the belief that there is something intrinsic about the sound of names.
The very iconicity might be the reason for refraining from translating
Hallelujah and Amen in so many languages, as if the sounds of such
basic religious notions have to do with their referents themselves—as
if by losing the sound, one might lose the meaning. This brings us to
etymythology in Jewish tradition.The gematric (numerological) value
of ‘ ייןwine’ is 70 ( )05 = ן ;01< = י ;01 = יand this is also the gemat-
ric value of ‘ סודsecret’ ( .)4 = ד ;6 = ו ;06 = סThus, this sentence,
according to many Jews at the time, had to be true.
2. Rejective vs. adoptive toponymic matching in Jewish tradition
Besides the universal phenomena of iconicity and the Apollonian ten-
dency, toponymic phonetic matches have been widespread throughout
Jewish history because of the Jewish midrashic tradition of homiletic
commentary on the Hebrew scriptures. In these midrashim (plural of
midrásh ‘examination, investigation, commentary’), playful puns and the
use of serendipitous similarity between etymologically-distinct words
were employed in the service of interpretation. In later generations too,
wordplay has been a conspicuous feature of Jewish oral argumentation—
cf. pilpul (lit. ‘peppering’) Producing a witticism (in both the general and
the contemptuous use of this word itself), reflecting humour at the
expense of another—and extremely often at the expense of oneself—has
been most welcome in Judaism throughout the generation.
I distinguish between rejective etymythological toponyms and
adoptive ones—according to whether negative or positive meaning is
associated with the material used to match the original name. Whereas
rejective toponyms originate in Othering, us versus them, adoptive
toponyms reflect appropriation and cultural flirting. Let us begin with
the “bad ones”.
2.1. Rejective lexical engineering: Othering
Rejective lexical engineering manifests, among other things, the phe-
nomenon of Othering, defining and securing one’s own (positive) iden-
tity through (the stigmatization of) the Other. The Other is what permits
us to discover—and even constitute—the Self. The Self is defined in
170
relation to Others; we define ourSelves through the Others: us versus
them. Consider the following toponymic matches in Jewish tradition:
• Medieval Hebrew !amaleq ‘Amalek’, a nation epitomizing evil since
the days of the Old Testament, was used to refer to hostile Armenia.
• Lithuanian Ashkenazic Hebrew ra dom (cf. Yiddish ra dam, from
Hebrew ra! dam) ‘of bad blood’ is a rejective match for Polish
Radom, the name of a town in Poland (approximately 100 km south
of Warsaw), or of its Yiddish adaptation ród¢m (see Weinreich 1955,
609; Wexler 1991, 42). Thus, if a pogrom had occurred in Radom,
it would have been rationalized by ra dam ‘of bad blood’. Obviously,
providing such an etymythological explanation for the pogrom was
regarded by some Jews as a mere wordplay. However, others might
have conceived of ra dom as having deep intrinsic truth, which might
have been religiously and homiletically based. One should remember
that at that time it was a common belief that all languages were God-
created and that Hebrew was the divine Ursprache.
• Ostra (south-east of Rovno)—cf. Yiddish óstr¢ and Polish Ostróg—
was referred to in Yiddish as óys tóyr¢ ‘without Torah’. However,
by others (or by the same people in other times), it was Ashkenazic
Hebrew oys tóyro or Yiddish אות תּורהos-tór¢, i.e. ‘sign of Torah’
(cf. Bar-Itzhak 1996, 29), which is an adoptive toponym.
Rejective lexical engineering occurs in literary works. In Dovid Hof-
shteyn’s poem Kíndershprukh (first published in 1920, cf. Shmeruk
1987, 261), Kiev is rhymed with Yiddish íev ‘Job’, from Biblical
Hebrew ?iyyoß ‘Job’, the connotation being of distress and disaster,
corresponding to the life story of the biblical Job. A fin de siècle anti-
American Hebrew match is as following:
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
International
America
Modern Hebrew
(jocular)
עמא ריקא
!ammå reqå
‘America’
cf. the opening page
of Gershon
Rosenzweig’s
satirical Massékhet
Amérika
Aramaic
! עמאammå ‘nation’
+
ריקאreqå ‘empty’
cf. עמא פזיזא
!ammå p¢zizå ‘hasty nation’
(Talmud: Kethuboth 112a),
referring to the
Israeli nation
Toponymy and
monopoly
171
Similarly, Israeli am reykaní, lit. ‘empty nation’, has been jocularly
replaced (International >) Israeli amerikáni ‘American’. Compare this
to the diametrically opposite Chinese 美国 Modern Standard Chinese
(henceforth MSC) meiguó, Cantonese meikok, lit. ‘beautiful country’,
a domestication of America.
There are, however, also Chinese examples of rejective toponyms
used to propagandize against hostile nations:
• The Turks were called in Classical Chinese 突厥 MSC tujué, con-
sisting of 突 tu ‘attack, invade’ and 厥 jué ‘stone-launcher’ (sixth-
ninth centuries).
• Mongol was allied with Classical Chinese 蒙古 MSC ménggu, con-
sisting of 蒙 méng ‘dark, obscure, abuse’ and 古 gu ‘old, locked,
stubborn’ (introduced around the eleventh century but still used).
On 非洲 MSC feizhou ‘Africa’ (cf. ‘wrong/not continent’), 英国 MSC
yingguó ‘England (cf. ‘hero country’), 海地 MSC haidì ‘Haiti’ (cf. ‘sea
land’), 泰国 MSC tàiguó ‘Thailand’ (cf. ‘safe country’), 德国 déguó
‘Deutschland, Germany’ (cf. ‘virtuous country’, 法国 MSC faguó
‘France’ (cf. ‘law country’) etc., see Zuckermann (2000, 259-262).
Hebrew oys tóyro ‘sign of Torah; Ostra’ and Chinese 美国 MSC
meiguó ‘beautiful country; America’ lead to the discussion of adop-
tive lexical engineering, including ‘politically correct’ toponyms,
which manifest appropriation.
2.2. Adoptive lexical engineering: appropriation
• Mishnaic Hebrew [jå’wån] ‘Hellas, Greece’ (Midrash Rabba to
Genesis 44), from:
1. Greek I3nia ‘Ionia’
2. Biblical Hebrew [jå’wån] ‘one of Japheth’s sons, the name of a
people’ (Genesis 10:2)
On Medieval Hebrew sprd (Israeli sfarád) ‘Spain’, Medieval Hebrew
?Òknz (Israeli ashkenáz) ‘Germany, Ashkenaz’, see Zuckermann (2000,
137-41).
• Ashkenazic Hebrew shapíro ‘Speyer’ (a town near Heidelberg,
Germany), from:
1. Yiddish shpéy¢r, German Speyer (toponym)
172
2. Aramaic shappirå ‘beautiful’, the feminine form of Aramaic
shappir (Daniel 4:9) ‘handsome, pleasing, good, cheerful’
The positive connotation of this toponymic match might explain its
frequent appearance in many Jewish surnames appearing from the
beginning of the sixteenth century, e.g. Shpiro, Shapirin, Shapira,
Sapir (cf. Beider 1993, 532b). The dynamics between tonomymy and
anthroponymy is a fascinating topic, which deserves its own paper.
• Ashkenazic Hebrew mógeyn vetsíno ‘Mainz’ (cf. Wexler 1991: 42),
from:
1. Hebrew magéntsa ‘Mainz’, Yiddish magénts¢, Polish Moguncja,
Latin Maguntia (Moguntia, Mogontiacum) (toponym).
2. Biblical Hebrew mågen w¢Òinnå, a tautological dvandva con-
junction which appears in Jeremiah 46:3, Ezekiel 39:9 and
Psalms 35:2, meaning ‘shield and shield’.
• Ashkenazic Hebrew har adonoy ‘Hrodna, Grodno’ (Weinreich
1955, 610), from:
1. Yiddish gródn¢, Polish Grodno, Belorussian Hrodna, Russian
Grodno Gródno (toponym).
2. Ashkenazic Hebrew har adonoy ‘The mount of the Lord’, from
Hebrew har ?adonåy, cf. har yy ‘The mount of the Lord’ in
Isaiah 2:3.
Consider Medieval Hebrew polin ‘Poland’. Blanc (1989, 57) claims
that there is no reason for its [i] vowel, cf. Yiddish póyln, Polish Polska
(polski ‘Polish’), Russian Polàja Pól’sha, Italian Polonia, English
Poland. This might lead to the conclusion that is a semanticized pho-
netic matching based on the Hebrew autochthonous root √lyn ‘lodge,
stay, dwell’.
Blanc mentions the well-known popular rationalization according
to which “when the Jews came to Poland, the skies ordered them to
stay there”. A detailed investigation is presented by Bar-Itzhak (1996,
30-7). However, my explanation, which may refute Blanc’s claim
regarding the [i] (y) in pwlyn, is that Yiddish póyln was spelled in
pre-Modern Yiddish as pwlyn or as pwylyn (cf. the current spelling
pwyln). Note that the pronunciation of (Medieval Hebrew >) Israeli
pwlyn by some speakers of Israeli, especially in the past, has been
pólin, which resembles the German and the Yiddish forms (as distinct
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Toponymy and
monopoly
173
from polín). This pronunciation could serve to strengthen the ortho-
graphic explanation. It seems that Medieval Hebrew pwlyn was not
an etymythological nativization ab initio but rather a mere phonetic
adaptation that has been rationalized etymythologically ex post facto.
Another name for Poland is Israeli polánya, which could be rean-
alysed as po lan ya ‘Here stays God’. The term might have been
induced by analogy to other Israeli country names corresponding to
the feminine form of the noun which refers to the person who lives in
the country (or to the feminine adjective), cf. ángliya ‘England’ versus
angliyá ‘English (feminine)’, and rúsya ‘Russia’ versus rusiyá ‘Russian
(feminine)’. Consider also Italian Polonia ‘Poland’.
2.3. Etymythological toponyms in the Haskalah period
Toponymic matches were very common among maskilim, followers of
the Jewish Enlightenment movement Haskalah in Germany (1770s-
1880s; cf. Aufklärung), led by the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
(1729-86) and the poet, linguist and exegete Naphtali Herz Wessely
(1725-1805, also known as Váyz§). Consider the following examples:
• Maskilic Hebrew poyálo tóvo (Israeli poalá tavá), lit. ‘good work-
ingman/labourer’—an Aramaic expression appearing in the Talmud
as [po!ala †åßå] (cf. Jastrow 1903, 281b, 1145a)—was the name
some maskilim used for Poltava, a city in the Ukraine (south-west
of Kharkov, east of Kiev), with a thriving Jewish community—
cf. Yiddish poltáv¢, Russian Poltava Poltáva and Polish Po¥tawa
(cf. Avinery 1946, 135; Klausner 1949, 97).
• Maskilic Hebrew sar to(y)v, lit. ‘good ruler’, was a matching of Rus-
sian Saratov Sarátov (the name of a city in Russia)—cf. Weinreich
(1955. 610, fn.).
• Maskilic Hebrew harérey élef (or harérey ólef) (see Saddan 1955, 40)
stands for International (The) Alps—cf. Russian Alàpx Ál’py and
Polish Alpy. Biblical Hebrew [har¢’re ‘?ålep] (Psalms 50:10) means
‘a thousand hills’ (cf. Israeli haálpim ‘The Alps’). In Israeli this expres-
sion could be understood as ‘mountains of a thousand (metres)’. Note
that only the second part of harérey élef is a matching.
• Maskilic Hebrew i shfánim, lit. ‘island of coneys’ (shfaním could
colloquially also mean ‘rabbits’), referring to the Iberian peninsula,
was used by Gordon (as khatsí í hashfaním ‘peninsula of coneys’)
174
in his poem bimtsulót yam (In the Depths of Sea)—cf. Gordon
(1956: 107a). It is a phonetic matching of Latin Ispania, or His-
pania—cf. Greek ?????? Spanía, Russian Ispaniq Ispániya,
Polish Hiszpania, Old English Ispania.
The origin of Latin Hispania, the name of the Roman Province, is
the Phoenician name for the western areas of the Mediterranean Sea,
described by the Phoenicians as “the coast of coneys” (see Rosen
1994, 90). If this theory is true, then Maskilic Hebrew i shfánim might
be an “incestuous” matching, in the sense that the material used in the
target language (TL, here Maskilic Hebrew) is etymologically related
to the nativized item from the source language (SL, here Latin).
Maskilic Hebrew po novi ze (Israeli po naví ze), lit. ‘here (this) is
my (beautiful) dwelling’, was a matching of Yiddish pónivezh, the name
of the town in Lithuania, famous for its Jewish centre (cf. Lithuanian
Yiddish pónivez) (used by Gordon 1883, 151, cf. Klausner 1949,
97).
Hebrew nwh—originally pronounced [nå’we]—‘(beautiful) dwell-
ing’, which participates in Maskilic Hebrew po novi ze leads to the
discussion of ideological hebraization of Arabic place names in Israeli.
3. Hebraization of Arabic place-names in Israeli: reclamation
Israeli uses the Semitic feature known as construct-state (smikhút), in
which two nouns are combined, the first being modified or possessed
by the second. For example, repúblikat banánot, lit. ‘republic bananas’,
denotes ‘banana republic’.
Hebrew [nå’we] ‘dwelling’ is often used as nomen rectum (gov-
erned noun) in Israeli toponyms constituting a construct state, for exam-
ple nevé-atív on Mount Hermon in northern Israel. In Biblical Hebrew
there are two different [nå’we], deriving from two distinct roots,
both spelled as √nwh (cf. √nwy). Biblical Hebrew √1nwh means ‘pas-
ture site in the desert’ (see II Samuel 7:8), ‘dwelling, habitation’ (see
II Samuel 15:25)—cf. Arabic [‘nawa:] ‘emigrated, wandered (m, sg)’
and Biblical Hebrew n?wt (e.g. Joel 2:22, Amos 1:2). Biblical Hebrew
√2nwh means ‘beautiful, comely’ (see Jeremiah 6:2) and is a variant
of Biblical Hebrew n?wh—cf. Arabic [‘nawwaha] ‘extolled, praised,
raised, elevated (m, sg)’, ‘excelled (m, sg)’, Mishnaic Hebrew n?h
‘beautiful’, Mishnaic Hebrew nwy [noj] ‘beauty’, Biblical Hebrew √y?h
(cf. √y?y) ‘be beautiful’ (Jeremiah 10:7) and Aramaic y?y ‘beautiful’.
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Toponymy and
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175
Biblical Hebrew √1nwh was the nomen rectum of several biblical
construct state toponyms, e.g. [n¢’we ?e’tån] (Jeremiah 49:19, 50:44)
and [n¢’we tan’nim] (Isaiah 34:13, 35:7). Therefore, the modern use
of nevé- could be regarded as deriving directly from these biblical
construct-states alone—cf. Israeli nevé shaanán (inter alia, the name
of a neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem), from Biblical
Hebrew [nå’we ∫a?a’nån] (Isaiah 33:20).
However, I suspect that, as usual, the reality is much more com-
plex, characterized by multiple causation—with several elements
simultaneously influencing the creation of some toponyms with nevé-:
Arabic [‘nabi:] ‘prophet’. Examples include the following:
• Israeli nevé danyél, lit. ‘Daniel’s dwelling’, the name of a com-
munal settlement in Mount Judaea, matches phonetically Ara-
bic [?an’nabi: dan’jal] ‘the Prophet Daniel’. It was named after
the Israeli convoy called in Arabic [?an’nabi: dan’jal], which
returned from this area on 27 March 1948 and was attacked by
Arabs near Bethlehem.
• Israeli nevé yamín, lit. ‘the right side dwelling’ or ‘the dwell-
ing of Yamin’ )a biblical name, e.g. the son of Simon, Jacob’s
son), a moshav (smallholders’ cooperative settlement) near
Kfar Sava in central Israel. This is a phonetic matching of
Arabic [?an’nabi: ja’mi:n] ‘the Prophet Yamin’, and was thus
named in accordance with the Arabic tradition that it is the
place where Benjamin, Jacob’s son, is buried. Benjamin is
called in Arabic [binja’mi:n] and on occasion [ja’mi:n]—cf.
(the now rare) [‘jamana]/[‘jamina]/[‘jamuna] ‘was lucky, for-
tunate (m)’, [‘jumn] ‘luck’, [maj’mu:n] ‘lucky’ and [ja’mi:n]
‘right hand’; see also Entsiklopédya Mikraít (iii:701).
(ii) International new, cf. Russian novxî nóvyi, e.g. Novxî Afon
nóvyi afón ‘New Athens’ in Abkhaz; Novxî Arbat nóvyi arbát,
a street in Moscow, established in the 1960s; Novxe Werëmu-
jki nóvye cher6mushki, a neighbourhood in Moscow which is
much newer and more beautiful than the preceding Cher6mushki.
Compare these with Slovene Nova Gorica, a city in Slovenia,
near Gorizia, Italy, as well as with German neu(e), English new,
e.g. New Hampshire and New York.
(iii) Biblical Hebrew √2nwh ‘beautiful, comely’.
(iv) (Hebrew>) Israeli nevé-midbár, a widespread construct-state
which literally means ‘dwelling of desert’, referring to ‘oasis’.
176
The last three inputs are apparent in the tendency to use Israeli nevé-
in the names of new and supposedly attractive neighbourhoods of
existing cities. Israeli nevé- is associated with a place which is green,
non-urban, different from its environment. Consider Nevé Savyoním
near Savyon in central Israel, Nevé Avivím and Nevé Dan in Tel Aviv,
Nevé Granót (1963) and Nevé Yaakóv (1924) in Jerusalem, and Nevé
Khaím (1950) in Hadera.
3.1. “Judaization” of Arabic toponyms in the Negev (1950)
It is instructive to compare and contrast the policy of David Ben-
Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.
Lee Kuan Yew shrewdly kept Malay as an important symbolic lan-
guage in Singapore. Thus, although it would be extremely hard for
anyone to find a Malay/Indian pilot or high officer in the Singaporean
Army (they are all Chinese) or a Chinese cleaning lady at the National
University of Singapore (NUS), the national anthem and the army
commands are in Malay rather than in English, Mandarin or Hokkien!
Such an advanced pro forma lip service is impossible in Israel. The
Jewish psyche would not tolerate singing the Israeli national anthem
in Arabic. Everything must be in ‘Hebrew’.
Ben-Gurion (a phonetic matching of his original surname Grün,
using the Mishnaic Hebrew name [gur’jo:n]) wanted all Israelis, let
alone government officials, to Hebraize their names. In 1950, two years
after the establishment of Israel, Ben-Gurion urgently founded a gov-
ernmental Geographical Names Committee (henceforth GNC) for the
Hebraization (Shnaton HeMemshala 1951, 279 prefers “Judaization”)
of Arabic toponyms in the Negev (in the southern part of Israel). (The
committee was called in Israeli haveadá hageográfit likviát shemót
banégev—mitáam misrád rosh hamemshalá.)
As a rough estimate, the GNC worked for 6 months, had 60 ses-
sions and suggested over 500 Israeli names. The Head of GNC was
Dr Avraham Yaakov Brawer and among its members were Professor
Shmuel Yeivin, Professor David Amiran and Zalman Lif (Lifschitz).
Analysing Shnaton HaMemshala h.t.∫.y.?. (The Government Year-Book
of 1950-1) (1951: 259-311, and especially 279-88), it is possible to
infer that the GNC used three main methods for suggesting Israeli
toponyms:
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Toponymy and
monopoly
177
1. Matching of the Arabic toponym with a phonetically-similar pre-
existent Hebrew item (i.e. etymythological nativization).
2. Literal translation of the Arabic toponym into Hebrew (cf. calquing).
3. Linking the place to a site mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures,
especially the Old Testament, and suggesting the ancient Hebrew
toponym as a replacement for the Arabic place name.
Of the 537 neologisms suggested by the Committee, 175 were phonetic
matches, 167 literal translations and 124 ancient Hebrew toponyms
linked to the present sites. The remaining 71 included other kinds of
neologization such as the following euphemistic neologisms, each con-
stituting an enantiosemic auto-opposite with its Arabic origin:
• The semantically positive en yáhav, lit. ‘The Spring of Hope’, replaced
the semantically negative Arabic [!ajn alwa’ba?], lit. ‘The Spring
of Plague’; Arabic [wa’ba?] meaning ‘plague, pest, epidemic’.
• Arabic [bi:r ‘hindis] ‘The Well of Darkness’ was translated as
(Hebrew>) Israeli beér orá ‘The Well of Light’. However, the ini-
tial name for this place, coined by the soldiers of the Israeli Army
Engineering Corps who stayed there while building the road to Eilat
in 1949-50, was beér handasá, lit. ‘The Well of (the) Engineering
(Corps)’, a phonetic matching of Arabic [bi:r ‘hindis].
Juxtapose these examples with Benevento, a town (and province) in
Campania, Italy, 50 km north-east of Naples. Benevento is understood
today as ‘good wind’ (Nissan, personal communication) or ‘good event’.
But its original names were actually Maleventum, Malowent and
Maloenton, which meant in the original Italic language neither ‘the
site of bad events’ nor ‘bad wind’. But the Romans re-interpreted the
name and after they won a battle there, they replaced Maleventum with
Beneventum.
Examples of phonetic matches from the suggested 175:
• Arabic [‘d”®abal (al)xa’ru:f], lit. ‘the mountain of the ram/sheep’ >
har kharíf, lit. ‘hot/sharp/fast-flowing mountain’ (p. 282b). Cf. Medi-
eval Hebrew nhl hryf ‘fast-flowing river’, which might have been
taken into account by GNC. In fact, GNC also matched Arabic [‘wadi
xa’ru:f], lit. ‘river of ram/sheep’, with nákhal kharíf, lit. ‘hot/sharp/
fast-flowing River’.
178
• Arabic [?al!unÒu’rijja], currently ‘racism’ (cf. [‘!unÒur] ‘component,
element, race’) > har nétser ‘mountain of sprout’ (p. 284a).
• Arabic [‘d”®abal almah(a)’wijja] (cf. [‘?ahwa:] ‘side of a valley,
dark green colour’, √hwj ‘gather; dark green’) > har mikhyá ‘moun-
tain of living’ (p. 284a).
By using phonetic matching, literal translation and recycling ancient
Hebrew toponyms, the Geographical Names Committee did not
exhaust all the possibilities that were theoretically available. However,
these methods were also prevalent in lexical, non-toponymic, neolo-
gization in Israeli, analysed by Zuckermann (2003).
3.2. Hebraization of Arabic toponyms in other regions
Phonetic matching of Arabic toponyms has been widespread in all
areas of Israel, not only in the Negev. Consider the following:
• har tov, lit. ‘a good mountain’, the name of a settlement located on
a mountain in Judea and having good air, is a phonetic matching
of Arabic [!ar’†u:f], the name of the nearby Arabic village. Vilnay
(1940, 323) intriguingly asserts that the Arabic name is meaning-
less. Perhaps it is a nativization to Latin Aretusa. Note the existence
of the mistaken forms [!ar’tu:f] (Kol Makom Veatar, 136) and
[?ar’†u:f] (Avinery 1946, 139).
• en véred, lit. ‘The Spring of the Rose’, the name of a settlement in
the Sharon area (central Israel), is a recalibration of Arabic [!a’j:un
alwar’da:t], lit. ‘springs (for) the women going down (to draw
water)’ (cf. Vilnay 1940, 325).
• bet gan, lit. ‘The House of the Garden’, the name of a settlement
near the Sea of Galilee (cf. Biblical Hebrew [bet hag’gån], the name
of a place in Samaria, see II Kings 9:27), is a partial phonetic match-
ing of Vernacular Arabic [be:t d®an], lit. ‘The House of the Ghosts’
(Vilnay 1940: 329) (cf. Arabic [d®inn] ‘demons, jinn’, but see also
[‘d®anna] ‘garden’).
• ramát shafát, a neighbourhood in Jerusalem < Arabic [Òu!a’fa:t]
(cf. √Ò!f ‘love, affection’, [Òu’!a:f] ‘madness (love sickness)’).
For further recalibrations, see Maisler (1932), Tazkír HaVáad HaLeumí
(1932) and Vilnay (1940).
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Toponymy and
monopoly
179
Importantly, these concoctions are prescriptive and scholarly,
introduced by clerk rather folk-etymology, by informed language plan-
ners. Sociologically, albeit not structurally, they should be distinguished
from lay, uninformed toponymic matches, such as the following:
• Israeli givát hanóar ‘The Hill of the Youth’ was the name children in
Givataim gave to גבעת אנוארgivát ánwar ‘The Hill of Anwar’ (from
the name of an Arab, cf. Arabic [‘?anwar], lit. ‘giving more light’).
• Under the British Mandate, George V Avenue in Jerusalem was
called (Hebrew>) Israeli avínu malkénu, lit. ‘Our Father Our King’
(i.e. ‘Our Lord’).
• Israeli givát haradár, lit. ‘The Hill of the Radar’—the name of a
place near Jerusalem where the British/Jordanian aviation radar was
located from the Second World War until 1967—was matched pho-
netically with the Hebrew name הר-אדרhar adár, lit. ‘Mount
Addar’, Addar being the name of a month in the Jewish calendar—
cf. Akkadian addaru.
3.3. Intra-lingual multisourced toponym
An example of an intra-lingual multisourced toponym:
• Israeli aléy zaháv, lit. ‘leaves of gold’, the name of a collective farm
in southern Israel, was coined in the 1980s. It derives from two
sources:
(i) Hebrew!ly zhb ‘golden leaves’ (which are common during
autumn)—arising from the name of the establishing group,
גרעין סתיוgarín stav, lit. ‘autumn nucleus (core-group)’
(ii) Clipping of !lyzh bgyn, Alizah Begin, wife of Menachem Begin,
then Israel’s Prime Minister. The settlers were supported by
Begin’s Kherut (-Beitar) Party and wished to commemorate his
wife. But they knew that there was no chance of accomplishing
this formally since it was too close to Mrs Begin’s death and
Mrs Begin was not, at least officially, an influential figure her-
self.
4. Concluding remarks
Juliet:
What’s in a name?
Answer: A lot!
180
Juliet:
Retort:
This article analyses toponyms that simultaneously have more than
one etymon (etymological source), championing hybridity and mul-
tiple causation. Special attention was given to toponymic neologisms
proposed by the Geographical Names Committee for the Hebraization
of Arabic toponyms in the Negev, the southern part of Israel, in 1950-
1952. The article contributes towards the development of a typology
of onomastic neologization in general and toponomastics in particular.
Based on examples from Israel’s efforts in building and defining itself
as a nation—as well as from rejective and adoptive lexical engineering
by Jews throughout history—this article explores the intricate and
intriguing relationship between names and identity.
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That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
Not in the Middle East!
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]
Professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann
D.Phil. (Oxford), Ph.D. (Cambridge) (titular), M.A. (Tel Aviv) (summa cum laude)
Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages
Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow
School of Humanities
The University of Adelaide
SA 5005, Australia
http://www.zuckermann.org/
http://adelaide.academia.edu/zuckermann/
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/ghilad.zuckermann
http://www.facebook.com/zuckermann
Author of Revival Linguistics, Oxford University Press, forthcoming
Author of Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli - A Beautiful Language), Am Oved, 2008 http://www.zuckermann.org/israelit.html
Author of Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 http://www.zuckermann.org/enrichment.html
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Toponymy and
monopoly
183
Summary: Toponymy and monopoly: one toponym, two parents; ideological
hebraization of Arabic place-mames in the Israeli language
This article analyses toponyms that simultaneously have more than one etymon
(etymological source), championing hybridity and multiple causation. Special
attention is given to toponymic neologisms proposed by the Geographical
Names Committee for the Hebraization of Arabic toponyms in the Negev, the
southern part of Israel, in 1950-1952. It contributes towards the development
of a typology of onomastic neologization in general and toponomastics in
particular. Based on examples from Israel’s efforts in building and defining
itself as a nation—as well as from rejective and adoptive lexical engineering
by Jews throughout history—this article explores the fascinating and multifac-
eted relationship between names and identity.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would
smell as sweet”, says Juliet to Romeo (or Yael to Ram, as per a fin-de-siècle
translation to “Modern Hebrew”) in a piece by the famous playwright referred
to by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi as “Sheikh Zubeir”. There are cases
in which the name is extremely important because it determines the way people
perceive the thing it stands for. Just as thought influences language, language
can shape thought. Already 2,500 years ago Confucius said that the first thing
a politician has to do is to rectify names!
Résumé: Toponymie et monopole: un toponyme, deux parents; hébraïsation
idéologique de noms de lieux arabes dans la langue d’Israël
Cet article analyse les toponymes qui ont simultanément plus d’une ori-
gine étymologique, champions de l’hybridité et de la causalité multiple.
Une attention particulière est accordée aux néologismes toponymiques
proposés par le Comité de toponymie pour l’hébraïsation des toponymes
arabes dans le Néguev, la partie sud d’Israël, en 1950-1952. Il contribue
à l’élaboration d’une typologie de la néologisation onomastique en géné-
ral et en particulier toponymique. Reposant sur des exemples des efforts
d’Israël dans la construction et la définition d’une nation – ainsi que dans
les techniques de rejet et d’adoption lexicaux par les Juifs à travers l’his-
toire – le présent article explore la relation fascinante et multiforme entre
les noms et l’identité.
«Qu’y a-t-il dans un nom? Ce que nous appelons une rose embaumerait
autant sous un autre nom», dit Juliette à Roméo (ou Yael à Ram, selon une
traduction fin de siècle de l’hébreu moderne) dans une pièce du célèbre dra-
maturge que le leader libyen Muammar al-Kadhafi nomme «Cheikh Zubeir».
Il ya des cas dans lesquels le nom est extrêmement important en ce qu’il
détermine la façon dont les gens perçoivent la chose qu’elle représente. De
même que la pensée influence la langue, de même la langue peut façonner
la pensée. Voilà déjà 2500 ans, Confucius disait que la première chose qu’un
homme politique doit faire est de corriger les noms!
184
Zusammenfassung: Toponymik und Monopolstellung: ein Toponym, zwei
Ursprünge; die ideologische Hebräisierung von arabischen Ortsnamen in
der Sprache Isreals
Dieser Artikel analysiert Toponyme, die gleichzeitig mehr als ein Etymon
(etymologischen Ursprung) und damit Hybridität sowie mehrfache Ursprünge
besitzen. Spezielle Beachtung finden toponymische Neologismen, die das
Geographical Names Committee for the Hebraization of Arabic toponyms 1950-
1952 für das Gebiet der Negev-Wüste, dem südlichen Teil Israels, vorschlug.
Es trug damit zu einer Entwicklung einer bestimmten Typolgie onomasti-
scher Neologisierung im Allgemeinen und im toponomastischen Bereich im
Speziellen bei. Basierend auf Beispiele von Bemühungen Israels, sich selbst als
Nation zu konstruieren und zu definieren – es werden sowohl ausgesonderte
als auch durch angenommene lexikalische Entwicklungen in der jüdischen
Geschichte werden betrachtet – untersucht dieser Artikel das faszinierende und
vielgestaltige Verhältnis zwischen Bezeichnungen und Identität. “Was bedeutet
ein Name? Was wir eine Rose nennen, würde mit einem anderen Namen
genauso süß riechen“, sagt Julia zu Romeo (oder Yael zu Ram, wie in einer
fin-de-siècle-Übersetzung in „modernes Hebräisch) in einem Stück eines
berühmten Autors, auf den sich der libysche Führer Muammar al-Qaddafi als
“Sheikh Zubeir” bezieht. Es gibt Fälle, in denen ein Name äußerst bedeutsam
ist, weil er die Art und Weise bestimmt, wie Menschen die Sache verstehen,
für welche der Name steht. So wie die Gedanken Sprache beeinflussen, kann
die Sprache die Gedanken beeinflussen. Schon vor 2.500 Jahren sagte Konfu-
zius, dass die erste Pflicht eines Politikers sei, Namen zu korrigieren!
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
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ha"tauyot" basafa shel hayom hen hadikduk shel makhar (The "Mistakes" of Today are the Grammar of Tomorrow)
Spirala 9 (Sapir Tikshoret), p. 20-21.
גלעד צוקרמן:
”הטעויות בשפה של היום הן
הדקדוק של מחר"
”שאלו פעם אדם זקן: ’השתנית במהלך חייך?‘. תשובתו הייתה: ’לא
השתניתי, אבל בשלב מסוים הבנתי מי אני!‘. אינני טוען לרגע שהש
פה הישראלית, שאכן החלה להיוולד לפני כ 123- שנה, לא השתנתה,
שהרי רק שפה מתה לא משתנה, והשפה הישראלית חיה ובועטת. יחד
עם זאת, נראה לי שבמקרה של הישראלית, הרבה שינויים לכאורה
אינם שינויים בעצם, אלא הכרה במהות האמיתית של הלשון היש
ראלית.
”אי אפשר להתייחס ל“עברית שהוחייתה“ בסוף המאה ה 19- וב
תחילת המאה ה 20- , כאילו הייתה המשך ישיר של העברית מקדמת
דנא, שכן הישראלית היא בעלת דנ“א אחר. למעשה, הישראלית איננה
שלב אבולוציוני בהתפתחות העברית, אלא שפת-כלאיים חדשה ומ
רתקת, היונקת בו זמנית הן מהעברית, הן מהיידיש והן משפות אח
רות שדיברו מחיי השפה, למשל ערבית, רוסית, פולנית ולאדינו. יוצא
שהיידיש, למשל, איננה ’שפה זרה‘ ביחס לישראלית. אין מדובר כאן
על שינוי או הידרדרות כתוצאה מעילגות או עצלות, כפי שמעלילים
טהרנים מתחסדים.
”השפה היא ראי החברה. השינויים בשפה הם תופעה רבגונית ויפה
פייה. כפי שהלשון משפיעה על המחשבה ועל התרבות, כך המחשבה
והתרבות משפיעות על הלשון. הזוג הלשוני הבא יכול להצביע על
תרבות משפחתית עכשווית באופן כללי: שוביניסט סיפר לי שחברתו
רוצה שני דברים: ז‘ וכסף. ז‘ היא תקבל! וכסף? ז‘ היא תקבל!. בלשנים
אמורים להתעניין בזוג המינימלי הזה - בן שלוש המילים - כי הוא
מעיד על הבדל סמנטי רחב.
”שפה בלי שינויים היא שפה מתה. ואני
במקרה מאמין בחיים לפני המוות, לא אח
ריו. צריך ללמוד עברית, כשפה זרה כמובן,
כדי להבין את התנ“ך וספרים אחרים. אין
רע בכך. אבל יש לעשות זאת בכנות ובש
קיפות, מבלי להטעות את הילדים לחשוב
שהתנ“ך כתוב בשפתם, ומבלי לגרום להם
לרגשות בושה או אשמה אם הם אינם מבינים את התנ“ך, כאילו שהוא
כתוב בשפת האם שלהם. הוא לא.
”בעוד 50 שנה הישראלים ירגישו הרבה יותר נוח עם הישראלית
כפי שהיא. דוברי ישראלית בעלי תסביכים דקדוקיים יתעצמו וישפ
רו את הביטחון העצמי, תוך התמודדות מוצלחת עם מה שאני מכנה
’סכיזופרניה דקדוקית‘, פרי באושים של אינדוקטרינציות ושטיפות
מוח ארוכות שנים של גדוד מגיני השפה, ועד הלשון, האקדמיה ללשון
העברית, מורים\מורות ללשון\לתנ“ך, משרד החינוך וכיוצא באלה.
”האקדמיה ללשון העברית תאפשר לדוברים להגיד ’עשר שקל‘
ו‘שש עשרה תפוזים‘. האקדמיה ללשון עברית בארץ חשובה אך ורק
לפרויקט המילון ההיסטורי שלה. כוחה מוגבל ביותר. הדובר הילידי
הוא המלך. הכוח אצלו.
”לעולם לא אשתמש בביטויים גזעניים כמו ’מרוקאי סכין‘, ’רומני
גנב‘ ו‘רוסי מסריח‘. אני שופט כל אדם באשר הוא. לעומת זאת, אני
מעריך ביטויים כמו ’לא שם זין‘. מה שמעניין עם ’זין‘, במובן האנטומי,
הוא שמקורו במילת סלנג של בחורי ישיבות במזרח אירופה. בשבי
לם ’זין‘ היה קיצור (האות הראשונה) של המילה ’זנב‘. באותה תקופה
השתמשו ב‘זנב‘ במשמעות ’איבר המין הגברי‘, תוך תרגום בבואה של
המילה היידית ’שוואנץ‘. נראה ש‘זנב‘ היה בתחילה לשון נקייה, אך
עם הזמן נעשה בוטה.
”המילה האהובה עלי ביותר בעברית היא המילה ’אהבה‘, ’אהבת
ביידיש פירושו ’לב‘). – HARTS – ‘ הארץ‘ (במקרה יוצא ש‘הארץ
עוד אני אוהב את בינת הלב (אינטואיציה), להעלות על נס, חתחתים,
משכוכית ואחשדרפנים. מילה ישראלית שאני אוהב, למרות שאיננה
קיימת בעברית: פירגון.
”הטעויות בשפה של היום הן הדקדוק של מחר. למעשה, לא מדו
בר בטעויות. הדובר הילידי, מי שדובר ישראלית כשפת אם, לא טועה.
בדיוק כפי שהארטישוק הירושלמי איננו ארטישוק ואיננו ירושלמי
(גם אם יש מסעדות בירושלים המתגאות בו), כך השפה שיש המכ
נים ’עברית משובשת‘ איננה עברית ואיננה משובשת. היא ישראלית
דקדוקית. אין שום טעם לכפות דקדוק על מי שדובר את הישראלית
כשפת אם, מהסיבה הפשוטה שהוא כבר מדבר אותה באופן מושלם,
לפי חוקי דקדוק המצויים במוחו.
”אין לדעת מדוע בחרתי להתמחות דווקא בשפה העברית, אולי
הייתה זו עכבה בשלב האוראלי... אבל תמיד אהבתי שפות והיה לי קל
מאוד ללמוד אותן ולשחק איתן. בזמני הפנוי כתבתי סיפורים פלינד
רומיים, שניתן לקרוא אותם אות אחר אות מהסוף להתחלה, ושירים
דו לשוניים הנשמעים אותו דבר בו זמנית, למשל גם בישראלית וגם
באיטלקית, אך שמשמעותם כמובן שונה בשתי השפות.
”האינגלוז של השפה מוסיף לה שכל. אני זוכר ששמעתי ביפן את
ג‘וניצ‘ירו קויזומי, שהיה אז ראש הממשלה, נואם ביפנית וקורא תיגר
כנגד האמריקניזציה של הלשון היפנית בתקשורת ההמונים. הבעיה
הייתה שהמילה שהוא השתמש בה ביפנית בשביל ’תקשורת המו
נים‘ הייתה: ’מאסו קומי‘, שהיא לא אחרת מאשר ההסגלה היפנית של
.mass communication הביטוי האמריקא
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haim targum efshari? (Is Translation Possible?)
Hed HaUlpan HaKhadash 96 (2009): 60-66. (in Israeli)
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2009. 'haim targum efshari?' (Is Translation Possible?), Hed HaUlpan HaKhadash 96: 60-66. (in Israeli)
צוקרמן גלעד 2009. האם תרגום אפשרי?, הד האולפן החדש 96.
http://cms.education.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/C28D301C-DCDC-4D5F-AA48-B6E84D5BBA71/109844/7MEHKARLACHON.pdf
לשון וחברה
האם תרגום אפשרי?
גלעד צוקרמן
(בעקבות 'הסדנה האוסטרלית הראשונה לשפות אפרו-אסיאתיות')
A Senegalese poet said 'In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught'. We must learn about other cultures in order to understand, in order to love, and in order to preserve our common world heritage.
(Cellist Yo Yo Ma, White House Conference on Culture and Diplomacy, 28 November 2000)
האם יש מילה שאינה ניתנת לתרגום?
האנתרופולוגית התרבותית מרגרט מיד (1901-1978) הייתה תלמידתו של היהודי, אבי האנתרופולוגיה המודרנית, פרנץ בועז (Boas, 1952-1858). מיד מציינת בספרהAnd Keep Your Powder Dry! An Anthropologist Looks at America (1942) את המילה הבאלינזית tis, המתארת מצב שבו 'לא חם כשחם בחוץ או לא קר כשקר בחוץ'. לכאורה, מדובר במילה בלתי-ניתנת לתרגום לאנגלית (או לשפה אחרת). אך האמת היא שכל מילה ניתנת לתרגום סמנטי. השאלה היא רק בכמה מילים, הסברים מורכבים ומאמצים לשקף גוני-משמעות (ניואנסים) צריך להשתמש כדי לבטא את הרעיון שהמילה מביעה. דווקא במקרה ספציפי זה, הייתי מציע את המילה heterothermal - 'הטרו-תרמי' (אם עדיין לא נגנבה על-ידי מדענים לצורכיהם שלהם) או משהו בסגנון זה.
הבעיה היא שמטעמי חיסכון ורצון ל'פשטות', התרגום בדרך כלל מאבד את נימות הלוואי (overtones), הקונוטציות, האסוציאציות והקישורים הסמנטיים הנלווים למילה המתורגמת. לדוגמה, הביטוי 'משכן הכנסת' מתורגם לאנגלית באתר האינטרנט הרשמי של הכנסת כ-Knesset Building. כיצד יכול אמריקאי שאינו מבין ישראלית, ואף לא עברית, להבין את המשמעות טעונת הקדושה של המילה 'משכן'? גם מבלי שישימו לכך לב, המילה 'משכן' מתקשרת אצל דוברי ישראלית רבים עם 'מלאכים' הרבה יותר מאשר עם 'גנבים', למשל.
השאלה הנוספת היא אסתטית: האם התרגום יפה כמו המקור? אפשר לתרגם את המילה היידית- אמריקאית פוּדְנִיק (PHuDnik) כ-'נודניק עם Ph.D.' (בעברית אומרים לעתים: נודניק עם תעודות), אך
האם זה יצחיק כמו פודניק אם לא נזכיר את גם המילה הזאת בעצמה? באותה מידה, תרגום יכול גם לעלות על המקור. 'אָוֶן גִלְיוֹן' העברי, שמשמעותו 'כתב רשע' (עם אסוציאציה להתגלות אפוקליפטית), הוא תשמו"ץ (תרגום שומר משמעות וצליל) של המילה היווניתευαγγέλιον (אוונגליון), שמתייחסת לספרי הבשורה של הברית החדשה, ושפירושה המילולי 'חדשות טובות'. יש להניח שלדעת הרבנים שהמציאו את התשמוץ הזה בתקופת התלמוד, הוא עלה על המקור היווני. חורחה לואיס בורחס כתב ב-1943 ש-'המקור אינו נאמן לתרגום!' (El original es infiel a la traducción).
בספר השיאים של גינס, במהדורת 1993, מוזכרת המילה מַמִיהְלַפִּינַטַפַּי ((mamihlapinatapai, משפת ה- Yaghan, המדוברת בארץ-האש שבצ'ילה. מילה זאת תמציתית ביותר ובניסיון לתרגם אותה לישראלית, דהיינו לעברית בת-ימינו, אין מנוס משימוש בכ-22 מילים: 'להסתכל זה על זה בתקווה שהצד השני ייזום משהו ששני הצדדים חושקים בו אבל אף אחד לא רוצה להיות זה שמתחיל בו'. בישראלית אין אפוא מילה אחת המתארת את הסיטואציה הזאת, אולם נראה לי שלא חסרים ביישנים, אפילו ישראלים, שמצב ה-'מַמִיהְלַפִּינַטַפַּי' קורה להם שוב ושוב.
מי חשב שלא ניתן לחשוב על משהו שאין מילה המתארת אותו? אמנם השפה משפיעה על המחשבה, אבל יחד עם זאת גם המחשבה משפיעה על השפה, והיא הרבה יותר ענפה ומורכבת מאשר מספר המילים והביטויים המוגבל של לשון מסויימת. נניח שיש שפה שאין בה מילה ל'תשוקה'. האם לרגע נשער שדוברי השפה הזאת לא יכולים להרגיש תשוקה? הבל הבלים!
העניין הוא שחרף העובדה שניתן לתרגם כל מילה (אם אין הגבלת מקום), קיים הבדל, לפחות אסתטי, בין לומר מַמִיהְלַפִּינַטַפַּי לבין להגיד 'להסתכל זה על זה בתקווה שהצד השני יזום משהו ששני הצדדים חושקים בו אבל אף אחד לא רוצה להיות זה שמתחיל בו'. כפי שאמר נלסון מנדֶלה:
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
משמע: 'אם אתה מדבר אל אדם בשפה שהוא מבין, זה חודר לראשו. אם אתה מדבר אליו בשפה שלו, זה חודר ללבו.'
האם יש מילה בלתי-בסיסית שניתנת לתרגום?
מאידך גיסא, גם כשנראה לנו שיש מילה מקבילה בשפה אחרת, הרבה פעמים אין האסוציאציות והקונוטציות שלה זהות. השוו את המילה האנגלית angel למילה הערבית ملاك מַלַאכּ, שפירושן לכאורה זהה: 'מלאך'.
בספטמבר 2009 ארגנתי כנס בינלאומי בברית' בין (הבת'רים) (ראו בראשית ט'ו), הלא היא בריסביין שבקווינסלנד, אוסטרליה. The first Australian Workshop on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics נקרא בקיצור AWAAL [או אף כ- AWAALالأول (AWAAL הראשון, בערבית). בין המשתתפים, מכ-20 מדינות, היו גם רוביק רוזנטל, ברוך פודולסקי, אורי צור, חגית בורר, אפרים ניסן, אריאל גוטמן, פוואז אל-עבד אל-חק, אד (אדגר) קונרד, קים קוניו, הת'ר לי, רפאלה פיירנו, פול גרינפילד (נשיא אוניברסיטת קווינסלנד, בריסביין, אוסטרליה), ריצ'ארד פות'רינגהם (דיקן הפקולטה למדעי הרוח), אלפרדו מרטינז אקספוסיטו, ג'ואן טומפקינס, פיטר קרייל, ג'ורג'יאנה פולטר, איבון טרייס, אבדל אל-הנקרי, וֵרְנַה רית'שילד, איאן האנטר, דייוויד טריגר, אמאר גאלה ואף ברוריה ברגמן ז"ל (שנפטרה לאחר הכנס).
אחד המשתתפים, סֵנְדִי חַבִּיבּ, מגוּש חלב, הלומד באוסטרליה, הציג הגדרות של angel ושל ملاك (מַלַאכּ) כפי שזה האחרון מובן על-ידי ערבים מוסלמים. חַבִּיבּ משתמש בתיאוריה הקרויה Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM – מטה-שפה סמנטית טבעית - אין קשר ל'נשמה'), שפותחה על-ידי ידידיי אנּה וְיֵזְ'בִּיצְקַה (Wierzbicka) (קנְבּרה, בירת אוסטרליה) וקְלִיף גוֹדַארְד (Goddard) ([ארמידייל, עיירה בניו סאות' וויילס, המדינה האוסטרלית שבירתה סידני). לפי אסכולת ה-NSM, יש להגדיר כל מילה באמצעות 'פרימיטיבים' סמנטיים בסיסיים, הִיוּלִיים, אוניברסליים (המשותפים לכל השפות והתרבויות), שלא ניתנים לרדוקציה נוספת – למשל: אני, אתה, אנשים, משהו/דבר, גוף, לחשוב, לדעת, לרצות, להרגיש, לראות, לשמוע.
להלן ההגדרה של ملاك מַלַאכּ, כפי שהוא נתפס על-ידי ערבים מוסלמים (לא נוצרים):
1) יצור מסוג מסויים.
2) יש אנשים שחושבים: 'אין יצור מסוג זה'.
3) כשאנשים חושבים על היצור הזה, הם יכולים להגיד את זה:
4) יש הרבה יצורים מהסוג זה.
5) היצורים האלה חיים במקום, אנשים טובים יכולים לחיות במקום זה אחרי שהם מתים.
6) הם יצורים טובים.
7) כמה מהיצורים האלה עולים על יצורים אחרים מאותו הסוג. בגלל זה, כמה מהיצורים האלה יכולים לעשות דברים מסויימים, ויצורים אחרים מאותו הסוג לא יכולים לעשות את הדברים האלה.
8) היצורים האלה אינם כמו אנשים.
9) ליצורים האלה יש גופים, הגופים האלה אינם כמו הגופים של אנשים.
10) אנשים לא יכולים לראות אותם, הם יכולים לראות את בני האדם כל הזמן.
11) אנשים לא יכולים לשמוע אותם, הם יכולים לשמוע את בני האדם כל הזמן.
12) אנשים יכולים לעשות הרבה דברים, הם יכולים לעשות יותר.
13) אם אלוהים רוצה שמישהו מהיצורים האלה יגיד משהו למישהו, המישהו הזה יכול לראות את היצור הזה, המישהו הזה יכול לשמוע את היצור הזה, היצור הזה יכול להגיד משהו למישהו הזה. בגלל זה, המישהו הזה יכול לדעת מה אלוהים רוצה להגיד למישהו הזה.
14) ליצורים האלה יש כנפיים.
15) היצורים האלה הם יצורים זוהרים.
16) אם אלוהים רוצה שאנשים יראו אותם, אפשר שיהיה להם גופים כמו הגופים של אנשים.
17) אם אנשים היו יכולים לראות אותם, אנשים לא היו יכולים לא להרגיש משהו טוב בגלל זה.
18) כמה מהם יכולים לעשות דברים טובים לאנשים.
19) אם אלוהים רוצה שמישהו ירגיש משהו מאוד רע אחרי שהמישהו הזה מת, כמה מהיצורים האלה יכולים לעשות כמה דברים למישהו הזה. בגלל זה, המישהו הזה יכול להרגיש משהו מאוד רע.
20) כשמישהו מת, הוא מת כי אלוהים רוצה שהוא ימות בזמן הזה.
21) כשאלוהים רוצה שמישהו ימות, אחד היצורים האלה עושה משהו למישהו הזה. בגלל זה, המישהו הזה מת.
22) אחרי שהמישהו הזה מת, שניים מהיצורים האלה אומרים כמה דברים למישהו הזה כי הם רוצים שהמישהו הזה יגיד כמה דברים על אלוהים.
23) מישהו יכול לחשוב כך: 'שניים מהיצורים האלה איתי כל הזמן. הם רואים אותי כשאני עושה דברים טובים, הם רואים אותי כשאני עושה דברים רעים. אחרי שאני מת, הם יגידו לאלוהים: 'המישהו הזה עשה את כל הדברים הטובים האלה, המישהו הזה עשה כל הדברים הרעים האלה'. [רחמנות!]
להלן ההגדרה של angel האנגלי:
1) יצור מסוג מסויים.
2) יש אנשים שחושבים: 'אין יצור מסוג זה'.
3) כשאנשים חושבים על היצור הזה, הם יכולים להגיד את זה:
4) יש הרבה יצורים מסוג זה.
5) היצורים האלה חיים במקום, אנשים טובים יכולים לחיות במקום זה אחרי שהם מתים.
6) הם יצורים טובים.
7) כמה מהיצורים האלה עולים על יצורים אחרים מאותו הסוג. בגלל זה, כמה מהיצורים האלה יכולים לעשות כמה דברים, יצורים אחרים מאותו הסוג לא יכולים לעשות את הדברים האלה.
8) היצורים האלה אינם כמו אנשים.
9) לאנשים יש גופים, להם אין גופים.
10) אנשים מתים, הם לא מתים.
11) אנשים יכולים לעשות הרבה דברים, הם יכולים לעשות יותר.
12) אנשים לא יכולים לראות אותם.
13) אנשים לא יכולים לשמוע אותם.
14) אם אלוהים רוצה שמישהו מהיצורים האלה יגיד משהו למישהו, המישהו הזה יכול לראות את היצור הזה, המישהו הזה יכול לשמוע את היצור הזה, היצור הזה יכול להגיד משהו למישהו הזה. בגלל זה, המישהו הזה יכול לדעת מה אלוהים רוצה להגיד למישהו הזה.
15) אנשים יכולים לחשוב על היצורים האלה כך:
יש להם גופים, הגופים האלה הם כמו הגופים של ילדים.
יש להם גופים, הגופים האלה הם כמו הגופים של גברים.
יש להם גופים, הגופים האלה הם כמו הגופים של נשים.
יש לגופים שלהם כנפיים כמו שלציפורים יש כנפיים, הכנפיים האלה לבנות.
כשאנשים רואים אותם, הם יכולים לראות משהו זוהר על כל צדדי ראשיהם, הם יכולים לראות משהו זוהר על כל צדדי גופיהם.
כשאנשים רואים אותם, אנשים לא יכולים לא להרגיש משהו טוב בגלל זה.
היצורים האלה יכולים לשיר.
כשאנשים שומעים אותם, אנשים לא יכולים לא להרגיש משהו טוב בגלל זה.
16) מישהו יכול להגיד לאחד היצורים האלה: 'אני רוצה ממך לעשות משהו טוב בשבילי'.
17) מישהו יכול לחשוב:
'אחד היצורים האלה הוא איתי כל הזמן.
היצור הזה רוצה לעשות דברים טובים בשבילי.
היצור הזה לא רוצה שדברים רעים יקרו לי'.
18) אם מישהו עושה משהו רע למישהו אחר, אחד היצורים האלה יכול לעשות משהו למישהו הזה. בגלל זה, המישהו הזה יכול להרגיש משהו מאוד רע.
הגדרות אלה מבוססות על מחקר מקיף ורציני גם של טקסקטים וגם של שימוש יום-יומי על-ידי דוברים ילידיים.
בואו אם כן נתמצת מהם הדברים המשותפים בין angel לבין ملاك מַלַאכּ (שוב, כפי שהיא מובנת על-ידי ערבים מוסלמים):
(1) ששניהם יצורים שיכולים לדבר ולחשוב.
(2) ששניהם טובים.
(3) ששניהם יפים.
(4) ששניהם גרים בשמיים.
(5) ששניהם עולים על בני האדם.
(6) בבכל קבוצה יש הייררכיה.
להלן תקציר ההבדלים בין שתי המילים:
(1) למלאכים בערבית יש גוף. למלאכים באנגלית אין.
(2) המלאכים בערבית הם יצורים בני-תמותה. המלאכים באנגלית הם אימורטליים.
(3) המלאכים בערבית מסתכלים על אנשים. המלאכים באנגלית שומרים על אנשים.
(4) למלאכים בערבית יש הרבה כנפיים. המלאך באנגלית מדומיין כבעל שתי כנפיים.
(5) המלאכים בערבית נבראו מאור. המלאכים באנגלית מדומיינים עם הילות.
(6) המלאכים בערבית יכולים להעניש אנשים שמתו. המלאכים באנגלית לא יכולים להעניש אנשים שמתו.
(7) יש מלאכּ שתפקידו לגרום לאנשים למות כשאלוהים רוצה שהם ימותו. לאף angel אין תפקיד שכזה.
המסקנה היא אם כן שגם כשאנחנו סמוכים ובטוחים שניתן לתרגם מילה משפה לשפה, אנחנו בעצם 'עובדים על עצמנו בעיניים'. כפי שאמר הבלשן אדוארד ספיר ב-1921 בספרו Language:
Language is a guide to 'social reality'. Though language is not ordinarily thought of as of essential interest to the students of social science, it powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
לפיכך, שפה היא לא רק פונמות, מורפמות ושאר ֶ-מות, בדיוק כפי שבן אדם איננו רק דם, עצמות, עורקים וסינפסות. לשפה יש רוח, mindset, אסוציאציות, קונוטציות, מטענים תרבותיים מורכבים וסבוכים. כמה חבל שכל כך הרבה בלשנים מתקדמים-לכאורה שוכחים זאת או שאולי מתעלמים מעובדה זאת בכוונה תחילה מכיוון שקשה מאוד לכמת, למדוד אותה או לכפות עליה סטרוקטורות פשטניות כאילני יוחסין או עצי גזירה תחביריים.
כפי שכתבו בחוכמה אוריאל ויינרייך, ויליאם לבוב ומרווין הרצוג ב-1968:
Linguistic and social factors are closely interrelated in the development of language change. Explanations which are confined to one or the other aspect, no matter how well constructed, will fail to account for the rich body of regularities that can be observed in empirical studies of language behavior.
חללים לקסיקליים טובים
חללים לקסיקליים הם הרבה פעמים שליליים. אני זוכר את אהוד אולמרט, בעודו ראש עיריית ירושלים, מרצה באגודת 'לחיים' באוניברסיטת אוקספורד ומצהיר בחוצפה, בעזות-מצח ובתעוזה – אך, יש להוסיף, ללא צביעות – ש'האנגלים לא מבינים מה זאת צביעות, המילה לא קיימת בלקסיקון שלהם'. להבנתי, הוא התכוון לומר שלפי דעתו, הצביעות הפכה אצל הבריטים ל'טבעית' עד כדי כך שהם כבר אינם מודעים לה. ומי לא שמע את הבדיחה המפורסמת על 'איך אומרים 'בתולה' בשוודית?' - 'אין דבר כזה!'
עם זאת, לאקוּנוֹת מילוניות יכולות להיות חיוביות ביותר. ראובן מירן פרסם לאחרונה את הספר 'אנה והציידים' (נהר ספרים, סוף 2009) על בת למהגרי עבודה בישראל שעליה להסתתר מפני משטרת ההגירה. והנה, מוטאטיס מוטאנדיס, ב-1943, באותה שנה שבורחס אמר ש'המקור אינו נאמן לתרגום', כתב נתן אלתרמן חד-העין את הטור הפוליטי הבא, שכדאי ללמד אותו בכל בית-ספר בארץ ובעולם.
אינני טוען שמצב העובדים הזרים בישראל זהה למצבם של היהודים הנמלטים מההשמדה הנאצית! ברם, הטור של אלתרמן רלוונטי גם לאלו וגם לאלו, במיוחד מההיבט של מה שאני מכנה 'חללים לקסיקליים טובים' – ראו המחסור לכאורה בשפה השוודית במילות 'אינפילְטְרַציה', 'קווֹטָה', 'ויזה', 'טְרַנְסְפּורט', 'קצה-גבול-של-יכולת', או 'כושר קליטה'.
הלשון השוֶדית / נתן אלתרמן (1943)
מעטים הם יודעי הלשון השוֶדית
מי דובר בה? אולי רק השוֶדים עצמם.
כי ארצם בהרים ובפיורדים אובדת,
וקטן ומֻצְנָע העָם.
ועת שוֶדיה אמרה: 'הנני מקבֶּלת
מגבול דַנְיָה את כל היהודים הגוֹלים',
נוכחו וראו כל עמי החֶלֶד
כמה דל הוא בשוֶדית אוצר המלים.
כי רבות מדינות כבר כָּהֵנָה הכריזו,
אך הללו הראו את גִנְזֵי לשונָן
במילות 'אינפילְטְרַציה', ו'קווֹטָה' ו'ויזה'...
רק בשוֶדית
מלים שכאלו אינן.
ועת נער נמלט אל גבול-שוֶדיה מציד,-
היא איננה פונה לעַיֵּן בַּמפות.
היא פשוט מוליכה אותו פּנימה לַבַּית,
בלי לדעת כי זו שאלה של טְרַנְסְפּורט.
מדינות בעולם יש גדולות שבעתים
ומקום בהן רב למַחְסֶה וּמָלון,
אך לפני הצילן איש-טובע ממים
אוהבות הן תמיד להביט בַּמִלון.
יען שפת מִלּוֹנָן ססגונית כַּפּרפר היא -
יש 'קצה-גבול-של-יכולת', או 'כושר קליטה'.
רק בשוֶדיה עוד חי המנהג הברברי
להציע לַהֵלֶך כוס תה וּמִטָּה.
ולכן הגדרות היא איננה בוררת
ואיננה מרבה דקדוקי מנגָנון,
היא כותבת פשוט: 'הַכְּנִיסָה מֻתֶּרֶת'...
ויסלח לה האל על דלוּת הסגנון.
ויאמַר לה האל בדמעה: שוֶדיה, שוֶדיה,-
שתי מלים נשכחות את כָּתַבְתְּ על פתחים.
אך שוות הן טרקְטַטים ואנציקלופדיה,
כן... אפילו בריטניקה... כל הכרכים.
ואזי מלאכים בלחישה יְמַלֵּלוּ
ואָמרו זה לזה: מָה רבָּה התהום,
אם שתי המלים הפשוטות האלו
הולידו דמעה בעיני מָרוֹם.
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פרופ' גלעד צוקרמן הוא בלשן באוניברסיטת קווינסלנד, בריסביין, אוסטרליה. ספרו ישראלית שפה יפה יצא לאור בסוף 2008 בהוצאת עם עובד. אתר האינטרנט שלו הוא www.zuckermann.org
Let My People Know!
Newsletter of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew 81:20-23 (2009).
Zuckermann, Ghil'ad 2009. 'Let My People Know!', Newsletter of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew 81:20-23.
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