[Lexicog] Re: Coinages

[Hayim Sheynin]

Rudy,

You are absolutely right. There was such study and the conclusions are true. This was said about 18 vols. Hebrew-Hebrew Thesaurus Totius Hebraitatis, Berlin-Jerusalem, 1924.  Nevertheless the wast amount of words was accepted and what is even more important the methodology of Ben-Yehudah in coining words was upheld. The Israeli society by its nature is very critical to any linguistic enterprise related to their language and there were different schools of thought in relation to Hebrew "Wortschatz".   There is in existence a popular journal Leshonenu la-am (Our language for the people), 10 issues every year.
You can find many criticisms and explanation about forms and meanings of words, coining new words, written by lay linguists (i.e. linguists without scholarly preparation) and answers by professional linguists. Many articles contained criticism of one or another Ben Yehudah coinage, there were alternative suggestions for certain Ben Yehudah's words. But despite all of the criticisms,
the Ben-Yehudah Lebenswerk is in high esteem, it found a lot of followers that continue his work.

The fact is that Ben-Yehudah's achievement led to everyday use of the language in Palestine under British mandate and then in the State of Israel. What is even more interesting that standardization of Hebrew stands on higher level than that in many other languages. For regular Hebrew speakers the story about Ben-Yehudah works sounds like fairy tale. The young people had they not heard
about Ben Yehudah and his work, would never guess that there was time when Hebrew language was dead, like Sanskrit, Greek and Latin.

By the way, similar criticism was raised against a smaller and more practical 11 vol. Milon Chadash (New Dictionary) by Abraham Even Shoshan. Nevertheless
this dictionary was the most influential in the period after the foundation of State of Israel and was a source for many shorter dictionaries.

Another multi-volume dictionary by Knaani remained less known to Israeli society. Knaani tried to correct Ben-Yehudah's mistakes and exclude words which were found objectionable by critics.

Most of the criticism  originates  because of particular type of dictionary, because most of Hebrew  dictionaries are historical by nature  and eclectic  by method.
The lexicographers try to include every word used in literature of different periods,
even in obscure writings and usually don't draw line between different periods and different styles. Simple people do not need OED or Ben Yehudah's dictionary, but as far as I know simple people do not criticize  OED, while they would persistently and with rigor criticize Ben Yehudah, Even Shoshan and other great lexicographers. Saying that I do not deny validity of scholarly criticism of lexicographic work in Israel. Every year there published better and better dictionaries. Nowadays the criticism gravitates upon superfluous use of foreign words, mostly English. Most probably the reason of abundance of English words used today in Israeli speech (not only by academically educated people) is development of international tourism, emigration and immigration, cooperation of American and Israeli companies, Hollywood film industry and especially wide use of Internet.
Only today I heard a new word in Hebrew: standapist (coined from English stand up comedian). There are thousands of similar coinages from English source in
spoken Hebrew today. However not everyone of them makes its place in dictionary. For long time Hebrew speaker use the words tramp and trampist,
but the meaning of these words in Hebrew is not so derogatory like in English.
Tramp in Hebrew means 'ride' and trampist is 'one who is waiting for ride, or given ride.'       

Regards,

Hayim Y. Sheynin

rtroike at email.arizona.edu wrote:                                  
 I heard from Robert Cooper some years ago that a study had compared the
 entries in a dictionary of Hebrew published around 1924 with current usage
 (I'm not sure whether it was a general dictionary or a technical one), and
 found that only about 40% of the words proposed in the dictionary were
 actually being used in the 1970s.
 
 Rudy Troike
 
 
     
                       

 
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