[Lexicog] Hamito Semitic languages

[David L]

Peter,

Highlights: 1. I can agree with you as far as basic words of Hebrew.
2. I believe I have discovered the original nature of word formation
of Ancient Hebrew.

Please note a couple of things.  It is true that I posted those
messages in some context on another group.  A Spammer had cloned my
id daved instead of david, and has copied and pasted some of my
messages in other linguistic groups, in a larger effort to discredit
me.  Those messages were taken out of context.  But I will try to
make progress in clarifying my view.  (being out of context messages
1182 and 1183 should probably be errased; I didn't notice any
deceptive editing of my text, so if it is not errased then that is
probably ok)

Concerning the question of Hebrew borrowed words from text:
I can agree with you, Peter, to a small extent.  That is that the
basic words of Hebrew may simply have changed over time as words have
changed in other languages. Though many other words have been
revived. Probably a better reference is Eduard Y. Kutscher's History
of the Hebrew Language; he says things pertaining to this issue that
Badillos does not say in his history.  Unfortunately I do not own a
copy of Kutscher's book, so I have to find a library that has it to
get some of the quotes I need on this.

In my view, as an example, (I am going to transliterate Ayin as
an 'o' grapheme here) ZRO "seed", which is also translated "arm",
never meant arm, I am thinking of such verses as "I will stretch out
my arm over all the land..." which should be "I will stretch out my
seed over all the land...".  And YD did not mean "hand" but it
meant "arm", and KP /kaph/ or /kapa/ did not mean "palm" but it
meant "hand".

Another example of a problem in my view is Y- which is translated as
masculine personal pronoun second person "he" in some cases; I know
that we find it in other Semitic languages and also in Chadic
languages such as Hausa.  But originally it had two functions as a
prefix, 1. to indicate future tense, 2. to indicate activation of an
action, which I translate as "make" in its general sense.  Just a
further note I do not translate the T prefix as "she" (I note
personal pronouns seem to me to be only suffixes in Ancient Hebrew),
I view T- as an auxilliary verb which I translate as "get" indicating
that the subject is passively taking on the verb, versus "make"
indicating the subject is actively causing the verb.  I am not sure
of exactly how to explain these Y- and T- and I should only give some
examples, but I am short on time for the moment, for such examples.

The basis for my taking the position that I can challenge certain
translations is that I claim, with many examples, to have discovered
the original nature of word formation for Ancient Hebrew (see
decipherment.com then click on the Ancient Hebrew link).

As part of the answer to your question there is also the matter of
the effects of Greek on languages in the Middle East of the Greco
Roman period when languages soon after were lost, and those which
survived had their sound systems (phonologies) influenced by the
presence of Greek and Latin.  I don't have time to go into that at
the moment.

I am also presently doing historical linguistics work in the Chadic
languages.  I have translated the book of Ruth from Ancient Hebrew
into English.  I am working on transliterating an Egyptian document
believed to be Aramaic.  I have also worked in Egyptian hieroglyphic
decipherment.  And in other areas I have worked.

Dave

--- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com, Peter Kirk <peterkirk at q...>
wrote:
> On 11/07/2004 18:08, daved_89793 wrote:
>
> > ...
> >
> > In my studies in Hamito Semitic languages there is a substratum of
> > Semitic (throughout Hamitic), that relates to changes in phonology
> > that were due to Greek influence and later Latin influence, I can
> > even differentiate the times of influence, relative. And the
> > substratum is basic Hebrew which was revived from being a dead
> > language, so effectively all of those basic forms were borrowed
from
> > texts. This is not taught.
>
>
> Dave, please can you clarify this one. Modern Hebrew was indeed
revived
> from being nearly dead, but I don't know of any other Hamito-
Semitic (or
> other) languages which have a substratum of modern Hebrew.
>
> There are languages which have a lexical substratum of Hebrew words
> which may have appeared in those languages after Hebrew was no
longer a
> generally spoken language - the only Hamito-Semitic language in
this
> situation which I know of is Judeo-Arabic. But that does not imply
that
> the Hebrew words were borrowed from written texts. There is a good
> chance that at least many of these loan words, typically referring
to
> the religious domain, have been in continuous use by the Jewish
> community and borrowed from language to language as the community
has
> adopted different languages for non-religious purposes.
>
> It is anyway misleading to suggest that mediaeval and modern Hebrew
are
> dependent on texts. Although for many centuries Hebrew was no one's
> mother tongue, there has been a continuous tradition of using it as
a
> spoken language within limited domains of religion and study. That
has
> not of course prevented phonological assimilation to the
surrounding
> languages. But it is quite misleading to suggest that loan words
from
> Hebrew have been taken from texts apart from a tradition of spoken
use.
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> peter at q... (personal)
> peterkirk at q... (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/




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