[Lexicog] Coinages

[Hayim Sheynin]

Dear Fritz,

Telling in brief, the majority of contributions were in coining words for realia that 
didn't figure in Biblical and medieval Hebrew. Sometimes a biblical word received an additional meaning, sometimes those were derivations from existing Hebrew roots, sometimes they were adaptation of words from cognate Semitic languages (mostly Aramaic and Arabic), sometimes making new words from loan words of unrelated languages, e.g. coining words with Greek prefix du- (from Greek dyo- two), like duqrav, duqran, (concept of doubling), etc., sometimes from existing roots new roots were formed (example, existing root D-L-Q (concept of burning), new word - deleq - fuel, new root T-D-L-Q (concept of fueling) and new verb le-tadleq (to give fuel, like the planes which fuel another planes in the air) or just to take fuel on regular gas station. By the way from the word gas (like CO2), the word gazoz was coined, meaning soda water. The ward geza (trank, stem, stock) received an additional meaning 'race' and 'pure race', 'bread', and from this new meaning were produced additional
 derivations like kelev giz`i - pure-bred-dog, giz`iyyut  - purity of stock, race, giz`an  - racist  (noun m.) , giz`ani -  racial  (adj.), etc. There was no word for carrot. So Ben Yehudah coined word gezer which has regular Hebrew template of Nomen segolatum and the word confirms to Arabic jizr with the same meaning. From this new word he concocted combination gezer lavan (literally white carrot)  - 'parsnip'. 
Some words coined by Ben Yehudah were coined following mistaken suppositions, e.g. melafefon ('cucumber') which according to straight etymology
would be well suited for cabbage. Anyway the word received its own life and nobody but Semitic scholars notice the original mistake. [Most of these mistakes came because of inadequate knowledge of Arabic or obscurity of post-Biblical Hebrew.]
The particular areas where Aramaic words were used: the terms of jurisprudence, real estate, taxation, etc.
This way Ben-Yehudah and several other people,  mostly Jews of Russian provenance  who emigrated to Palestine  in the last quarter of the 19 century and
first quarter of the 20th century, contributed  to  development of  modern spoken Hebrew.
If you read Hebrew literature written close to 1900, you may encounter a lot of foreign words (from Greek and Latin, German, French, English, Polish and Russian languages) which later were rejected by the speakers and replaced with the words which satisfied Hebrew coinage and derivation patterns. Since about 1926 Hebrew develops according to status of a regular living language.
What is still regulated, however, it is 
1) rules of orthography. There were many suggestions to reform Hebrew script. However all of them were rejected. Academy of Hebrew Language restricted corrections to indicate scriptio plene rather than scriptio defective.
2)scholarly terminology. From time to time Academy of Hebrew Language in Jerusalem publish updated terminological dictionaries, separate for each discipline.   

In addition, Hebrew translators of world literature greatly contributed to development of modern Hebrew. Wherever they encountered foreign word which didn't have a proper Hebrew word, they either paraphrased or invented a new word. 

This is to answer you while standing on one leg. For longer discussion, there is a vast scholarly literature about Ben Yehudah and his family, Ben Yehudah and his contribution and just about revival of Hebrew. Did you hear also about revival of Hungarian and revival of Provencal?

Best wishes,

Hayim Y. Sheynin



Fritz Goerling <Fritz_Goerling at sil.org> wrote:                                          
  
 Hayim,
   
  The revival of Hebrew is certainly a unique case. In which area of neologisms did Ben-Yehudah contribute the most?
   
  Fritz
   
   
  In the modern period the major contributor of new words was Eliezer Ben-Yehudah (Perelman, 1858-1922), Hebrew writer and lexicographer, while  some lexemes and many phrases were contributed by Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), greatest modern Hebrew poet. However the nature of Hebrew neologisms differs significantly from the cases of English and Russian. Hebrew contributions served revival of Hebrew from the dead, while both English and Russian were spoken languages.
 
 Hayim Y. Sheynin
 
 
 
  
      
     
                       

       
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