[Lexicog] Coinages

[Fritz Goerling]

Dear Hayim,

 

Thank you for that information.

I draw my hat to Ben Yehudah.

 

To life, le chaim,

 

Fritz

 

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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