1. Languages of Judaism Hebrew, Aramaic, Ladino, Yiddish, and Yinglish

2. Sacred Languages: Languages of Sacred Scriptures Hinduism:Sanskrit (Vedas) Judaism: Hebrew (Tanakh) Christianity: Greek (New Testament) IslamArabic (Qur’an)

3. Map of Semitic Heartland

4. Chart of Semitic languages

5. Map: Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia

6. Map: Hittites, Mitanni, Egypt

7. Map: Afro Asiatic Family

8. Core features of Hebrew and other Semitic languages Pharyngeal consonants (absent from modern Hebrew) Triliterate roots Noun morphology: 3 cases (now disappearing) Verb morphology: –complex derivation from simple roots –Gender inflection in 2 nd and 3 rd persons

9. Four phases of Hebrew Biblical (Classical) Hebrew, till 3 rd c. BCE. –Aramaic replaced it as the spoken language Mishnaic (Rabbinic) Hebrew: written in 200 C.E. –Never the spoken language of the people Medieval Hebrew: 6 th to 13 th century. –Borrowings from Greek, Arabic, Spanish Modern Hebrew

10. Medieval Hebrew Poetry (piyuttim) Creation of thousands of new terms using Hebrew roots.

11. The phonology of Hebrew When no longer a spoken language, people pronounced (or mispronounced) it on the basis of Diaspora languages Two possible sources of phonological influence: Yiddish and Arabic. Ashkenazic Hebrew based on Yiddish phonology. Sephardic Hebrew based on Arabic phonology

12. Israeli Hebrew: a phonological mishmash The State of Israel tried to adopt the Sephardic pronunciation. But there was phonological interference from European languages –Couldn’t pronounce pharyngeal sounds (‘ayin and Het) –Used the Yiddish uvular “r”. Elite mispronunciations became the norm.

13. Examples of problem words Ani rotse lagur b’erets israel (I want to live in the land of Israel) Arba>im (forty) Qaniti lachem leHem. (I bought bread for you.) Machar (he sold) and maHar (tomorrow) The mispronunciation of the Ashkenazim has now become “higher class” Hebrew.

14. Hebrew alphabet Sounds, not idiographs Only consonants. Vowels not represented until later. (Masoretic vowel points). Written from right to left Some letters have a different form if they are word-final

15. Semitic alphabets

16. Semitic alphabets, cont’d

17. “In the beginning…”as in the Torah scroll

18. “In the beginning…”with vowels and cantillation