Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?
- From: "Yusuf B Gursey" <ybg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 8 May 2005 07:27:45 -0700
Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Helmut Richter wrote:
> >
> > Peter T. Daniels:
> >
> > > Wexler says that Modern Hebrew is "relexified Yiddish," and he
has a
> > > point -- because Modern Hebrew grammar bears very little relation
to
> > > Biblical Hebrew grammar and is very similar to "Standard Average
> > > European" grammar, which is reasonable because Hebrew was revived
as a
> > > spoken language by people whose native language was Yiddish.
> >
> > I understand the point but I feel it is grossly exaggerated. A
Modern
> > Hebrew speaker has no problems reading the Bible, and if he once
and
>
> They could _read_ TaNaKh, but they couldn't _write_ it or speak its
> language.
a forgery of an inscription alledgedly attesting to repairs on the
Temple of Jerusalem was caught when a modern hebrew word was noticed.
also IIRC some felt that "spiral staircase", included in the forgery
was a misreading of the Biblical text. the letters were also phoenician
rather than canaanite.
it also led to the reevaluation of the "James Osuary" given by the same
dealer. both being judged forgeries, the dealer was arrested.
>
> > for all has learnt that what mitaking aspects as tenses can yield
> > unexpected meanings in some contexts (and surprisingly,
statistically
> > only in few contexts because the most frequent BH form does not
exist
> > in MH and thus cannot cause misunderstandings), he will understand
> > everything correctly. One afternoon of BH lessons might well be
enough
> > to learn the different tense system and the somewhat different SOV
> > word order.
>
> SOV??
>
> > > They
> > > assiduously learned Hebrew vocabulary, but they were not equipped
to
> > > take on a very alien syntax, including a tense-aspect system
totally
> > > different from what they were used to.
> >
> > Would such a shift in grammar (an aspect system with some tense
> > flavour becoming a tense system with a little aspect flavour) be
> > absolutely inconceivable, had the language gradually evolved over
the
> > last 2000 years instead of being reanimated or reinvented?
>
> Of course not. And it _did_ happen. The people who continued to write
in
> Hebrew for centuries after no one spoke it any more naturally wrote
it
> with more and more of their native syntaxes. Just as 19th-century
Latin
> bears little syntactic relationship to Cicero's Latin.
>
> And IH is most definitely very unlike BH.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.
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- Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?
- From: Helmut Richter
- Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?
- From: Peter T. Daniels
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