Language of Jews, part 2
Every week #JWHIA wishes us #ShabbatShalom. Much more on that #greeting, #shalom, and things they can tell us about language and dialect: a very long 🧵
(FYI: if you have followed me on twitter for awhile, you’ve seen much of this before.)
#Shabbat /ʃaˈbat (Hebrew), ʃəˈbat (Jewish English)/ = Sabbath; also #Shabbos /ˈʃɑbəs, ˈʃɑbos/ (Yiddish, originally, but also for some English speakers & Ashkenazi Hebrew speakers); also #Shabbath (from Ancient Hebrew, but also for some English speakers & Sephardic Hebrew speakers)
#Shalom (#sholom, etc) /ʃaˈlom (Hebrew), ʃəˈlom (Jewish English)/ = 1. peace, 2. rest, 3. well-being; 4. (consequently) the #greetings hello/goodbye; 5. by analogy, a #nameOfGd; 6. a #given #name for boys & girls
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#ShabbatShalom = the standard #greeting on #Shabbat (the 7th day of the Jewish week, corresponding to Friday evening thru Saturday evening); essentially "[may you have a] peaceful/restful Shabbat”
The "shalom" wiktionary entry shows 4 Hebrew and 3 Yiddish pronunciations, a few of which I’ve included below. (Hebrew at the top, scroll to the bottom for Yiddish)
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/ʃaˈlom/ (Modern Hebrew)
/ˈʃɔ.loɪm/ (Ashkenazi Hebrew)
/ˈʃɔl̴əm/ (Litvish Yiddish)
/ˈʃul̴əm/ (Poylish Yiddish)
Etc.
That’s a lot of ways to pronounce “shalom”, from shah-LOAM to SHOW-loim. What gives? Why are those pronunciations so different? What even is Ashkenazi Hebrew anyway, isn't Yiddish the traditional language of Ashkenazi Jews?
https://babka.social/@jewterpretor/109391843152701398
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#JWHIA (@jewwhohasitall) tweets in an exaggerated version of Jewish English, a dialect which mixes in a ton of Hebrew and Yiddish vocab. Languages of Jews, a 🧵: Hebrew belongs to the Semitic language family (which belongs to the Afroasiatic language family). Semitic languages were originally spoken by people of Arabian peninsula, the Levant, & Horn of Africa, & spread over time to North Africa, West Africa, Malta, & West Asia; plus immigrant diaspora communities now found across the world. 1/
By a very basic definition, language is a tool: a set of building blocks used by humans as our primary method of communication; whether spoken, written, or signed. It's highly structured, indefinitely flexible, & infinitely creative. Speakers use the building blocks (sounds, words, and grammar, i.e. #structure) in different combos (#flexible) to build meaning and communicate ideas (#creative).
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A #language, e.g. English, ASL, or Hebrew, is the particular system/set of building blocks that a (usually) large group of speakers uses to communicate with each other in a wide range of contexts and situations, often over many hundreds or thousands of years.
Language changes over time! People have spoken something called “English” for between 1500 and 2000 years, but Old English doesn’t look or sound like contemporary English.
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side note: check out the incredible video linked in this toot for a good demonstration of English between the 8th and 19th centuries:
https://mastodon.social/@azforeman/109505226662693317
Back to the thread:
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So why are they both called English? First, because contemporary English descends directly from Old English; and second, because that’s what the speakers of each called/call their/our language.
A #dialect, e.g. Southern US English, Orthodox Jewish English, or Nigerian English, is a subset of/variation on those building blocks that meets the communication needs of a community of speakers at a particular time:
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regional (Southern US English), cultural (African-American English), religious (Orthodox Jewish English), or something else entirely (e.g. "medicalese" of healthcare professions).
Dialects can contain dialects, and overlap: Texas English is a variety of Southern US English (which is, itself, a variety of US English, etc.) that also has elements of Chicano English.
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Most speakers understand and speak multiple dialects, and #codeSwitch (alternate between languages/dialects) in different contexts (and sometimes within a single conversation with another person). (A (near?) universal example: as a teenager, did you speak to your friends the way you spoke to your grandparents? Probably not. You spoke different dialects, understood when to use each, and code switched in the different contexts.)
What does that mean for Hebrew?
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Hebrew is a #SemiticLanguage (one of many language families). Semitic languages evolved and changed over many thousands of years. One branch of that family tree led to Canaanite, which is now extinct, but as the dialects of Canaanite changed over time, eventually they weren't so much dialects but distinct languages: Moabite, Phoenecian, and Hebrew (among several others). Like any other language, Hebrew kept changing.
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Hebrew speakers developed different dialects to suit their needs in different places, contexts, and time periods; each dialect had/has variation in vocab, pronunciation, and grammar.
Some examples, just from the Ancient Hebrew period:
-Old Hebrew (from the 10th to 6th century BCE)
-Classical Biblical Hebrew (from the 8th to 6th century BCE)
-Late Biblical Hebrew (from the 5th to 3rd century BCE)
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-Israelian Hebrew (a northern dialect of Biblical Hebrew that emerged during Old Hebrew & evolved separately through Late Biblical Hebrew )
-Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew (from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE – Hebrew script, i.e. square script, developed during this period)
-Mishnaic Hebrew (“Early Rabbinic Hebrew”; from the 1st to 3rd/4th century CE)
(With the exception of Israelian Hebrew, the list above doesn’t even address regional, class-based, etc dialects during this period.)
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This represents the end of Hebrew as a "living" language. Between the 2nd and 4th century CE Hebrew was replaced as the native language and colloquial language of Jews by Greek and Aramaic.
But Hebrew persisted as a language of Jewish scholarship, so it was continually influenced by other languages spoken by Jews; even as a #deadLanguage (i.e. no longer a native language or colloquial language) it continued to develop new & changing dialects, e.g.:
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-Tiberian Hebrew (7th-10th century CE), which at the time became the standard for pronouncing the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible)
-(what I’m going to call) “Medieval philosophical Hebrew” (12th-13th century CE), which borrowed directly from Greek & Arabic, coined new words from Hebrew roots and was used primarily for scientific and philosophical translation. (This is the Hebrew of Maimonaides.)
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Hebrew was intentionally revived as a living, spoken language in the 19th and 20th centuries, becoming Modern Hebrew/ Modern Israeli Hebrew.
Modern Hebrew has a lot in common with Ancient Hebrew but there are clear differences (some small, some not-so-small) in the sound system (= phonology), grammar, and especially vocabulary (new concepts for a new era need new words).
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Modern Hebrew has dialects of its own to meet the needs of its speakers. For the most part, the dialects are “sociolectal” (class-based and culture-based) rather than regional, because the majority of modern Hebrew speakers live in Israel, geographically a very small country.
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So, Ashkenazi Hebrew? It is the set of dialects (marked primarily by sound system/pronunciation patterns) used by a majority of Ashkenazi Jews (Jews whose ancestry traces back to Central or Eastern Europe) for pronunciation of Hebrew.
It is strongly influenced by Yiddish because historically that is the traditional language of Ashkenazi Jews; it is also influenced by other languages spoken by Ashkenazi Jews, including gentile languages of Central and Eastern Europe, and English.
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Similarly, Sephardic Hebrew is the set of dialects used by a majority of Sephardic Jews (whose ancestry traces back primarily to the Iberian peninsula & North Africa) for pronunciation of Hebrew. It is influenced by Ladino (now an endangered language), because historically it was the traditional language of Sephardic Jews. It's also influenced by other languages spoken by Sephardic Jews, including gentile languages of the Iberian peninsula and North Africa, & English.
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Sephardic Hebrew often (not always) bears more overt resemblance to standard Modern Hebrew than Ashkenazi Hebrew does.
And of course there are other groups of Jews (e.g. Mizrachi Jews, whose ancestry traces to the Middle East and eastern North Africa) with their own sets of Hebrew dialects.
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Consequently, every Hebrew word used by JWHIA has multiple possible pronunciations: e.g. Modern Hebrew (multiple dialects), Ashkenazi Hebrew (multiple dialects), Sephardic Hebrew (multiple dialects), multiple varieties of other contemporary Hebrew dialects, multiple varieties of Ancient Hebrew and Medieval Hebrew, etc.
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If it’s also borrowed into Yiddish, it has multiple Yiddish pronunciations. Borrowed into English, it has multiple possible pronunciations, related in part to personal or community ancestry, but with significant and variable influence from English.
In sum: that’s the (very long but actually still quite introductory!) explanation for why there are so many possible pronunciations of SHALOM.
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Jewterpretor