How Hebrew was revived

LANGUAGE

In these monthly discussions we answer one question about language in PNG and beyond. This month we are looking at Hebrew and ask how this language went from a living language to a dead academic language and then was brought back to life as a vibrant living language.

IF you go to Israel today you will see signs written in Hebrew and hear people speaking Hebrew on the street and with their families.
It is hard to believe that this has not always been the case. For hundreds of years, Hebrew was not used as a spoken language in families or everyday life, but now it is the home language of millions of Israelis.
So how could this language be restored to be the spoken language of an entire modern nation? And what lessons can Papua New Guineans learn from the way Hebrew was revived as a living language?
Hebrew was spoken by the early Jewish tribes long before the time the Hebrew Old Testament was written down in the form we know today. The area where its speakers lived was subject to migrations and attacks from many other countries, with Hebrew competing with a number of other languages in the region.
By the time Jesus was born, while Hebrew was the language still used by religious leaders and in formal writing, many Jews, perhaps even Jesus Himself, used Aramaic as a home language, with Greek being used as a language to speak with foreigners. Latin was also an important language because of the presence of Roman soldiers and administrators. Hebrew was already starting to disappear as an everyday language during Jesus’ lifetime.
During the time of the Roman Empire, many Jews left the Middle East to live and work in cities in Europe and Northern Africa that were then part of the Roman Empire. Many other Jews moved as merchants to more distant countries in Africa and Asia.
After the unsuccessful Jewish revolts in the first and second centuries AD, the Romans took many of the remaining Middle Eastern Jews captive and exiled them to various places in the Roman Empire. As a result of all of these voluntary and forced migrations, few Jews lived in their ancient homeland and Jews elsewhere came to adopt the language of their new homes. Hebrew was kept as a language to learn at school for religious purposes, but it was no longer used as a spoken everyday language anywhere in the world.

The situation changed in the late 1800s with the emergence of Zionism in Europe. Many Jews faced persecution from Christians in the European countries where they lived, so Zionists developed the idea that they should form their own nation. They said that since their religious and cultural identity had started in the area then known as Palestine, they should establish their new Jewish nation there. As groups of these Zionists moved to Palestine, the question arose as to what the language of their new country would be. In the end, Zionist leaders decided on Hebrew. They pointed out that Hebrew had been the language of the ancient Jewish state and it was still learned as a common religious language in schools in all Jewish communities around the world.
Dedicated Zionists who had moved to Palestine started to use Hebrew among themselves and with their children. They also started to use it as the language of instruction in the schools they established. This was not easy because, although many had learned Hebrew in religious classes, they had had no experience actually speaking it, especially about topics that had nothing to do with religion, such as farming, housekeeping, or romance.
Nevertheless, a few persevered and spoke only Hebrew with their young children. The breakthrough came in the 1880s when a baby son said his first words and they were in the Hebrew he had been hearing from his parents. After almost two thousand years of being dormant, Hebrew once again had its first native speaker.
These first Zionists were mainly Europeans. But after World War II, when Israel was established as an independent country, large numbers of Jewish immigrants came to Israel from around the world, bringing with them the many languages they had spoken in their home countries. Learning Hebrew was a way to unify them into a cohesive whole and to give them a national consciousness.
But using an ancient language for modern purposes was not always easy. A language academy was established to invent the new words needed to talk about modern technology, government, and ideas.
Wherever possible, the language academy has used old Hebrew roots to coin new words. But as with other languages, English has been a source for many new words. Often there has been tension between younger speakers who use a term borrowed from English and the language academy, who prefer a term formed from ancient Hebrew roots.
Arabic, which is the home language of almost a quarter of all Israeli citizens, is another source of words. Young people especially like to use words of Arabic origin for slang terms to sound cool.
We cannot be sure of the exact pronunciation of ancient Hebrew because there were, of course, no recording devices available back then, so we should not think that the Hebrew spoken today is exactly the same as the Hebrew spoken two thousand years ago.
In addition, over the years, some Hebrew words have changed their meaning. Some scholars have also pointed out that if we examine the grammar of Biblical Hebrew with that of modern Hebrew, there are some noticeable differences, with modern Hebrew showing ways of forming sentences that are similar to the grammatical patterns of the European languages spoken by the Zionists who established the modern state of Israel.
Nevertheless, modern Hebrew is close enough to ancient Hebrew that modern Israelis can read the original text of the Old Testament with little difficulty. The success of the revival of Hebrew as a modern language after so many years being dormant shows the importance of language documentation. Even though no one spoke Hebrew at home for hundreds of years, there were many documents that had been written during the time that the Hebrew was still spoken, including the Hebrew Old Testament.
Moreover, there were numerous grammar books and dictionaries to help people learn the language so they could use it for religious purposes. Language activists many centuries later could use these resources to learn and use the language.
The resurrection of Hebrew shows us that documented languages never really die. While they may be asleep, with proper documentation they can be woken up and brought back to life.
This is an important lesson to remember when we think about the importance of documenting the many PNG languages that are not being used anymore for everyday communication and are in danger of “falling asleep”.
Someday, they too, may be revived, but only if we who are alive while they are still spoken provide future generations with proper documentation about them.

• Professor Volker is a linguist living in New Ireland and an Adjunct Professor in The Cairns Institute, James Cook University in Australia. He welcomes your language questions for this monthly discussion at [email protected]. Or continue the discussion on the Facebook Language Toktok page.