The Revival of Hebrew? (1879-1908)

It was a pleasure to work with you on this Sam, languages being my passion and being Jewish a huge part of my identity, I am honored to have helped with this video. Great video on your part!

My first day living in Israel, I walked around with my Ben-Yehuda dictionary in hand. I was looking for a hot plate. I looked it up and the dictionary said "luach bishul". So I asked to buy a luach bishul. I got stares of bewilderment. Perhaps, I thought, my accent is off. After all, it was my first day. So I showed them the word in the dictionary. Still, only puzzlement. Finally, somebody said, "Hu rotzeh plata!" ["He wants a 'plata''!"] I got want I wanted. The next thing I bought was a more modern dictionary.

Coptic Egyptian here, just wanted to say Ive been subscribed for a while, and I really appreciate this channel I admire the Jewish people for reviewing Hebrew, I hope one day the same could be done with the Coptic language !.. ✌️

Look for the part of the video where my native accent slips out! CORRECTION: It's not that asinine to translate "kadima" as "east," since "kedma" is an archaic term for "east" in Hebrew. However, Yonas spelled out the "i" sound, so it still wasn't tremendously credible, especially in the context of the essay.

As a Welshman and Welsh speaker,🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 the Hebrew revival is a great inspiration to us. We adapted the Ulpan to our Wlpan in the 1970s. The Hebrew language is the main defining feature of the Israeli state as every citizen speaks it whatever their religion or politics. It's the one thing which unites everyone. Don't allow English to supplant it. Having said that, I wish Ben Yehuda had simplified, or rather, made the modern Hebrew alphabet consistent and adopted vowels! Very difficult to read Hebrew if you don't already speak it. One small request, can you keep the quotations and maps up for longer so we have time to read them?

They beat a small boy unconscious, and killed his dog, because his dad had only taught him Hebrew? The fudge!?

19:08 well the word 'kadima' can legitimately be translated as 'to the east' as the root of the word K-D-M in the bible was used to describe the east "tsafona va'negba, yama va'kedma"(north and south, west and east.

As a Korean, we went through a similar history. Korean language was regulated and banned during Japanese rule as an assimilation policy, but the scholars and patriots succeed to preserve their own language.

I never got a straight answer to why Israel adopted the Hebrew pronunciation it did — the half-baked theory our ulpan teacher told us was that they considered the Yemenite pronunciation most authentic, then proceeded to simplify away the features that would have been impossible for Ashkenazim and European Sephardim to reproduce. I was completely unaware of the Algiers connection of EBY — toda rabba for explaining this!

Systematizing the creation of new words for an old "dead" language is such a delightful combination of traditionalist and progressive

What great detail to fill out my simple understanding. Great teaming...lots of knowledge packed in to one vid. Really appreciate your work and effort.

19:08 I wouldn't call the tranlation of "Kadima" as "the east" instead of "forward" as baseless, as "Kadima"/"Kedma" was how the direction "east" was commonly called in the bible. It's even referenced in HaTikva - "Ul'fa'atei Mizrah, Kadima". In a similar manner "Westwards" was sometimes called "backwards" (which is why the mediterranean was sometimes called "Yam Ha'ahron" - the sea of the back), "southwards" was "rightwards" (which is a possible etymology for the name of the land of Yemen at the southmost end of the Arabian peninsula - Yamin = right/south) and "northwards" was "leftwards" (which I cannot think of an example for right now but I'm sure there is one somewhere.) So while it's clearly not the intended meaning, I can see how one COULD translate "gather strength and move forward" as "gather an army and march eastward".

11:04 "By coincidence" Those are the most spoken languages in Israel. But those are mainly slang words that we won't use in a seriously like in articles or books.

Most fascinating, I consider myself lucky to have stumbled across the channel

Love the use of the first Assyrian flag as the choice for Aramaic, I have that flag hanging in my room at the moment.

The vav consecutive was lost way before the 16th century. Even by the Mishnaic period it has been lost. The verb tenses also changed significantly between the Biblical and Mishnaic periods. These changes didn’t all occur in the 16th century in Safed.

19:08 The incident recalls to mind a video I watched called Star War: The Third Gathers: Backstroke of the West (a bootleg Chinese translation of Revenge of the Sith translated back into English with subtitles), and the resulting dialogue changes make the film sound rather absurd and oddly humorous. Not exactly the most suitable analogy, but things can get lost in translation, so people might intentionally lose things in translation for reasons. Devices used in translation may be subject to error at times- there’s this YouTuber called Random Typek who made a whole channel out of it!

I think this is my first visit to your channel. Very impressive and fascinating history and an equally impressive video.

Incredible video Sam! I’m curious if you’ll ever do a video on Judeo-Spanish/Ladino as I know there’s been a recent push in reviving/standardizing it and it’s so interesting. Keep up the incredible work!

Wow I learnt so much here! Great video