Will text messaging be the death of Hebrew?

IHT ^ | 08 Aug 2008 | Isabel Kershner

[BGHater]

Some Israelis have described being moved almost to tears by a rare viewing of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved and most complete Dead Sea biblical scroll, on special exhibit this summer at the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum for the first time in 40 years.

The familiar, unfulfilled prophecy of the 2,100-year-old scroll - "and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" - undoubtedly arouses emotion here. But there is also a thrill born of ordinary people being able to read, and at least partly understand, an ancient Hebrew text.

Two centuries after it was written, Jewish history became one of dispersal and exile, and Hebrew ceased to be widely spoken for the next 1,700 years.

Its revival is often hailed as one of the greatest feats of the Zionist enterprise; today, Hebrew is the first language of millions of Israelis, a loquacious and literary nation that is said to publish an average of 5,500 books a year.

But in a country where self-doubt and insecurity run deep, even a linguistic triumph can be a cause for concern. After such a meteoric comeback, some worry that the common language may already be in decline, popularized to the point where many Israelis can no longer cope with the rich complexities of traditional Hebrew prose.

[x]

Will deceptive headlines be the end of journalism?

[goldstategop]

Hebrew is the only ancient language to be successfully revived to become a living spoken language again. Its future is secure. When Yehuda Ben Eliezer sought to revive in the 19th Century, it seemed utopian. But by the 1920s, it was already one of the three official languages of the British Palestine Mandate. It can surely adapt to text messaging as much as it has to incorporating foreign loan words to make it relevant to contemporary situations. Israelis face lots of problems. The survival of Hebrew isn't one of them.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[skeeter]

R U kidding me?

[Sgt_Schultze]

Id h8 2 say ya.

[Pearls Before Swine]

I’d worry more about Chinese. Hebrew’s alphabet isn’t very large, but Chinese uses characters for each word.

[the invisib1e hand]

NYT, Global Edition.

[Lurking Libertarian]

ping ibri.