Journal Article

CHANGING SOUNDS AND FORMS IN ISRAELI HEBREW

Bolozky, Shmuel

2024

Overview

The article starts with a characterization of Israeli Hebrew, and its development from a conglomeration of written sources going back to classical Hebrew, including ones from about 17 centuries when it was not spoken. As a result, what became accepted as Israeli Hebrew is a merged grammatical (and lexical) system, built upon written sources regarded as the normative standard that should dictate speech norms as well, and that any deviation from it would be detrimental. Some Hebraists question whether a language that was not spoken for so long can still be regarded as “Hebrew,” or even as a Semitic language. The average Israeli fails to recognize the inevitability of change in language development through history, and the existence of multiple levels of language uses (registers) side-by-side, each of which is just as legitimate as the other. We follow with illustrations of the expansion of new word formation from existing bases through linear derivation by means of suffixes, a most transparent process, alongside discontinuous (root+pattern) derivation. We will also explore the changing treatment of possessive and existential sentences, the neutralization of numeral gender, the maintenance of fixed stress in certain classes of words, and a certain tendency towards rhythmic alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. Some of these have precedents in earlier stages of Hebrew, and demonstrate that change is a natural result of Israeli Hebrew’s being a living language, and should not be regarded as evidence of its deterioration, becoming non-Semitic, an artificial hybrid language, or creole.

• Publisher: National Association of Professors of Hebrew (NAPH),National Association of Professors of Hebrew