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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: What if English were not imposed on colonies?
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References: <4s165s$4tu@scooby.beloit.edu> <DuDv6t.AA0@news.uwindsor.ca> <Ox$zacAm4p5xEwnE@vision25.demon.co.uk> <4s9m2v$m0c@news.sas.ab.ca>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 16:52:37 GMT
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In article <4s9m2v$m0c@news.sas.ab.ca>,  <blaine@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> wrote:
>Cheradenine Zakalwe (zakalwe@vision25.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>: In article <4s5rn3$kis@news.sas.ab.ca>, blaine@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
>: writes:
>: >Similarly in Israel, Hebrew is the official language, and English the 
>: >unofficial one.  Conversational Hebrew is pretty much like conversational 
>: >Latin at this point,
>
>: In what sense?
>
>That both languages are pretty well dead as informal, conversational ones.
>Admittedly, Hebrew is not nearly in the same state as Latin.  Unless I'm
>mistaken, Hebrew is mostly for use in Jewish rituals, and Israeli government
>works.  It's also a universal language for Jews of (theoretically) all 
>backgrounds, just like Latin was for Catholics.

	What kind of contact do you have with Israel and Israelis?  Have
you never met a native speaker of Hebrew for whom English and Arabic are
both second languages?  Have you never seen an Israeli television pro-
gramme (such as "Sesame Street") or movie, or read a Hebrew novel, or
listened to a Hebrew radio programme?  In short, what do you base your 
opinion on?

>My point was that Hebrew was the official language, and English (and possibly
>Arabic, among Sephardim and Arabs) the unofficial ones.  A good number of 
>Israelis use English, Arabic, Russian, German, etc. at home and in other
>day-to-day activities rather than Hebrew.

	The literature I've seen suggests that most of these are declining
as home languages.  More importantly, Hebrew is the common language of these
people and, as such, is used in schools, at work, and on the street.  When
a Russian immigrant buys vegetables from a Yemenite, he *might* be able
to speak to her in English, but--given that he knows no Arabic and the
Yemenite no Russian--he's better of using the Hebrew he learned in ulpan
when he immigrated.  The Yemenite took all her schooling in it, after all.
She definitely studied Arabic as well (and possibly English), but that
doesn't mean she uses them outside of limited domains.

	Language shift from Ladino/Spanyol/Judezmo to Hebrew is almost
complete in Israel; few if any of the competent speakers are younger 
than middle-aged.  Not many native speakers of German survived to immigrate
and their language-retention rates are poor.  As the Ethiopians are
both more recent and more isolated immigrants than others, their retention
rates for Amharic are probably quite high; I can't imagine many have 
mastered English or Arabic.  The Russians are better-educated and, thus,
more likely to know English; I'm not sure how much they actually use it
in their daily lives.

	In short, Hebrew is expanding its domains in Israel at the expense
of most other languages.  Arabic is expanding, but not between Jews, as
is English, but the day when the latter ousts Hebrew is certainly not even
on the horizon.

>As for Yiddish vs. Hebrew, I'm not sure.  Yiddish is more of a conversational
>language and had more literature in the past 200 years, but its use for a 
>while had been discouraged in Israel.  Like Hebrew, it also has a very narrow
>audience.

	But a dedicated one!  The Hasidim, who form the core of the native
Yiddish-speaking population, are very tight-knit and conservative.  Those
in Israel refuse to profane Hebrew by using it for secular purposes.  Yid-
dish also certainly has not had more literature than Hebrew at any time in
its existence:  It came into its own only in the late 19th century and
declined precipitively with the destruction of most of its speakers in WWII.
During the period between the turn of the century and the Holocaust, there
*might* have been more works published in Yiddish than in Hebrew, but I
doubt it, because this was also the period when Zionism was at its most
dynamic, spawning an explosion in Hebrew writing.

	Also, Whereas Yiddish was used only by some Eastern European Jews, 
Hebrew was written by *all* of them (with the exception of a few isolated
communities, like the Ethiopians) and there is an extensive tradition of 
Hebrew poetry dating back to the early Middle Ages.  Secular Hebrew prose 
has definitely come into its own both in volume and quality since WWII.

>: > and most of the Ashkenazim speak European languages,
>: >and the Sephardim and Arabs, Arabic.
>
>: Isrealis brought up in Israel presumably speak better Hebrew than
>: English or Arabic, no?
>
>Many of them do, depending on their state of assimilation.  But as in Europe
>and Asia, multilingualism is the rule, not the exception.

	It's a far cry from this statement to "Hebrew is like Latin."
That comparison hasn't been valid for at least 50 years.

>Nationalism aside, there are certain advantages to English or Arabic over 
>Hebrew.  Both English and Arabic have a wide audience (hundreds of millions
>of people, AOT a few million for Hebrew) and are commonly used in
>international communication and trade.
>
>That is why many "small" languages (those with few speakers) are in decline.

	So why are many small languages, including those in competition
with English (like Welsh), Arabic (like Berber), and Spanish (like Quechua), 
now on the increase?
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
