The Revival of Hebrew? (1879-1908)

Che Languages:
@CheLanguages

Maps by Omniatlas:

Sources:

Aidan Beatty
"Language Politics: Comparing Irish Nationalism and Zionism"
History Ireland, Vol. 26, No. 1

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
"An Honorable Question"
HaShahar, 18 March 1879

Arie M. Dubnov
"Itamar Ben-Avi: the Strange Life of Israel's First Native Hebrew Speaker"
Jewish Quarterly, No. 249

Jack Fellman
"Concerning the 'Revival' of the Hebrew Language"
Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 15, No. 5

Ofra Tirosh-Becker
"Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and Algerian Jews: Relationship and Language"
Arabic and Semitic Languages Contextualized

0:00 Intro
0:59 Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Hebrew with Che Languages
4:35 The Literary Revival of Hebrew
6:35 Ben-Yehuda’s Early Life
8:29 The Method for Modernization
11:11 Becoming Ben-Yehuda
14:30 Ben Yehuda vs. the Old Yishuv
20:10 To Be Continued…

[hix]

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 !.. ✌️

[moshecallen]

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.

[CheLanguages]

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!

[SionTJobbins]

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?

[arielruzitsky]

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.

[SamAronow]

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.

[ancienbelge]

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!

[DanielLLevy]

We were taught most of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's story, of course, but his fortuitous experience of the early Algerian intellectualism that was to shape much of the French cultural output in the 20th Century, was for some reason downplayed. Curricula do have time constraints and I do not blame anyone...
This video is brilliant and I loved it!

[acorn]

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.

[thomaspayne]

Thank you so kindly for your time and efforts to make known the language, culture, and history of the children of the Yehudim. Past and present. This was my first experience into the expression of the modern Hebrew, leading toward an accurate understanding of the influences, conditions, and trials incurred in a quest to conjoin the nation of Yisra’el into continuity of its people in their return from a near two thousand year diaspora through a renewed language… Hebrew. And it, like they, I believe are a living miracle in our time. As no other people throughout known history? Have so completely been restored. May this rich heritage carry on to their children and their children’s, children, forever! And may they never forget the promise given to them by Him in whom they received this land, blessed be He. Baruk attah, Shalom.

[urplereen]

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

[nataliesirota]

Thank you Sam Aronow and Che Languages for this wonderful video on the "revival" and development of modern Hebrew!

[mammuchan]

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

[BenLlywelyn]

Todah. A lot of my own channel deals with languages. This was worth my time. I don't know how far into Judaism I will go, but Hebrew as a langauge is utterly fascinating and will likely be my 5th language.

[Jaynat_SF]

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".

[AssyrianFire]

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

[QuandaleDingleGoofyAhh]

Wow I learnt so much here! Great video

[Grey]

I'm an Orthodox Jew who's tried explaining this to people. Everyone thinks I'm being doctrinaire, but the fact is Hebrew was absolutely not purely a liturgical language. Putting aside the literature, the correspondences, Sephardim to this day use Hebrew to converse far more than Ashkenazim did. Just another detail overlooked in this simplified narrative, I suppose.

[Alex.HFA]

Takziv as "budget" feels inspired to me, from "Likzov", to measure out/limit. It feels so very natural.

[DiamondKingStudios]

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!