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 !.. ✌️

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

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?

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.

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!

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.

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".

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

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 RU-vidr called _Random Typek_ who made a whole channel out of it!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

Wow I learnt so much here! Great video

it jut occurred to me that this series will end one day. that will be a sad day.

9:50 the word for insertion is החדרה (hachdara) from the root חדר (heder) which means "room"(as in bedroom) but "hachnasa" is the word we use for income

Great video. Thanks for sharing.

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

Absolutely fascinating, thank you!

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.

That is a really interesting approach to expounding on an extant language. Some time ago I watched a heart surgery in South Korea and was thoroughly surprised at how many terms were in English. My understanding is that a lot of work has been done since then but the point stands.

So, so good! Thank you for these videos! Also, please leave quotes up for just a bit longer! It's my one and only complaint - I'm a super fast reader but I can still only get through half of them if I'm lucky!

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

Thank you for your youtube channel! I Randomly your video was recommended to me 1 hour after uplaod and I am glad it was. I have zero connection to jews, but recently I have been interested in Jewish history,, but I couldn't get past the ways that authors portray the Jews, either as victims, demons or as exotic superior people, a very sincere thank you for humanising your people in the eyes of a stranger . Already binging through your channel.

I've often heard mentions of Yemen's Jews, but never seen a video or read a full text on them specifically. Perhaps that could be an idea for the future? They didn't have a very small community either, so there could be enough material.

Curious choice when talking about the Maimonides writing in Hebrew (one major work only, the Mishneh Torah) you show a frontispiece from the work Guide for the Perplexed, translated into Hebrew, but which Maimonides wrote in Arabic, like most of his work. He did write the Mishneh Torah in Hebrew to make it accessible to Jews in Europe, who did not speak Arabic.

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!

amazing video!

the usage of the perfect aspect as the past tense, the imperfect as the future, and the gerund as the present is a pattern used in aramaic.

Great work!

The revival of Hebrew truly is amazing! A lesson for all linguists

why is translating "lalechet Kadima" as "invadeing(more like going to, but an army "going" somewhere is usually an invasion) the east" so far fetched? "Kedam" is an ancient Hebrew term for "east", the word "Kadima" is used as "eastward" in the literal hebrew anthem, hativka "ולפאתי מזרח קדימה - עין לציון צופיה"

Awesome, been waiting for a new upload! Thanks Sam! I've been catching up from the start of your history videos, this is great stuff. This should be required viewing for high schoolers here in the US.

19:05 "קדמה" ו"קדימה" אלה מילים שונות בתכלית!

Hi Sam. Great Video. I know you never promise videos about something beforehand. Still, as a former Simon Dubnow Riga Jewish School student, I would like to know if there will be a seperate episode on Jewish Autonomism. I think the concept is somehow a road not taken and is not necessarily an alternative to Israel but could have been a supplement to organizing the life of the diaspora in cooperation with Israel. Keep up the great work.

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.

This’ fascinating!

Yey for Yair! Che Languages has become one of my favourite channels in the last couple of months, and I discovered it thanks to your previous collaboration. Edit: Also, the whole video was immensely interesting.

The ultra-orthodox were a problem then as now.

great video sam

Uncovering the reason why I've been stuck in ulpan for almost a year now

Wow! You're a fantastic source for Jewish history. After I watch your videos, I feel like I have a comprehensive understanding of our history, instead of just some aspects of each story. I'll give you a 10/10 👍

I have enjoyed the documentaries because with everything in the news and the world I thought it was important to get educated on the issues. I admire both the Hebrew people for maintaining their culture for centuries, and my faith comes from theirs.

As your videos enter the 1900s, will the kibbutz feature into any of the videos? They always seemed fascinating to me, and maybe others might find them interesting too.

It's impressive that it was revived after so long. We should do the same with other languages

Ayy finally!

This is awesome! It's so fun going through Jewish history with you :D

I remember reading the book that Ben Avi wrote. I remember it was written that after a fight with some kids they sung the french song for peace and later Eliezer beaten him up for singing that. And another time Eliezer was dishearten when he heard his barely alive son, that has just been recovered from a shipwreck, talking in arabic.

Hey Sam! I have a question not directly related to the history you have been teaching but more the maps you have created (e.g., of Jerusalem, Algiers, Paris, etc.). These would appear to be vectorized maps with building footprints or roads/block from that era. Do you base it off of older maps? How do you vectorize these maps without the tedium of hand-tracing? It would appear to be a minor question but the consistency of these maps across all of the videos have made me curious. Thank you!

great video anyway

Thank you for this series! Looking forward to hear more about hebrew. And not really looking forward to when will you reach 1930's.

The Tapuaj Adama Story made my day? *French Accent* How should we call this? *French Accent* I mean, it is an earth apple, so how about that? GENIUS! LOL!

I wouldn't say the translation of קדימה (kadima) as eastward is baseless, as in old hebrew the word קדמה (kedma) meant eastward. Still absurd and likely malicious, though.

well qadima does sometimes means "east" / "to the east" in Biblical Hebrew

"conversational Hebrew had already been a normal feature of life in cities like Safed for centuries". This sounds very interesting. Can you tell us more about this?

Is there a possibility you’ll cover the Beilis Trial in a future video?

Just letting you know the link to Che Languages isn't working :( great video with good support

Is that the old Assyrian flag at 10:36?

An amazing video as usual. I wanted to ask whats your opinion of people today who complain about changes in the language (dropping ayin, hey and het for example) who claim that these happen due to "lazyness"

So how much difference was there between Aramaic and early Hebrew? Are we talking differences similar to dialects, or Icelandic and Norwegian, or Icelandic and German?

A master story teller!

Make a video about language of the old yishuv!

6:30 sounds great

What's the flag used to represent Aramaic at 10:34?

What a great video

10:50 Excuse me, but "Carl" and "Earl" are not cognates. Earl would be the English word, while the Norse word would be Jarl, or whatever old form of those words you'd want to use.

Ancient Hebrew conceptions of tense was not quite as linear in terms of how time was understood, but that can be said of several ancient forms of languages. For example, in Exodus, Ea asher ea translates as "I am that I am," but in antiquity it might have been alternatively understood as "I will be what I will be." So, it's not really nailed down in present tense. The Greeks and Romans introduced Judeo - -Christian thought to linear time.

so interesting!!

11:03 In fact, Russian is the third largest spoken language in Israel following the aliyah of post-Soviet Jews. Even Wiktionary has a category for Israeli Russian.

Although Ben Yehuda based his preferred pronunciation of Modern Hebrew on the Sephardic one, over the years, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation ended up having more of an influence on Modern Hebrew.

Loved the nod to “where’s the bathroom” lol

There are so quite some many dialects in Hebrew, which made the revival so significant imo; to unite.

I have to say, all in all a very well done and fascinating video. Though I could spot a (small) number of oversimplifications or errors. For example that ashkenazi hebrew (sic!) and yemenite hebrew where closer to ancient and medieval hebrew sephardic pronounciations. Especially for ashkenazi hebrew this is very much wrong and btw according to the communis opinio of hebraists nowadays ashkenazi Hebrew developed in the very late medieval and early modern period out of sephardic hebrew. There is much evidence that the type of hebrew pronounciation used by ashkenazi Jews in the medieval age was essenitially more or less the same as sephardic hebrew (e.g. some medieval vocalized ashkenazi hebrew manuscripts frequently do mistakes that could only arise in sephardic pronounciation, but not in ashkenazi (i.e. confusing Qamats and Pata7). Also the german born medieval rabbi Asher Ben Ye7iel after moving to spain and becoming chief rabbi of Toledo never comments on differences in pronounciation despite otherwise meticiously noting differences. Furthermore what you mean by closeness to medieval pronounciations really much depends on which medieval pronounciation you are talking about. Tiberian, Palestinian or Babylonian, if we are talking about Babylonian (which is the basis of the yemenite pronounciation) or Tiberian, then yes Yemenite Hebrew is close to medieval pronounciation traditions (though not really that close to ancient pronounciations). For Ancient pronounciations however the evailable evidence (especially greek and to a lesser degree latin transcriptions of Hebrew, e.g. wittnesed by the LXX, the Secunda, etc.) resembles the sephardic pronounciation of hebrew (especially the vowel system= waaaaaaayyyyyyy closer than yemenite or even ashkenazi. Otherwise in the english language you'd find words like "Isroel" or even "Isruayl" instead of "Israel"... This is because the english names for places and personal names found in the bible normally entered english through the transcriptions of the LXX and later also latin transcriptions who where themselves influenced by the LXX....) Leaving that and a few other minor errors here and there asside, it was a really good video though...

Crazy Ive been doing similar things with Sanskrit in my own writings

Wow so the series is almost done? Onlt 1 century to go?

Modern Hebrew has three striking parallels to Arabic dialects - use of a present participle for present tense instead of the imperfect, analytic genitive instead of a construct phrase, and SVO word order. By contrast, Biblical Hebrew and Classical Arabic use the imperfect for the present tense, the construct phrase for possession, and a VSO word order. My belief is that both Modern Hebrew and the Arabic dialects were influenced by Aramaic. In the case of Modern Hebrew, the Aramaic influence probably came through Rabbinic Hebrew, which served as an unconscious grammatical model for the new language, given that a traditional Jewish education required literacy in Rabbinic Hebrew through the Gemorah. In the case of Arabic, my feeling is that Arabic dialects probably evolved from former Aramaic-speaking people adapting to the new language.

You put the drawings of Eliezer Ben Yehuda's descendents but no Gil Hovav? shame! nice collab there with Che Languages!

9:21 Chile while being the longest country in the world (4000 km from north to south) it's also a thin country (500 km from west to east), but not that mutillated as it appears in that map.

At 10:00 minutes you mention the number of Hebrew roots as about 8,000. One compendium of all the roots used in the Hebrew Bible has only 1,995 roots. While it is is possible to expand this a bit further using some postbiblical sources, I have no idea how you arrive at 8,000.

Does the Hebrew language continue to evolve ? Thanks

BRO okay, hear me out, might sound weird... 15:48 you mention a 'gal gadot' i presume you arent referring to the actress who played wonderwoman. PLEASE i genuinely beg tell me who this is, because google search only returns results about the actress. . for YEARS i thought that 'gal gadot' was a prime minister of israel during, like, the 60s? i have no idea where this came from. whenever i heard the name i pictured a black and white photograph of a dude in a hat. when the wonderwoman movie came out, i heard someone say that gal gadot was playing wonderwoman. and i was like... um... what? i thought this was, like, some kind of mandela effect false memory; but BRO who was this guy who my mind somehow sorted into the list of israeli prime ministers (or presidents, ive checked both lists and NOTHING matches the name or picture i remember)???????? i genuinely cant find anything except about the actress online. please fr i thought i was going crazy

Damn, I've never learned about the violence eliezer and his family faced. Radicals just can't stop ruining everything

Rly sick story

They revived the language but not the original accents

12:51 Sephardic Hebrew's inventory almost exactly matches that of the Brazilian Portuguese I speak. If it weren't for chi and the glottal stop I could probably get the two confused

I've heard that modern Hebrew is a modern invention from both politically left and right leaning people who didn't grow up speaking it. It's good that you're clearing up some confusion

I repeat: what wouldnt we do without your videos?

17:00

Haham: rabbi Baş: head Hahambaşı: Head of hahams Greetings from Turkey 👋

you have a very strong ashkenazi accent .. thanks for the history

Cant say i like to be in his sons shoes. Couldnt he teach him french after 3 years

One of the great ideas of modern times. A culture bases everything on their language; without it they will be assimilated into other cultures.

The picture at 17:00 may be a fake fabricated by postcard makers to sell to tourists/pilgrims at the time.