Learning Journal #7

[Omer Genosar]

Hebrew is a very good language to include in the conversation of reviving languages. Hebrew itself was a dead language in terms of the spoken form, thankfully its Jewish roots kept the written aspect of the language alive. The work that Eliezer Ben-Yehuda did to revive the spoken language is amazing. He turned a group of people from many different backgrounds that spoke numerous languages into a fairly homogenous society through speech. Speech is one of the main pillars of society, it brings together people with a bond that is inseparable and is the foundation to most cultures. Whenever a language is lost, the culture or group it came from usually dies with it. Resurrecting or at least preserving languages is extremely important for the survival of a culture. Some words have meanings that are solely owned by one language. Of course a table is a table even if the sound is different, but what about a word like Mashuguna in Yiddish? It means a combination of silly, crazy, and chaos all in one, there is not another word like it yet when the language goes so do those words.