The Rise and Decline of a Dialect: A Study in the Revival of Hebrew

120 Pages·1979·7.454 MB·English

by  Aaron Bar-Adon

JANUA LINGUARUM
STUDIA MEMORIAE
NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA
edenda curat
C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD
Indiana University
Series Practica, 197

AARON BAR-ADON
The University of Texas, Austin, Texas
THE RISE AND DECLINE
OF A DIALECT
A Study in the Revival of Modem Hebrew
MOUTON PUBLISHERS • THE HAGUE • PARIS • NEW YORK
ISBN: 90 279 3206 9
© 1975, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands
First edition. Second printing 1979
No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or
any other means, without written permission from the publishers.
Printed in The Netherlands
Affectionately Dedicated to my Mother,
Esther Bar-Adori
The Land of Israel (Palestine) During the Early Stages of the
Hebrew Revival (Before the Establishment of the State of Israel).
LAND OFT SRflGL
(PflLEiTlNe)
~ biyw'i^ of JoH
FOREWORD«
While recording in Israel in the mid 1960's for securing oral evidence for a comprehen-
sive research on the History of the Revival of Modern Hebrew, I encountered survivors
of a unique speech community. This group developed by design a special Galilean
dialect of its own, independent of the Judean pronunciation which was becoming the
"standard" one for the revived modern Hebrew. Officially, the revival of Hebrew as a
living, spoken language started in the 1880's, whereas the Galilean dialect emerged
in the mid 1890's and survived as a viable version of a modern Hebrew pronunciation
until the 1920's, when it was abolished, for reasons to be explained, and almost com-
pletely disappeared in the thin air.
Indeed, speakers who joined the Hebrew speech community after 1925, not only
as new immigrants to Palestine but also as native speakers, did not usually have any
clear idea about that Galilean dialect. At best, they may have heard some of the jokes,
or Shibboleths, about that pronunciation - as I did as a youth around 1940. Since
then I was wondering whether that pronunciation really had a basis in reality, whether
there has ever really existed a special Galilean dialect in the initial stages of the
Hebrew revival.
And here I have tapes of real flesh-and-blood Galileans that I recorded myself in
Upper Galilee, among them speakers of Ashkenazi (European) origin, who realize
the /'/ and /h/ as the voiced and voiceless pharyngeal spirants ['] and [h], respec-
tively, and maintain the most salient feature of that dialect, namely the realization
of the fb/ {Bet) as the plosive allophone [b] only, completely abolishing the fricative
allophone [v] (Vet), or the fricativization (spirantization) rule of /b/. Soon the whole
mystery started clearing up, from their evidence and from that of their brethren who
emigrated to other parts of Israel. The latter could be divided into two kinds: those
who preserved its major features in full or in part, and those who intentionally abo-
lished it but could always be detected through the use of some variants from their
native Galilean dialect or through their typical hypercorrections. But the oral evidence
* This research was made possible through a 1969 Fellowship of the American Council of Learned
Societies and a Research Grant from the University of Texas Research Institute, for which I wish
to express here my sincere gratitude to both institutions.
6 FOREWORD
of other old-timers was helpful too. For comparative purposes, representatives of sub-
sequent generations were also interviewed and recorded. Their ignorance was reveal-
ing too....
After six summers and one winter of recording all over Israel (including the off-
springs of the initiators of the dialect), and examining of various published and
unpublished documents, as well as visiting of a theatrical play about the period
("Days of Gold") and conversing with the playwright, I was just about ready for
writing the history of that dialect. Except that the problem was how to coach it
within the general revival of Hebrew as the desirable sociolinguistic background, but
at the same time, without becoming involved in the writing of the entire history of
the latter. The following monograph in English is an attempt to do just that, while
the more involved and comprehensive proposition is being done in Hebrew which
is naturally more suitable for the task.
My gratitude to Professor Winfred P. Lehmann for his encouragement and com-
ments and to Professor Shelomo Morag for his comments and initiative in the publica-
tion of this monograph. Special thanks to all the oldtimers who took the time and
trouble to tell me all about the dialect. To them this volume is dedicated.
I should also like to thank Professor Joshua A. Fishman for reading the manuscript
and for his help in suggesting the present title of this volume. And last but not least,
I would like to thank David Hintze for retyping the manuscript and Sherry
McCullough for her assistance in preparing the Index.
CONTENTS
Foreword 5
Table of Contents 7
1. Introduction 9
2. On the Background : Ben-Yehuda 11
3. The Role of Teachers, Po'alim, and Youth in the Revival 19
4. Conditions for a Special Dialect: Sociolinguistic Considerations 21
5. The Creation of a Special Upper Galilean Hebrew Dialect in a Multilingual
Society: Epstein 23
6. On Some Basic Differences Between the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi Tradi-
tions of Pronunciation 27
7. Fricativization (Spirantization) of /b/, or Not? 31
8. Epstein's Regression 37
9. Promoting the Galilean Dialect : Wilkomitz 39
10. Nativization and Continuity Processes by Children 43
11. Pronunciation Issues at the First Hebrew Teachers' Assembly (1903) 47
12. Encounter at the Second Teachers' Assembly (1904) 51
13. The Aftermath of the Confrontation at the Second Assembly 59
14. Debate at a Session of the Hebrew Language Committee in 1913 61
15. The Attitude of the Rest of the Country 65
16. Disseminating the Dialect: Some Sociolinguistic Aspects 67
17. What About Lower Galilee? 73
18. The Beginning of the End: The Death of a Dialect 75
8 CONTENTS
19. Hypercorrection Phenomena: Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Aspects. 81
20. Post Mortem: Myth, Distortion, Ridicule 83
21. Yamim sel Zahav "Days of Gold" 85
22. Shibboleths for Galileans 87
23. Concluding Note 89
Bibliography 91
Index 97