[Avodah] "the language of Canaan"

[dbmin9 at aol.com]

He also mentions "the language of Canaan".


 


 Two points:

In Medieval Europe, the Jews had a minhag of renaming place-names after Biblical places and words. Hence, the Biblical "Ashkenaz," which can't have been the site of modern-day Germany, gave the name to that land. So too for Tzorfas (France), Sepharad (Spain), Hagar (Hungary) and Slavic lands, which were called Kenaan. Micha's reference to the Slavs as slaves may well be the connection. The others seem to have been based on phonetic similarity ('Ashkenaz' may have been so-called because of a phonetic similarity to Scandia, a general name for parts of Northern Europe).

Second point: IIRC Rashi scholars believe the lo'azim which refer to the language of Kenaan (ie, Slavic) to all be later interpolations into Rashi's text.

S.



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