[Avodah] Choshen

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 06:00:42PM -0400, Yitzhak Grossman wrote:
:> Not at all. Cognates require that things didn't drift too far in this
:> particular word, not that the words are static. After all, cognates are
:> often found between languages that diverged millenia ago.

: In your previous message, you wrote:
:> Definitely not "come from other languages"! Rashi on Bereishis  1:11
:> reads "'Safah achas' - leshon haqodesh."

:> Clearly Rashi felt the  bilbul leshonos was incomplete, leaving traces
:> of similarities in some words  from the original leshon haqodesh.

Note that the first quote of me in this post I am talking about my
own position, since I was questioned about language drift during the 2
millenia pre-migdal. The second (and chronologically earlier) quote was
from when the topic was Rashi's position.

But you failed to note that the first is my own feelings (as informed
by a rebbe-chaveir who also has a PhD in linguistics), and the latter
is my understanding of Rashi.

I don't see Rashi saying anywhere that LhQ drifted between Adam and
Avraham (the generation of the hapelagah). It may be implausible given
modern theories of language, but there is no reason to believe that
Rashi thought it did.

I therefore don't think Rashi believed there were words in LhQ borrowed
from elsewhere. I would assume from his silence (and because language
evolution wasn't a topic of discussion in his day), LhQ was unchanged
from Adam to well after Moshe.

My own opinion is more difficult (and therefore likely to be flawed); I
think the only borrowed terms in LhQ are for concepts that didn't exist in
Adam's day. Words may evolve, within the qadosh worldview. But to require
a new word means that the other culture was the first to encounter a
new realia. And then the borrowed word may have to drift in meaning to
fit the categorization of the world that better brings one to qedushah.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A person must be very patient
micha at aishdas.org        even with himself.
http://www.aishdas.org         - attributed to R' Nachman of Breslov
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