[Mesorah] At/Atah

Tue Aug 26 13:51:08 PDT 2008

Oh my.  I didn't realize that a discussion of pronouns could become so
contentious.  I will try to do my best to explain what little I know of
the issue(s) being discussed in the hope that some things can be cleared
up.

First of all, Proto-Semitic is a (re?)construction of a proposed
forerunner of all Semitic languages.  It has never been heard (obviously)
or even seen in an inscription.  Where does it come from?  As an example,
I'll explain what I meant by mentioning the proposed Proto-Semitic word
*'anti.  First, we start from Tanakh.  Most of the time, the second person
feminine pronoun is "at".  There are several lines of evidence that
suggest that this is not the only form of the pronoun:  The dagesh in the
tav implies that there is an assimilated letter (probably a nun); the word
appears in Aramaic (in Tanakh, and very occasionally in Bavli) as "ant",
with a nun.  In addition, the word appears (in k'rei) seven times as
"atti" - probably not chance.  Furthermore, there are some odd verb forms
that can be explained best by assuming a "-ti" ending to the pronoun: 
Some Hebrew past tense verbs are created by adding the pronoun to the
verb.  (Example:  katav+attah=katavta (which appears many many times in
the form katavtah, with a heh at the end, just like the pronoun).)  In a
few places in Tanakh, something that looks like a second-person feminine
ending has a "-ti" ending (e.g., Shoftim 5:10), implying that the
second-person feminine pronoun also sometimes has a "ti" ending.
Looking at other languages, linguists notice that in Arabic, it also
appears as a variant of "ant", with a nun; and Syriac (a dialect of
Aramaic) it appears with both a nun and a yodh.
What happened?
Well, no one really knows.  Since it's more natural for letters to become
assimilated and fall out, as opposed to become created where there was
none, linguists assume that the "original" form of the word did have a
nun, that in Hebrew was later assimilated to the tav and left us with the
dagesh in the tav.  Is that right?  Could be.   It's also possible that
during the time of Migdal Bavel, "attah" was actually pronounced with some
sort of faint nun in it that later was actually written by other Semitic
languages descended from Hebrew after Migdal Bavel.  We don't have too
much evidence, I don't think.

In any case, to say that Proto-Semitic actually existed, I think you're
forced to say that there was a long history of a precursor to Hebrew well
before Tanakh was written down; it's really not a question of what
language Adam ha-Rishon spoke.

Just in terms of shitos rishonim on Hebrew - there's a famous machloket
Rambam-Ramban about why Hebrew is Leshon ha-Kodesh, with Ramban
emphasizing that Hebrew was the language of creation (implying that it was
indeed first) in Ramban's peirush on Shmot 30:13; ibn Ezra (Breishit 11:1)
and Kuzari (2:68) both hold that Hebrew was the first and only language
before Migdal Bavel, but R. Yosef Bekhor Shor (Breishit ibid.) argues and
says that everyone knew all seventy languages.

Kol tuv

Ben Kandel

> On Monday, 25 Aug 2008, R' Raphael Davidovich wrote, in part,
> about Rashi to B'reshis 2:23:
>> I thought the Chazal was about Adam Harishon, which could
>> conceivably lead a person to conclude that Hebrew is the
>> literal first language, which led to my counter-argument
>> that this is no reason to think that it must also be the
>> origin of all post-Mabul languages.
>>
>> However, Chazal say even less than that.  The claim, which
>> is pure Medrash that has no practical human language
>> conclusion, is that Hashem created the world with Hebrew.
>> That has NOTHING to do with the development of languages in
>> the history of Olam Hazeh.  It is entirely plausible to
>> suggest that while from a aggedeta point of view, Hebrew was
>> the "language" that made Creation, Hebrew as a human language
>> evolved and developed in a manner similar to all other
>> languages.
>
> The context of the Rashi (the pasuk) implies that Adam spoke the language
> in question.  Even if we ignore Rashi, each of the following statements
> seems either reasonable or Jewish to me:
>    1.  One person was created first, and was able to speak
>        intelligently as soon as he was created, or soon after.
>    2.  That person spoke only one language on a regular basis
>        at the time he was first able to speak.
>    3.  That language thus did not descend from any other.
> Am I to understand that you, R'RD, wish to argue that that language was
> something other than Hebrew (l'shon kodesh), despite the Rashi alluded to
> above, and that Rashi was referring only to the creation of the world and
> not the language Adam spoke, despite the context of the Rashi?  Or that
> that language Adam spoke was other than Hebrew, despite the context of the
> Rashi, and that Rashi, and the midrash he's quoting, decided to lie, and
> say it was Hebrew even though it was actually Proto-Whatever, just for the
> sake of d'rash?  Either one seems to me, if you'll excuse me, far-fetched.
> And if Adam spoke a different language, what sort of language was it, and
> why did he speak it?  I mean this from a Jewish point of view.  That is,
> if the world was created with Hebrew, or, at least, if the Torah is in it,
> then why would Hashem create the first person speaking Proto-Whatever, or
> how did he develop it?  It all seems to me so unreasonable.
>
> R'RD also refers to Hebrew's not being the "origin of all post-Mabul
> languages".  I agree.  But it did predate them, as far as I can currently
> understand, which is a separate issue.
>
> I am willing to be convinced otherwise.
>
> Michael Hamm
> AM, Math, Wash. U. St. Louis
> msh210 at math.wustl.edu                Fine print:
> http://www.math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ ... legal.html
> _______________________________________________
> Mesorah mailing list
> Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org
> http://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/mesorah-aishdas.org
>
>
>