[Mesorah] Speaking of Temani customs

[Akiva Miller]

I see a gigantic difference between Medieval Aramaic vs Shakespearean
English.

The latter was a spoken language where the grammar and meaning was
commonplace, even if only a few could read and write. The illiteracy may
have led to rampant spelling errors, but that's about it.

The former was a foreign language, which people were familiar with only to
whatever extent they knew gemara; I can all too easily imagine how their
writing must have been riddled with ignorant errors.

Akiva Miller


On Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 2:34 AM Ira L. Jacobson via Mesorah <
mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

>
> *At 19:53 17-04-19  +0000, Mandel, Seth stated the following: *
>
> knowledge of Aramaic was nil in medieval Europe. Anything composed in
> Aramaic from that period is full of errors, sometimes quite serious ones.
> This is not a problem confined to the afterSeder compositions, but covers
> so many things.
>
>
> This is interesting reasoning.  Let us assume that the figure stated for
> ignorance of Aramaic among Jews at the stated time is accurate.
>
> In England in the mid-1500s the *illiteracy *rate in the English language
> in England was about 75 percent for men and 95 percent for women.  From
> that I can conclude that William Shakespeare's writings are full of errors,
> sometimes quite serious ones.
>
> Or not?
>
>
>
> =-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-==-=-=-=-=- During General
> Grant's "Western Campaign," he issued "General Order #11," which evicted
> all Jews from his area of operations. (NOT his finest moment)
> mailto: laser at ieee.org
>
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