[Mesorah] "Teven" at the end of a pasuk

[Mandel, Seth]

On the contrary, the sound was of me drawing in my breath to see how well R. Micha has absorbed things and thought about them.
One of the things you learn from psycholinguistics is not just that language is implanted in humans, but that language is part of their mind: all people, whether geniuses or slow, learn to speak language.  Even more, all children go through identical stages in learning to speak, similar to Piaget stages.  This includes not only that nouns come first, but also that sounds are learned in a specific sequence.
The conclusion is that HBQH installed into humans not only the ability to learn a new skill, language, but that our brains are set to use language.
But there are many other things that characterize all languages.  One is that all languages, without exception, change over time.  All of them.  Anyone with sensitivity sees that the Hebrew used by Chazal in the Mishna (and Tosefta and B'rayto) differs greatly from the Hebrew used in the Bible.  So greatly that a Jew from the time of Mattan Torah would have great difficulty understanding the Hebrew of Chazal.
An example I like is the quite common phrase in Chazal יצא ידי חובתו.  Although the words would be familiar to someone from the time of Mattan Torah, they would mean to him "he left behind the hands/restrictions of the money he owed."  In addition to words changing their meaning, new words were created (in the Torah, torches are called לפידים; Chazal call them אבוקות).  And new words were borrowed, and clearly Chazal did not care that a word like פנקס is from a Greek word pinax, even though they could have done things like the אקדמיה ללשון העברית does nowadays, inventing new Hebrew words.  This is besides the fact that languages change their pronunciation.  Modern English is quite different from Middle English (e.g. Chaucer), but even Shakespeare, whose language was Modern English, pronounced words differently, as is clear from some of his rhymes (raisin rhymes with reason).
Anyone who denies that languages change is denying the work of HQBH.
Falling back on idea that Hebrew is a holy language because it was spoken by HQBH is a mistake. Clearly, HQBH used Hebrew to dictate the words of the Chumash to Moshe Rabbenu.  But HQBH has no mouth, no tongue, no ears. What he said to Moshe Rabbenu when transmitting the Torah was by something like telepathy, but Moshe understood it in the languages that he spoke, Biblical Hebrew.  When you dream that someone is talking to you, no one thinks that someone else in the room can hear the voice, since your ears do not hear the sounds, either.
As the Rambam and the Ramban both say (from different points of view), Hebrew is called L'shon haQodesh because it is the language that the Jews used to learn and speak Torah.  The Torah is the source of its holiness, not the sounds of Hebrew.
So yes, the language that Adam and Eve spoke was different than the language of the Jews in the time of Moshe Rabbenu, which was different than the language used by Chazal (even assuming that when the Torah records Adam and Eve speaking it is recording their words literally, rather than recording whatever they spoke translated into Hebrew).
Once upon a time I spoke at length with R Refoel Shmuelevitz, the RY of Mir, and asked him whether there could be any objection to this idea, that Adam and Even spoke a language very different than the the Hebrew of the time of Moshe Rabbenu.  After thinking about the question, he said no, as long as the d'roshos that Chazal record could be applicable to that language.
Similary, there can be no doubt that other "Semitic" languages descended from an early common language that linguists call "protoSemitic," just as Spanish and French and Italian and Romanian are all descended from a language that can be called "protoRomance" or "vulgar Latin," which is quite similar to Classical Latin but not quite identical.  The original Semitic language was neither Hebrew nor Aramaic nor Arabic nor Geez; all are descendents.  What you decide to call it ("proto Hebrew" or "proto Semitic) is deterrmined by your Weltanschaung, not by facts.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
________________________________
From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of Micha Berger via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2021 6:38 PM
To: Toby Katz <t613k at aol.com>
Cc: mesorah at lists.aishdas.org <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] "Teven" at the end of a pasuk

On Fri, Dec 24, 2021 at 09:26:43PM +0000, Toby Katz via Mesorah wrote:
> "Pre-Hebrew"?!  Is that a thing?

Pre-Leshon haQodesh... I don't think so. Although I don't know how O
linguists make peace with the historical evidence vs Migdal Bavel.

But... LhQ evolved even during the time of Tanakh. Why would it not have
evolved in the time between Adam and Matan Torah?

Me, I see it as which line of the tree do you plan on drawing straight,
and which languages will you draw as branch points? Linguists care about
the set of phonemes, the morphology, grammar vocabulary, and other such
features. The Torah cares about ease of communicating different subsets
of truth.

So, LhQ is a single trunk that runs from Adam until at least Ezra,
perhaps Chazal, and perhaps some qedushah still remains in Rabbinic
Hebrew centuries after the last navi.

And yet it could also be true that Rabbinic Hebrew was less like some
pro-Semitic language than other languages are. Less like it -- in features
that matter less to its qedushah.

To me, LhQ is the language where "Torah" can be linked to both "hirayon"
and "moreh" and where we aren't trained to think that "yir'ah" is two
things (awe or fear). Where the noun and the present tense are the same
word (boneh = builder and also boneh = is building) because you are what
you do. Etc...

If Arabic retained more incidentals of early Semitic back when Sheim was
speaking Lashon haQodesh -- like retaining two forms of ches or ayin,
it still didn't retain the qeduushah.

So we draw our trees differently, but we should all be using the same line
segments representing the same splitting points and cross-influences. Just
drawn at different angles to each other depending on what's really
important to you.

(The sound you hear in the background is RSM trying to politely hold in
the laughter at my naivite and ignorant shouting.)

Gut Voch!
-Micha

--
Micha Berger                 Like a bird, man can reach undreamed-of
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.aishdas.org_asp&d=DwICAg&c=VTwaeXjOsAHot2hQQ0nozrBJwyviuCtydNuGwYGfYiI&r=e6XbAQdGwcl_5FMtQ-t1eA&m=DgvWjRGXHDV6LgWf2MM0uUWOGYBpFZz295WRJRdoBMyjG9yJsDVg_a-nTmFHSkOW&s=hN6klO17vrq-UOemZqThBkiFTNvSN8mN5uyUciR-s8I&e=    heights as long as he works his wings.
Author: Widen Your Tent      But if he relaxes them for but one minute,
- https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__amzn.to_2JRxnDF&d=DwICAg&c=VTwaeXjOsAHot2hQQ0nozrBJwyviuCtydNuGwYGfYiI&r=e6XbAQdGwcl_5FMtQ-t1eA&m=DgvWjRGXHDV6LgWf2MM0uUWOGYBpFZz295WRJRdoBMyjG9yJsDVg_a-nTmFHSkOW&s=rXfM3VosBu9oWPh7JFo_FdkCE8YxXfPH2nuxJOKH44k&e=     he plummets downward.   - Rav Yisrael Salanter
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