Exactly. Hebrew was never a "dead language." Modern Hebrew is simply a revitalized language. Jews studied, spoke, and wrote Hebrew continuously since ancient times. Hebrew was often used as a common language between Jews when they didn't speak the same language (such as during European diaspora times, when Yiddish speakers met non-Yiddish speakers).
The difference is that Hebrew was not typically a first language, but that's often the case with revitalized native languages.
Years ago, I had a flatmate who was from Finland. She was a Finnish historian, and she compared the revitalization project to revive Modern Finnish to the revival of Modern Hebrew.
Finland was colonized by Sweden for nearly 700 years, and during that time, Swedish became the official language of Finland. Finnish was still spoken, but it was in danger of dying out. Then in the mid-1800s (half a century after Finland was conquered by Russia, and was no longer under Swedish control), there was a Finnish language revival, and Modern Finnish was created. Part of this modernization included writing dictionaries, creating new vocabulary, and establishing consistent grammatical rules.
From the Wikipedia article on the creation of Modern Finnish:
In the 19th century Johan Vilhelm Snellman and others began to stress the need to improve the status of Finnish. Ever since the days of Mikael Agricola, written Finnish had been used almost exclusively in religious contexts, but now Snellman's Hegelian nationalistic ideas of Finnish as a fully-fledged national language gained considerable support. Concerted efforts were made to improve the status of the language and to modernize it, and by the end of the century Finnish had become a language of administration, journalism, literature, and science in Finland, along with Swedish.
Yeah. It's a similar story to the revitalization of Hebrew and the creation of Modern Hebrew, albeit Jews kept our native language alive under occupation for thousands of years longer than the Finns did.
AND YET, how many bigots do you see attacking Finnish people, and telling them shit like, "YOU SHOULD STILL BE SPEAKING SWEDISH!!! YOU'RE SPEAKING A DEAD LANGUAGE!!! YOUR LANGUAGE IS ISN'T REAL!!!"
No one. No one does this.
Everyone accepts that in Finland, people speak Finnish. Even though for hundreds of years, many people in Finland spoke Swedish as their first language. Even though Modern Finnish is a revitalized version of old Finnish.
So what's the difference?? Hmmm I wonder?? Why do people have such a hard time accepting that Jews are now speaking a revitalized version of OUR native language?? Why do people have such a hard time accepting that Jews want to speak Modern Hebrew, with an increased vocabulary and consistent grammatical rules??
Yeah, it's because people fucking hate Jews, and part of the way that Jew-hate manifests is that goyim LOVE holding Jews to double standards.
It's FINE when Finnish people revitalize their native language, but how DARE Jews speak our native language, the language we have been speaking, reading, and writing for over 3500 years.
We should celebrate the fact that Jews can now speak our native language as a first language. That is the goal of all native peoples, after all.
ellievsbear
origamiaround
titsay
discoholicmusic
snowghoul
