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How the Hebrew Language Grew
Book by Edward Horowitz, Horowitz, Edward
341 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1967
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 20, 2025
I expect this book lands differently if you're an American Jew who grew up hearing a good amount of Hebrew but never thought harder about language than the average person, as opposed to someone with a historical linguistics background who first came to it from that perspective. Horowitz notices a few patterns in Hebrew that he wants to communicate to stir up enthusiasm for learning it, and I can certainly imagine that for a person in his target audience (which, incidentally, is also already able to read at least vocalised text) it will do exactly that.
Not all of the patterns he thinks he sees are real, though, and his explanations for them are often spurious. This gets worse as the book goes on, too—much of what he has to say about e.g. the origin of the alphabet can be excused as lies-to-children simplification and his discussion of e.g. the behaviour of "weak letters" in verbal forms, while neither helpful nor strictly correct diachronically, is at least not far removed from many of the crappier grammars of the time, but most of his many etymologies of roots as onomatopoeic or the product of random metathesis or random consonant insertion or completely unmotivated "interchange of sounds" are absolute nonsense. It's also not the case that בׇּתִּים, the plural of בַּיִת, was originally the plural of another word for house altogether, or that the מ in מַקְטֵל nouns (sorry, מַפְעֵל) is the same as מָה 'what', or that manna is from מַן הוּא, or that תִּקְטֹל is "really" אַתָּה קְטֹל, or that asphalt is from Yam Shafelet (or that the Dead Sea was ever called that), or that עַיִן is עֵין in the construct state because "עֵין is the old way of pronouncing עַיִן", or or or. Horowitz thanks William F. Albright, Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai, and Alexander Sperber—all very weighty names—in his foreword for their help with questions on "difficult etymological and grammatical points", which makes you wonder how much worse it could have been.
It could be the most accurate and insightful work of historical morphology and etymology in the world, though, and it would still be a book explicitly written to encourage American Jews to learn Modern Hebrew as a living language and, crucially, move to Israel to speak it there—by 1960, when this first came out, you would have had to be a real piece of shit to write it.
Not all of the patterns he thinks he sees are real, though, and his explanations for them are often spurious. This gets worse as the book goes on, too—much of what he has to say about e.g. the origin of the alphabet can be excused as lies-to-children simplification and his discussion of e.g. the behaviour of "weak letters" in verbal forms, while neither helpful nor strictly correct diachronically, is at least not far removed from many of the crappier grammars of the time, but most of his many etymologies of roots as onomatopoeic or the product of random metathesis or random consonant insertion or completely unmotivated "interchange of sounds" are absolute nonsense. It's also not the case that בׇּתִּים, the plural of בַּיִת, was originally the plural of another word for house altogether, or that the מ in מַקְטֵל nouns (sorry, מַפְעֵל) is the same as מָה 'what', or that manna is from מַן הוּא, or that תִּקְטֹל is "really" אַתָּה קְטֹל, or that asphalt is from Yam Shafelet (or that the Dead Sea was ever called that), or that עַיִן is עֵין in the construct state because "עֵין is the old way of pronouncing עַיִן", or or or. Horowitz thanks William F. Albright, Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai, and Alexander Sperber—all very weighty names—in his foreword for their help with questions on "difficult etymological and grammatical points", which makes you wonder how much worse it could have been.
It could be the most accurate and insightful work of historical morphology and etymology in the world, though, and it would still be a book explicitly written to encourage American Jews to learn Modern Hebrew as a living language and, crucially, move to Israel to speak it there—by 1960, when this first came out, you would have had to be a real piece of shit to write it.
July 3, 2019
I personally expected more historical background about the genesis of the language, but the extended explanations about the formation of various words based on the 3-letter root were also interesting. At the end of each chapter there is a list of questions that sum-up the learning therefore it is a recommended reading for the students of Hebrew language.
November 16, 2019
Absolutely superb, riveting, enthralling and can’t rate it highly enough. A life changer in its way. Re-discovering it now after 30 years!
May 9, 2020
A feast for those who love the Hebrew language.
September 10, 2023
An entertaining and good book on the topic of the development of the Hebrew language.
July 10, 2014
Mr. Horowitz writes in a delightfully informal, personal style that is easy and entertaining to read. This is not a book for learning Hebrew, but it will definitely help put the modern language into a larger context.
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February 19, 2009Hebrew
October 4, 2012
Overall I liked this book. The content was interesting. I felt as though some things could have been more explained though, and at times the author took an obnoxious tone.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews