The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past

by Paul Wexler

Hebrew is regarded as a former living language which ceased to be a native language 1800 years ago, only to be given a spoken function anew in the late 19th century. Since the re-acquisition of a lost colloquial function has never been documented, Modern Hebrew has become an object of fascination among linguists and laymen alike.In this book the author claims- Modern Hebrew is not a direct continuation of monolingual Semitic Hebrew- Modern Hebrew was created when Yiddish speaker re-lexified their language to Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew- Yiddish is a Slavic language, derived from Sorbian and thus, Modern Hebrew is a Slavic LanguageThese claims raise a number of interesting why do most speakers believe that Modern Hebrew is a Semitic language, what are the contributions of Modern Hebrew to the typology of diglossia, historical and genetic linguistics, universal grammar, 2nd language acquisition and political science?

146 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1990

Reviews

[Ashley (אהבה) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful for my essay but this guy seems pretty deluded and has a tendency to exaggerate things greatly

[Michael Drash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Provocative thesis with interesting semi-logical foundations but I had the impression that certain portions/claims were reaches. Hard to evaluate because out of my domain of expertise. Easy to read/follow if not believe.

[Colin Naturman]

Crackpot nonsense from an historical revisionist. How on earth was this published in a monograph series?