Nicki: Hi Princess! Yeah, that's truer than true. You see, Ben, girl, I was born in Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago, but my family moved to New York when I was 5. I was always surrounded by foreign cultures there. And girl, you see, growing up in such an environment exposes you to a crazy amount of people and to foreign languages also. I'm sure you know what I mean, girl, you live in Berlin, a very multicultural place as well.
Ben: That's right, Nicki, I do meet people with crazy cultural and linguistic backgrounds here. I simply love it.
Nicki: Right, it was the same with me in New York. I've always had a fascination for foreign languages, but I simply never had the time to study one seriously. I learned Spanish in school, dabbled in French, developed a convincing British cockney accent (I'm sure you're familiar with my alter egos) and that's it. Once my career took off, language acquisition was pushed into the background entirely. A couple months ago, I heard my background dancers chat in some foreign language and it got me thinking... I asked myself, Nicki, girl, why did you give up on learning languages? You see, girl, I never got around to learning my favorite foreign language...
Ben: Aw Nicki, that's touching and a bit melodramatic, too. That language being...?
Nicki: Hebrew, of course! New York has a huge Jewish population, so you do hear some Yiddish and Hebrew on the streets every now and then. But I don't know more than that. Ben, girl, can you tell me more about Hebrew? I'm dying to know more!
Ben: Nicki, you came to the right place! I can tell you ALL you need to know about Hebrew, because...
I'm a Linguist.
Yeah, bitches. With a capital L. Bold. So fierce. In your faces.
Moving on, let's talk a little about my relationship to Hebrew. I started learning Hebrew one and a half years ago, just for fun. Exactly like how your music, Nicki, is often accused of being some horrible amalgam of dance, electro and something yet undefined labeled as 'europop'...
Nicki: Bitch, please.
Ben: ...so is modern day linguistics often said to be too eurocentric, leaving many popular and interesting languages out of its scope. That was probably one thing that made me learn Hebrew. The other being the hotness of Israeli soldiers.
[Nicki and Ben do a high five]
Ben: Now, while I'm by no means fluent in this language (in fact, I'm very far from it), I do know a lot about its structure, its origins, you know, basically about its dirty secrets.
Because I'm a Linguist.
Nicki: I think you've said that before, girl...
Ben: I'm just gonna ignore that. Right, to show that we, here at the Oral Disco compound, are not eurocentric at all when it comes to languages, we're going to discuss Hebrew in our first, well, episode. Nicki, are you as excited as I am?!
Nicki: You a stupid hoe, you a-you a stupid hoe.
Ben: Excuse your face?
Nicki: Oh sorry, I got bored listening to you and decided to practice some songs.
Ben: Right. Let's get back to language. First of all, it's very important to talk about Hebrew in contrast to Yiddish, since some people don't know how or whether these two are related at all. To clear up the confusion:
Yiddish (or ייִדיש for yidish) is a language that belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. Thus, it's related to languages such as German, obviously, but also English, Dutch and Scots. Scandinavian languages (e.g. Swedish, Icelandic) are Germanic too, but belong to the North Germanic branch and therefore are more distant relatives. What generally confuses people is that Yiddish is written with what most people call the 'Hebrew alphabet', making it hard to distinguish it from...
Modern Hebrew (or עברית ישראלית for ivrit israelit), is a Semitic language and part of the Afroasiatic language family. It's related to languages like Arabic and Amharic.
[Nicki gasps loudly – possibly to draw attention to herself]
[she fails, because a Linguist can never be stopped or distracted]
Ben: Now we know that Hebrew and Yiddish are basically unrelated languages. They, of course, do share some similarities. Both languages come to mind when thinking about 'languages of the Jewish people'. Without getting into the history of these languages, let's just say that in the past, Yiddish was spoken in many Jewish families at home, while Hebrew was the language reserved for religious purposes.
Both languages were highly influenced by others: Yiddish was spoken in many Eastern-European countries, that's why Slavic languages formed the language to a certain extent. German, obviously, was the basis for Yiddish. Native speakers of German claim to easily understand Yiddish when they hear it, which might be true to some extent (possibly similarly to how speakers of different Scandinavian languages understand each other relatively easily).
Yiddish had an effect on Hebrew and vice-versa. Imagine a couple in an open relationship where both people have a different STD. Once they get in bed with each other and have unprotected sex...
Nicki: Always use a condom!
Ben: ...they'll most likely exchange STDs. This is basically what happens when languages touch each other.
Nicki: Umm, the metaphor wasn't exactly perfect, girl...
Ben: Your face isn't perfect.
Nicki: ...still, I could write a book on this topic. Princesses, always put a condom in your purse when going out!
Ben: Right, kids. STDs aren't fun.Trust me.
Nicki: Wait, what?
Ben: Just kidding. Let's turn our attention to what people call the 'Hebrew alphabet'.
Nicki: Starships were meant to fly -
Ben: Both Hebrew and Yiddish use this alphabet in their current forms. However, the pronunciation of these letters can differ in the two languages. As we're focused on Hebrew here, we're going to forget about Yiddish for the time being. Just keep in mind that, despite using the same alphabet, Hebrew and Yiddish are two completely different languages, belonging to two entirely different language families.
Nicki: Hands up and touch the sky -
Ben: Now, I said 'Hebrew alphabet', because technically, that's not true. Said alphabet is, in truth, called the Aramaic alphabet, which gradually got adapted to Hebrew and replaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.
Nicki: Can't stop, 'cause we're so high -
Ben: I'm glad you're paying attention, girl.
Nicki: I'll rip your pre-pubescent face off if you call me 'girl' one more time, slut.
Ben: Let's do this one more time, girl!
Nicki: You're as fruity as my new fragrance, Pink Friday.
Ben: Right. We're not going to discuss this alphabet in detail, as the point of this episode of Oral Disco is to give an overview on Modern Hebrew from the perspective of the potential language learner.
Now that we know what's used to write Hebrew, let's talk about how it's written. As you might know, Nicki, Hebrew is, like Arabic and Yiddish, written from right to left, a concept mostly alien to speakers of Indo-European languages. Don't think of this as a difficulty though, it simply takes some getting used to. Unfortunately, there's another peculiarity of Modern Hebrew that makes it a tiny bit more difficult than your average foreign language: its orthography is consonantal, sometimes employing matres lectionis (called niqqud) to ease reading.
Nicki: Girl, I've no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Ben: I usually feel the same way when listening to your songs, you little Motormouth Maybelle, you.
Nicki: What the fuck?
Ben: Okay, let me explain. The alphabet used to write Hebrew consists entirely of consonants. In writing, the vowels are not represented. Native speakers simply know where the vowels are and learners of the language, sadly, must learn this by heart. It's not as bad as it sounds: it is definitely weird at first, but after a while, you get used to it and start noticing certain patterns. I'm sure you could read English without vowels. Dn't y thnk tht's pssbl, Nck?
Nicki: It sounds like you're choking on the dick of some Lovecraftian tentacle monster, girl.
Ben: Nevermind. In children's books, poetry and language books, vowel indicators are used. These are absent in present-day media in Israel, as written language there is obviously targeted at native speakers. It's important to mention that other ways of indicating vowels exist apart from the already mentioned matres lectionis. Four letters of the alphabet, namely vav (ו ), yud (י ), he (ה ) and alef (א ), can also function as vowels. Let's not get into the details too much, our goal here is to simply provide you with a brief overview.
Now, Nicki, I know that you're very adept at accents.
Nicki: My tongue could do things to you that would make you cry tears of joy.
[Nicki fits both of her fists into her mouth simultaneously]
Ben: I'm... wow.
Nicki: Yeah, you know it.
Ben: Right. What I was getting at is that Hebrew does have a couple of sounds, though not many, which could prove difficult to pronounce to a foreign speaker. English natives will not be happy to hear that the 'R' in Modern Hebrew is guttural, that is to say, realized as in Standard German or in French. Another tricky sound is the one transliterated as 'Kh', which also doesn't exist in English, though speakers of German will be happy to know that it's the 'ch' sound in words like Loch, acht, sachte, etc. It's by no means a difficult sound, it's just not found in all languages of the world.
Nicki: You know, girl, that's the sound that made me fall in love with Hebrew. Yeah, I swear. It gives the language this tough, masculine edge. You know what I'm talking about? Hebrew is such a 'uuh'-language, with English being a 'aah'-language.
Ben: I've no idea what you're talking about. All I can think of are half-naked Israeli soldiers showering each other with champagne.
[Nicki and Ben do another high five]
Ben: Yeah, moving on. All other sounds of Hebrew are, in some form, found in English, including the vowels. Hebrew makes no distinction between vowel length and only has 5 of them: a, e, i, o, u. Great news!
Nicki: It's like there's a party in your ass and everybody's invited!
Ben: I think that'd only happen in jail. I'm horribly picky.
Nicki: What?
Ben: If you aren't familiar with what Hebrew sounds like, I recommend listening to some authentic Israeli music. My preferences include insanely pretty Shiri Maimon, even prettier Harel Skaat, dreamy Yuval Dayan and fierce Ayala Ingedashet.
Nicki: Girl, I'm not happy about you drooling over other bitches while I'm here.
Ben: Hey, I was only drooling over some shirtless pictures of Harel. But yeah, I'm sorry, so guys, go and check out Nicki's second album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded. Or whatever.
Nicki: I don't give two shits about what you think. If you be hatin', go pound the alarm. See what I did there?
Ben: Err... I'm really not sure. Let's get back to Hebrew.
Another important thing to mention is the phenomenon of triliterality. In other words, the root system that's prevalent in Semitic languages, including Modern Hebrew.
Most, if not all words in Hebrew can be traced back to a root that consists of three (in rare cases four) consonants. Roots generally have an abstract meaning attached to them. By adding or exchanging vowels in between and around the root consonants, this abstract meaning changes slightly. There are specific vowel (and additional consonant) patterns that change meaning in a given way.
I'm going to give you an example to better illustrate what I'm talking about: there's a pattern that's sometimes used to change nouns with various meanings into nouns denoting illnesses. You've got the word כלב or kelev for dog. Putting this noun into the above mentioned pattern will net you כלבת or kalevet for rabies. Same for אדום or adom for red, turning into אדמת or ademet for measles.
Nicki: I don't get this. I left my roots in Trinidad.
[Ben sighs loudly]
Ben: Alright, let me give you another example.
Consider the triconsonantal root ל-מ-ד (or L-M-D), which has the inherent meaning 'study' or 'learn'. From this root, you can form the infinitive ללמוד or lilmod for to study, the nouns תלמיד/תלמידה or talmida/talmid for female/male pupil or student. Another noun formed from this root would be תלמוד or talmud for instruction/teaching. Has this helped a little?
Nicki: Certainly, girl. I feel enlightened. You're amazing at this!
Ben: Aw, thank you, Nicki! I'm nothing special, I'm just...
A Linguist.
Nicki: Girl, you need to stop saying that.
Ben: Okay, okay, sure. Whatever.
Nicki: Seriously, get your act together and move your ass back to telling me about Hebrew.
Ben: Alright! That's mostly it for the consonantal root system. Obviously, it's not all rainbows, candies and giggles in the world of Hebrew roots. During its history, the sound system of the language underwent great changes and became much simpler than it was thousands of years ago. Now, changes such as these are normal in any language, but in the case of Hebrew, this messed up the root system somewhat. Without going into detail too much, let's just say that there are some consonants which tend to disappear when forming certain verb forms.
Nicki: So what? They just disappear and all that's left behind is a gaping hole? Hey, that's like your ass!
Ben: Well, no. It's true, they disappear, but some vowels, sometimes even other consonants take over their place.. So what's left behind is not exactly a gaping hole, more like... a messy hole. Like you!
Nicki: Touché, bitch.
Ben: With that, we can conclude our short introduction to the characteristics of Modern Hebrew. You might have noticed that I generally, though by no means always, use the term Modern Hebrew. This has to do something with the history of the language. I'm sure you've heard about Biblical Hebrew or about the revival of the language before. Unfortunately, this episode of Oral Disco would be too long if we covered all of those things, so we'll have to leave them for another time.
Let's wrap up what we learned about Modern Hebrew today:
- Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family
- Yiddish (a Germanic language) is not related to Hebrew, although both use the same alphabet
- what people call the 'Hebrew alphabet' is actually an adapted version of the Aramaic alphabet
- Hebrew is written from right to left
- its orthography is purely consonantal, vowels are only partially indicated
- its sound system is much simpler compared to its ancient form, with only the guttular 'R' and the uvular 'Kh' being vaguely difficult for English speakers
- Hebrew only has 5 vowels: a, e, i, u, o and doesn't distinguish between long and short vowels
- an important feature of Semitic languages that also pertains to Hebrew is triliterality
Now, Nicki, was this overview enlightening?
Nicki: Girl, I have to say, you're one fruity little slut-faced nerd bender, but you seem to know your shit. I approve. I'd do you in a heartbeat.
Ben: Do you like my tight sweater? Rawr.
Nicki: Girl, what?
Ben: Tune in next week for another episode of Oral Disco, where language and popular culture meet!
...and subsequently rape each other.
Disclaimer: The Nicki Minaj in this article is entirely fictional.
