What Is Linguistic Anthropology? Essay Example

To underscore the theme of overlap in the humanities and social science, it behooves us to consider how political changes can impact the use of language. Here, the development of the Hebrew language is explored.

As upheaval in ensued in the Levant 3000 years ago, Hebrew was just a budding dialect of Canaan. As the Judean culture spread from the central highlands of Canaan, so did the language. Eventually, it became the spoken and written liturgical language (Mintz). As a Semitic language, Hebrew is derived from Afro-asiatic roots.

Following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the first century of the Common Era, Hebrew was quickly replaced by Aramaic and Greek in Palestine (Mintz). Nevertheless, many Jews tried to preserve their language, but its use waxed and waned over time. As with any spoken language, it changed over time.

Much of Modern Hebrew is barrowed from Arabic. Some of this intermingling of languages includes the implementation of Arabic syntax and morphology in Modern Hebrew (Nahir). It also includes the use of entirely Arabic words or prefixes or suffixes. It was also fused with Yiddish, an Indo-European language.The development of the Hebrew language has been explored here. The relationship between political upheaval and the use of language begs certain questions. If the pronunciation of certain words has forgotten, how to linguist find out how they are pronounced?

Works Cited

Mintz, Jenny. (2001) “The History of Hebrew.”  ILPCJS. <http://www.ilperetz.org/graduates/jenny_mintz.htm>

Nahir, Moshe (2003). “Micro-corpus codification in the Hebrew Revival”. Digithum [online article]. UOC. No. 5. <http://www.uoc.edu/humfil/articles/eng/nahir0303/nahir0303.html>