The science of studying the Hebrew language. Large encyclopedic dictionary What is the Hebrew language, what does it mean and how to write it correctly. Introduction to the discipline “Ancient Hebrew Language”

EXPLANATORY NOTE

The Hebrew language is an academic discipline, the subject of which is a system of knowledge, skills and abilities aimed at developing the ability to read and write (mediated communication) in the Hebrew language on the basis of linguistic and regional knowledge.

The study of this discipline in preparation for the specialty “Theology” is due to the fact that a significant part of the Old Testament (the first section of the Christian Bible) is written in Hebrew. The same language, also called Biblical Hebrew, is also represented by a few epigraphic monuments.

The purpose of the discipline is to teach students reading and grammatical analysis of the texts of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament through the development of normative grammar and a lexical minimum.

The books of the Old Testament are recognized as sacred, inspired books in two world religions - Judaism and Christianity, and are the most important theological source. Mastering the basics of the Hebrew language as the language of the sacred Old Testament books is a necessary component of studying these books themselves, the traditions of their interpretation that have developed over many centuries, and a number of theological disciplines.

The standard curriculum for the discipline “Hebrew Language” was developed in accordance with the regulatory documents of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus and the state standard for the specialty “Theology”.

Ideally, familiarity with the Hebrew language should precede the study of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. However, in accordance with the curriculum for the specialty "Theology", the study of the Hebrew language is combined with the study of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. This combination, explained by the large number of hours devoted to the study of the Old and New Testaments, is quite acceptable. In itself, it can serve as an additional incentive for students to study the original language of the Bible.

In the process of studying the Hebrew language, not only traditional exercises are used, including educational texts, but also unadapted, original biblical texts. Unadapted texts are attracted already at the initial stage of study, when becoming familiar with phonetics and graphics. For this purpose, the biblical passage most familiar to students is selected (for example, chapter 1 of the book of Genesis or one of the psalms). A selected passage is read and analyzed at each lesson in accordance with the constantly updated body of knowledge. When analyzing the text grammatically, information of an exegetical nature is used, obtained by students in the study of theological disciplines (Introduction to Theology, Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments).

After studying the topic “Pronouns and Pronominal Suffixes,” students are given a series of sequential tasks, according to which they must memorize several passages of biblical texts. These texts may include the first verses of Genesis 1 (Gen. 1:1-5), the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:1-17), the Mosaic Law of Love (Deut. 6:4-9), Psalm 1, Psalm 8, as well as the Lord's Prayer.

The final form of control is a test, during which the knowledge and skills of students are tested. When conducting the test, educational and non-adapted texts that were reviewed during practical classes are used.

The immediate task of teaching the “Hebrew language” is to develop in the student the appropriate ideological and professional competencies – subject and operational.

The formation of subject competencies of students is carried out in accordance with the requirements of the state educational standard of the specialty “Theology”, which stipulates that as a result of studying an academic discipline, a student must know:

Main milestones in the history of the Hebrew language.
Spelling and phonetics of the Hebrew language, alphabet and ways of marking vowels.
Basics of Hebrew grammar (morphology and syntax)
The most important vocabulary of the Hebrew language.

The student’s operational competencies are that as a result of studying the course he should be able to:

Read the Bible test in Hebrew.
Determine the gender, number, state of the name.
Determine the tense form of the verb, its person, number, type.
Understand the system of prepositions and suffixal pronouns.
Translate passages from the Old Testament using a dictionary and grammar tables.
Use the acquired knowledge when studying and interpreting the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament.

Students are prepared for the study of the Hebrew language by familiarization with such disciplines as the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (sections covered in the 1st year), Introduction to Theology, and Liturgics. In turn, the knowledge acquired during the study of the Hebrew language is necessary for students to master educational material on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (sections covered in the 2nd year), Dogmatic Theology, and Patrology.

The program is designed for 66 classroom hours (66 practical). The form of control is testing.

THEMATIC PLAN

No.	Lesson topic	Number of rooms hours
No.	Lesson topic	Practical, part.

	ChapterI. Phonetics and graphics.
	Hebrew alphabet. Consonants.
	Signs to indicate vowels. Syllables.
	Silent consonants. Guttural consonants.
	ChapterII. Morphology.
	A certain state of a name. Article.
	Fused prepositions.
	Name (noun and adjective). Gender of names.
	Interrogative pronouns. The connecting conjunction is "vav".
	Expressing case relations. Conjugate combination.
	Pronoun. Pronominal suffixes and fused prepositions “le” and “be” with suffixes. Direct addition indicator.
	Verb. Perfect.
	Pronominal suffixes with nouns units h. and the prepositions “ke” and “min”. Demonstrative pronouns.
	Active participle. Directive case.
	Pronominal suffixes with plural nouns. Expression of possessiveness.
	Imperfect. Imperative mood.
	Non-finite verb forms. Infinitive.
	Passive participle. Segolat names.
	Cohortative and Jussiv. Prepositions in plural form. with suffixes.
	Numerals. Functional words.
	"Vav" sequences.
	State verbs.
	Verbal breeds.
	ChapterIII. Basic syntax.
	Section IV. Translation of unadapted biblical texts.
	Translation of biblical prose.
	Translation of biblical poetry.
	Total:

Introduction to the discipline “Ancient Hebrew Language”.

Names of the Hebrew language. Names of native speakers of this language. Hebrew as a language of the Afroasiatic language family. Ancient Semitic languages. Features of the grammatical structure and writing of Semitic languages. The language of Hebrew poetry. Stages of development of the Hebrew language. The most important monuments of the Hebrew language. History of the study of the Hebrew language by Jewish and Christian scholars. Grammar of the Hebrew language in Russian.

ChapterI. Phonetics and graphics.

Topic 1. Hebrew alphabet. Consonants.

Hebrew alphabet. The order of letters in the alphabet. Writing letters. Square (Aramaic) font. Name of letters. The semantic meaning of the names of the letters. Transcription and sound of letters. Letters that take an extended form of writing. The numerical value of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Forms of consonants at the end of a word. Letters with similar spelling. Unpronounceable letters, letters with similar pronunciation. Silent consonants. Signs that determine the pronunciation of consonants: dagesh, rofe, mappik. Classification of consonants according to the organs involved in their formation. Guttural consonants and their features. Abbreviations of words.

Topic 2. Signs to indicate vowels. Syllables.

Mothers reading. Signs for short vowels: patah, segol, hirik katan, kamatz katan, kubuts. Signs for long vowels: kamats gadol, tsere, hirik gadol, holam, shuruk. The semantic meaning of the designation of short and long vowels. Signs to indicate super-short vowels. Shva: simple (moving and stationary) and compound (khatef). Emphasis: primary (milra and milel) and secondary. Matag. Open and closed syllables. Matag. Rules for the use of long and short vowels in an unstressed syllable. McCaffe. Kamats katan and kamats gadol. Their use. Dagesh is weak, Dagesh is strong (compensating, word-formative and euphonious). Accents, their types and purpose. Pause. Ketiv and qere.

ChapterII. Morphology.

Topic 1. A certain state of the name. Article.

Name in Hebrew. Use of the definite article. Vocalization of the article when joining a word. The article before the glottal consonant and “resh”.

Topic 2. Name (noun and adjective).

Noun. Adjective. Gender of names. Feminine endings for names. Words and names related to feminine names. Name number. Masculine, feminine and neuter plural endings. Dual. Expressing case relations. Independent, definite and conjugate states of a name. Changing the form of a name depending on the nature of the stress. Incorrect names in independent and conjugate states. Expression of possessiveness. Ancient ending of the accusative case (directive case). Segolat names.

Topic 3. Pronouns and pronominal suffixes.

Pronoun. Personal pronouns. Personal pronouns in the nominative and accusative cases. Interrogative pronouns. Vocalization of interrogative pronouns and features of their attachment to words. Personal interrogative pronoun. Impersonal interrogative pronoun and its vowel. Demonstrative pronouns. Relative pronouns. Pronominal suffixes, their meaning when attached to a name and verb. Attaching pronominal suffixes to masculine and feminine singular and plural nouns. Nouns with suffixes.

Topic 4. Numerals. Functional words.

Cardinal and ordinal numbers. Numerals are masculine and feminine. Designation of tens, hundreds and thousands. Prepositions. Prepositions with pronominal suffixes. Combined prepositions and their features. Vocalization of fused prepositions when attached to a word. Combined prepositions with pronominal suffixes. The connecting conjunction is "vav". Its vowel when attached to a word. The particle “eth” in the meaning of “s” and as an indicator of a direct object. Adverbs. Interjections.

Topic 5. Verb. Verb moods.

Verb. Basic form of the verb. Verb tenses. Perfect of a regular verb. Imperfect of a regular verb. Verb moods. Indicative. Imperative mood. Negative form of the imperative mood (prohibition). Incentive mood (cohortative). Desirable mood (jussive). State verbs and their features.

Topic 6. Non-finite verb forms.

Non-finite verb forms, features of their formation and use. The infinitive and its types (absolute and conjugate). Active participle. Passive participle.

Topic 7. Verbal rocks.

General overview of the system of verb formations (regular verb). Verb formations of the Hebrew language, their characteristics and meanings. Breed Kal. Niphal breed. Piel breed. Pual breed. Hifil breed. Hofal breed. Hiopael breed.

ChapterIII. Basic syntax.

Noun and verb sentences. Order of words in a sentence. Peculiarities of coordination of the main members of a proposal. Direct addition indicator. Definitive sentences. Expression of possessiveness. Interrogative particle. “Vav” sequences with perfect. "Vav" sequences with imperfect.

ChapterIV. Translation of unadapted Hebrew texts.

Topic 1. Translation of biblical prose.

Analysis and translation of biblical historical texts: Genesis 1, Genesis 18. Analysis and translation of legal biblical texts: Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-17), Mosaic law of love (Deut.6:4-9), Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21:1 – 23:19). The Lord's Prayer.

Topic 2. Translation of biblical poetry.

Features of Hebrew poetry. Parallelism of members and its types. Analysis and translation of Psalms 1, 8, 50 (in the Hebrew Bible 51), 109 (in the Hebrew Bible 110). Analysis and translation of the prophecy of Amos about the judgment of the nations (Amos 1-2), a hymn from Eccl. 3:2-9.

LIST OF BASIC AND ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Main literature

Sources

Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997. - 5th ed. (1st ed. - 1967) - LXX, 1574 pp.

Bible. Books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in Russian translation with appendices. Brussels: Life with God, 1989.

Teaching. Pentateuch of Moses. From Genesis to Revelation (translation, introduction and commentary by I. Shifman). M.: Republic, 1993.

Educational literature

Griliches L., priest. Practical course in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament. M., 1996. (The electronic version of the book is on the website www.bible-mda.ru).

Lambdin T.O. Textbook of the Hebrew language. M., 1998.

Jewish and Chaldean etymological dictionary / Comp. Steinberg O.N. - Vilna, 1878. (The electronic version of the book is on the website www.bible-mda.ru).

Demidova G.M. A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew. St. Petersburg, 1999.

additional literature

Gesenius V. Jewish grammar. SPb., 1874. (The electronic version of the book is on the website www.bible-mda.ru).

Grande B.M. Introduction to the comparative study of Semitic languages. M., 1972.

Dyakonov I.M. Languages of Ancient Western Asia. M., 1967.

Languages of the peoples of Asia and Africa. M., 1989. T.IV.

Pavsky G., prot. A brief Jewish grammar for students of the sacred language in religious schools. M., 1822. (The electronic version of the book is on the website www.bible-mda.ru).

Troitsky I.G. Hebrew Grammar. SPb., 1908. (The electronic version of the book is on the website www.bible-mda.ru).

What is "Hebrew"? How to spell this word correctly. Concept and interpretation.

Hebrew Ancient Hebrew language ANCIENT HEBREW LANGUAGE, or ancient Israelite, spoken by the ancient Jews of Palestine in the 15th-14th centuries. before the Christian era, belongs to the system of Semitic languages and is the most well-known dialect of the Hebrew-Phoenician or Canaanite language. The most important and most numerous monuments of D. e. language. preserved in the Bible. With the emergence of the Arameans in the Middle East as a major economic and political force, who owned the main trade routes, D. e. begins to gradually be replaced by Aramaic, especially starting from the Persian era, when Aramaic became the official language of the western part of the Persian state. The process of displacement of D. e. language is much faster. went back to the time of Alexander the Great, when Jews who emigrated from Palestine began to speak Greek in Egypt and Asia Minor, and Aramaic in Mesopotamia. In Palestine, the process of displacement proceeded somewhat more slowly. In this era, D. e. language. has already changed somewhat; new morphological and syntactic facts appear in it, many words borrowed from Aramaic, Greek and Latin. However, in the 1st century BC, even here, the Jewish population of the cities already spoke Aramaic, with the exception of a small layer related to the cult and religious schools. The agricultural population, living on a subsistence basis and isolated from the cities, continued to speak the D.E. language. much longer; This is evidenced by the rich agricultural terminology found in the Mishnah and other collections of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Starting from the 4th century. D. e. language. finally ceases to be colloquial. As a language literary and written communications, it continues to be used in subsequent centuries and partly until recently (see Hebrew literature). By the nature of its roots, the Jewish language is quite close to Aramaic, but contains many elements that bring it closer to the Babylonian language. In terms of the type of development, especially in the number of vowels in a word, it occupies a middle place between classical Arabic and Aramaic; at the same time, it retains many features of much greater antiquity than these latter languages. It should be noted, however, that tradition has preserved D. e. language for us. in the form in which it was shortly before the 4th century; in more ancient times it was much richer in grammatical forms, as can be seen from compound proper names and from some surviving more ancient expressions. GRAPHICS D. e. language. consists of 22 consonant letters of the so-called square font, which was gradually developed from the Old Aramaic alphabet, which in turn came from the Old Phoenician alphabet. Vowels are indicated by a system of signs placed under and above letters, the so-called punctuation, invented no earlier than the 6th century after Christ. era. The oldest inscriptions are written in the Old Phoenician alphabet. HEBREW ALPHABET Bibliography: Gesenius W., Jewish Grammar, trans. K. Kossovich, St. Petersburg, 1874; Krymsky A., Semitic languages and peoples, part 1, M., 1903; Stade W., Lehrbuch d. Hebraischen Grammatik, Lpz., 1879; Noldecke Th., Die Semitischen Sprachen, Lpz., 1899; Gesenius W., Hebrasche Grammatik, umgearbeitet von E. Kautsch, 28 Aufl., Lpz., 1909; Beer G., Hebraische Grammatik, Sammlung Goschen, Berlin, 1915; Bauer H. und Leander P., Historische Grammatik d. Hebraischen Sprache, Halle, 1916.

Among the Semitic languages, along with the well-known ones (say, Arabic and Hebrew), there are also very rare ones - both dead and still alive, but sometimes uninteresting even to the speakers themselves. A linguist, associate professor at the Institute of Oriental Cultures and Antiquity of the Russian State University for the Humanities in the Department of History and Philology of the Ancient East talks about how, to whom and why these languages are taught. Asked questions, Ph.D. Philol. Sciences, Art. scientific co-workers Institute of Linguistics RAS.

- Let's first talk about the languages you teach. I myself am a native speaker of the New Aramaic language and I can say: interest in them both in the scientific community and even among speakers of these languages is very restrained.

One of my colleagues from Heidelberg, Professor Werner Arnold, once told me: “You know, New Aramaic languages are taught in only four universities in the world, including in Moscow!” Why in Moscow? It all started with my specialization, Ancient Syria and Palestine. Therefore, this is the study of Hebrew and Aramaic. I proceeded from the fact that, regardless of funding at any given moment, the Aramaic scientific agenda is incomparably broader than the Hebraic one. It is necessary to answer the questions that science has posed. Hebraistics, that is, the study of the Hebrew language and the Old Testament, is partly a popularization discipline, a general cultural one, since a noticeable influx of new texts is not expected. And the specialist in Hebrew and the Old Testament is in some sense a mass profession in Israel and in Western Europe, for obvious reasons. In Israel - it’s something like our classical Russian literature; in Germany - there is a theological faculty in every university: it is necessary to teach future shepherds to pronounce clever Hebrew and Greek words from the church pulpit.

As for Aramaic studies, the scientific need here is incomparably greater. This field is unplowed! Syriac texts must be published. Students, for example, must write dissertations. It is usually a pain to choose the right topic. The student is not yet capable of serious analytical work on grammar. But he can publish a new text, he reads it, translates it, comments on it - and feels like a pioneer. It's simple and clear. Decoding text is what we have been teaching him for years. A huge scientific agenda in the field of modern Aramaic languages, usually unwritten. You can do field work. Even here in Moscow, my department colleague Alexey Kimovich Lyavdansky, who is in contact with speakers of New Aramaic dialects, is successfully doing this. Kristina Benyaminova studied with us at the Russian State University for the Humanities (linguistics), she is now recording folklore texts from her relatives - native Aramaic speakers, under the leadership of Alyosha. What could be more interesting for a young philologist than field work? Never mind. Finally, you can study the history of Aramaic languages, something that I am currently working on with my young colleagues. The Aramaic languages are more than three thousand years old, this is the deepest layer of time! In terms of the depth of written evidence, they are comparable only to the Chinese language. This is of great interest to historical linguistics, but linguists are often discouraged by the need to learn dead languages. Most people prefer to work with grammars. No linguist has ever undertaken the task of creating a history of the Aramaic language. However, the problem exists, and science will solve it sooner or later. Without working on New Aramaic, this task cannot be approached. But specialists in ancient Aramaic, as a rule, do not know modern Aramaic languages. One of them, articulating the general mood in their workshop (and, probably, to justify his dense ignorance), once wrote: “...a highly corrupt form of Aramaic is still spoken in three villages of Syria and in some few areas of Iraq". And they are “spoiled,” our writer continues, under the influence of Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish. I began studying New Aramaic from scratch when my colleagues and I were working on the first volume of “Semitic Languages” in the “Languages of the World” series.

- Yes, I remember how you sat with us at the Institute of Linguistics and worked on this volume.

In this volume I have been to some extent responsible for the description of the Aramaic languages. And willy-nilly, I had to start with where a person usually ends his literary career, that is, I wrote a general essay about the Aramaic languages, and only then began to deal with specific scientific problems. Now, of course, I would write all this differently...

- In any case, the book came out very useful, and not only for linguists. It was in great demand among the Moscow Assyrian diaspora.

It's nice. Unfortunately, not all Middle Aramaic languages could be described. However, the volume provides the most complete description in Russian of the New Aramaic languages in their diversity. While we were working on the Aramaic block of this volume, I began to learn the Turoyo language. It is one of the most archaic modern Aramaic languages and is therefore important to the history of Aramaic. All languages, of course, are equally worthy of attention. But since I am studying the history of the verb, it is Turoyo that interests me.

- All this is undoubtedly interesting as an object of research, however, as far as I know, changes are now possible at the Russian State University for the Humanities that will complicate both the teaching of rare languages and jewelry work with students. We are also talking about abandoning groups with a small number of students. How will this affect your discipline?

I am not knowledgeable enough to answer questions about administrative changes. Negotiations with the rector are within the competence of the director of the institute. However, the new rector at a meeting with us said that it was desirable to increase student groups to 12 people. I would take it.

- But where will they come from in such numbers and, most importantly, where will they go after graduation?

I can still imagine where they will come from - we had cases when we recruited large groups, 10-11 people, but then they scattered in all directions, and they did the right thing, because they definitely won’t be able to work in their specialty in such numbers, there are so many of them no need. Well, if we graduate 15 specialists in Aramaic languages, they are guaranteed not to find work due to their education. In our country, these languages are taught mainly because we ourselves took the initiative. And we cannot make plans for the future. We can only speak about our desire to recruit students and teach them.

- But you are not limited to teaching at the Russian State University for the Humanities? As far as I know, you are currently busy preparing a summer school for Semitic studies. Tell us about her, please.

The idea was born like this. I have long wanted to communicate with our Ukrainian colleagues and told Dmitry Tsolin, an Aramaist from the Ostrog Academy, about this. And we decided to hold a summer school in Ostroh, this is the former Polish part of Western Ukraine. I announced this plan in our Aramaica Facebook group. And a dozen and a half Moscow colleagues immediately responded and wanted to teach at the summer school! The academic level of lecturers will be high. There will be Moscow Semitic philologists from among the best, and there will be our colleagues from Western Europe and Israel. Students are from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, possibly from Israel. There are even from Western Europe. It’s too early to talk about details; everything is in the preparation stage. We are planning three weeks of very intensive classes to give students the chance to discover new worlds. I want people to discover something new that may change their worldview and consciousness. I understand that this sounds naive, but changing people’s lives with the help of new knowledge is my long-term goal.

- Finally, please tell us about how your department was created.

The department was founded by Leonid Efimovich Kogan. He is one of those people who knows how to plan his life 20–30 years in advance. While still a student at the Oriental Faculty in St. Petersburg, he came to us at the Russian State University for the Humanities to give lectures on Semitic philology. In 1996, he entered graduate school at the Institute of Oriental Cultures of the Russian State University for the Humanities. In 1997, Lenya recruited his first group of students in the specialization “History and Philology of Ancient Mesopotamia”, and this was the beginning of our department. In 1999, the “History and Philology of Ancient Syria-Palestine” group was first recruited; I am now in charge of this specialization. Then Arabists appeared at the department, this year there will be a third intake. And our fourth direction is “Ethiopian-Arabic Philology,” where among the living Ethiosemitic languages, Amharic is studied mainly.

- Do you have many students?

Due to the non-market nature of the specialty, the passing score on the Unified State Exam is low, so at first a lot of people come. Many then drop out, because from the first semester they have to work a lot, cram, “dig the earth with their nose.”

- How does your teaching of Middle Eastern languages differ from training, say, at the Institute of Asian and African Countries?

I did not study at ISAA, I only taught Hebrew and Aramaic there, so I can only judge superficially. At ISAA, the main focus is practical: the emphasis is on the study of living literary languages - say, standard Arabic or Hindi. We do not teach to be simultaneous interpreters, but we pretend to raise scientists, primarily philologists.

- As I understand it, you do special work with students?

How else?! By the end of the training, we have few students left, although it also happened that six or seven people reached the end of the course, and this is a lot for us. There were cases when only one student remained from an entire class. However, finding him employment is not an easy task. The labor market is such that there are no prospects for such rare specialists. A graduate could apply for a job at our institute, but this is difficult to do for obvious reasons, and the further it goes, the more difficult it will be, since budget funding for education, as we know, is being reduced. There is another option: to get hooked somewhere in Germany or France. But there is nowhere to put their young specialists in the Ancient East. Sometimes it seems that our situation until recently was even better than Western Europe, strange as it may seem. This is explained as follows: in the West, things work rather according to the “all or nothing” principle: a scientist either ultimately receives a life-long contract, a “tenure-track position,” or drops out of the profession. In Russia, this is more nuanced: you can work all your life as a senior teacher without an academic degree - there is nothing special about it.

- We, celtologists, have the same situation: our languages have no practical value and are in little demand.

Of course, we are preparing those who will engage in science. At the same time, the labor market does not expand, but, on the contrary, collapses, as funding for scientific research decreases. If a person does not have children and he himself lives with his parents (in short, he is free from the “housing problem”), then he can still somehow live on the salary of a research assistant - after all, there are always part-time jobs. There are also grants. But the outlook remains chronically unclear. Most likely, sooner or later you will have to look for a job to survive and do science in your free time. But “work for survival,” if it is interesting and requires the use of brains, attracts a person more and more. A capable person (and, as a rule, others do not study with us) begins to represent value in a different labor market. Science is gradually leaving his life. That is, if a person is capable and not ready for life without long-term guarantees, then his strength will go where there will be a material return.

- We have all seen many such examples, but still those working at the Russian State University for the Humanities are those who did not give up academic activities. How do they survive?

Our situation is not bad; for some time now we have been paid more. Enough for food. Everyone builds their life differently, I can’t speak for others. If a person receives at least some money for research that makes up the meaning of his life, I consider this to be great luck. I didn’t initially count on this for myself. And I am grateful to my colleagues, students and fate itself for everything that happened and can no longer be taken away.

Anna Muradova Among the Semitic languages, along with the well-known ones (say, Arabic and Hebrew), there are also very rare ones - both dead and still alive, but sometimes uninteresting even to the speakers themselves. A linguist talks about how, to whom and why these languages are taught.Sergey Vladimirovich Lezov , Associate Professor at the Institute of Oriental Cultures and Antiquity of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Department of History and Philology of the Ancient East. Asked questionsAnna Muradova , Ph.D. Philol. Sciences, Art. scientific co-workers Institute of Linguistics RAS.

— Let’s first talk about the languages you teach. I myself am a native speaker of the New Aramaic language and I can say: interest in them both in the scientific community and even among speakers of these languages is very restrained.

“One of my colleagues from Heidelberg, Professor Werner Arnold, once told me: “You know, New Aramaic languages are taught in only four universities in the world, including in Moscow!” Why in Moscow? It all started with my specialization, Ancient Syria and Palestine. Therefore, this is the study of Hebrew and Aramaic. I proceeded from the fact that, regardless of funding at any given moment, the Aramaic scientific agenda is incomparably broader than the Hebraic one. It is necessary to answer the questions that science has posed. Hebraistics, that is, the study of the Hebrew language and the Old Testament, is partly a popularization discipline, a general cultural one, since a noticeable influx of new texts is not expected. And the specialist in Hebrew and the Old Testament is in some sense a mass profession in Israel and in Western Europe, for obvious reasons. In Israel - it’s something like our classical Russian literature; in Germany - there is a theological faculty in every university: it is necessary to teach future shepherds to pronounce clever Hebrew and Greek words from the church pulpit.

As for Aramaic studies, the scientific need here is incomparably greater. This field is unplowed! Syriac texts must be published. Students, for example, must write dissertations. It is usually a pain to choose the right topic. The student is not yet capable of serious analytical work on grammar. But he can publish a new text, he reads it, translates it, comments on it - and feels like a pioneer. It's simple and clear. Decoding text is what we have been teaching him for years. A huge scientific agenda in the field of modern Aramaic languages, usually unwritten. You can do field work. Even here in Moscow, my department colleague Alexey Kimovich Lyavdansky, who is in contact with speakers of New Aramaic dialects, is successfully doing this. Kristina Benyaminova studied with us at the Russian State University for the Humanities (in linguistics), she is now recording folklore texts from her relatives - native Aramaic speakers, under the leadership of Alyosha. What could be more interesting for a young philologist than field work? Never mind. Finally, you can study the history of Aramaic languages, something that I am currently working on with my young colleagues. The Aramaic languages are more than three thousand years old, this is the deepest layer of time! In terms of the depth of written evidence, they are comparable only to the Chinese language. This is of great interest to historical linguistics, but linguists are often discouraged by the need to learn dead languages. Most people prefer to work with grammars. No linguist has ever undertaken the task of creating a history of the Aramaic language. However, the problem exists, and science will solve it sooner or later. Without working on New Aramaic, this task cannot be approached. But specialists in ancient Aramaic, as a rule, do not know modern Aramaic languages. One of them, articulating the general mood in their workshop (and, probably, to justify his dense ignorance), once wrote: “...a highly corrupt form of Aramaic is still spoken in three villages of Syria and in some few areas of Iraq " And they are “spoiled,” our writer continues, under the influence of Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish. I began studying New Aramaic from scratch when my colleagues and I were working on the first volume of “Semitic Languages” in the “Languages of the World” series.

— Yes, I remember how you sat with us at the Institute of Linguistics and worked on this volume.

— In this volume I was to some extent responsible for the description of the Aramaic languages. And willy-nilly, I had to start with where a person usually ends his literary career, that is, I wrote a general essay about the Aramaic languages, and only then began to deal with specific scientific problems. Now, of course, I would write all this differently...

Sergey Vladimirovich Lezov - Russian linguist and human rights activist. Born in 1954 in Smolensk, graduated in 1981 from the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University (Department of Romance Philology). In his youth, he participated in the human rights movement: he was on the editorial board of the Express Chronicles newsletter (1987−1990), and the Moscow Helsinki Group (1989−1990). Candidate of Philological Sciences (1994, dissertation “History and Hermeneutics in the Study of the New Testament”). Since 1992 he has been teaching at the Russian State University for the Humanities, at the Institute of Oriental Cultures and Antiquity. He translated books by theologians Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann and philosopher Martin Buber into Russian. Author of numerous works on Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian languages.

— In any case, the book came out very useful, and not only for linguists. It was in great demand among the Moscow Assyrian diaspora.

- It's nice. Unfortunately, not all Middle Aramaic languages could be described. However, the volume provides the most complete description in Russian of the New Aramaic languages in their diversity. While we were working on the Aramaic block of this volume, I began to learn the Turoyo language. It is one of the most archaic modern Aramaic languages and is therefore important to the history of Aramaic. All languages, of course, are equally worthy of attention. But since I am studying the history of the verb, it is Turoyo that interests me.

— All this is undoubtedly interesting as an object of research, however, as far as I know, changes are now possible at the Russian State University for the Humanities that will complicate both the teaching of rare languages and jewelry work with students. We are also talking about abandoning groups with a small number of students. How will this affect your discipline?

— I am not knowledgeable enough to answer questions about administrative changes. Negotiations with the rector are within the competence of the director of the institute. However, the new rector at a meeting with us said that it was desirable to increase student groups to 12 people. I would take it.

- But where will they come from in such numbers and, most importantly, where will they go after graduation?

— Where will they come from, I can still imagine - we had cases when we recruited large groups, 10-11 people, but then they scattered in all directions, and they did the right thing, because they definitely won’t be able to work in their specialty in such numbers, they you don't need that much. Well, if we graduate 15 specialists in Aramaic languages, they are guaranteed not to find work due to their education. In our country, these languages are taught mainly because we ourselves took the initiative. And we cannot make plans for the future. We can only speak about our desire to recruit students and teach them.

— But you are not limited to teaching at the Russian State University for the Humanities? As far as I know, you are currently busy preparing a summer school for Semitic studies. Tell us about her, please.

— The idea was born like this. I have long wanted to communicate with our Ukrainian colleagues and told Dmitry Tsolin, an Aramaist from the Ostrog Academy, about this. And we decided to hold a summer school in Ostroh, this is the former Polish part of Western Ukraine. I announced this plan in our Aramaica Facebook group. And a dozen and a half Moscow colleagues immediately responded and wanted to teach at the summer school! The academic level of lecturers will be high. There will be Moscow Semitic philologists from among the best, and there will be our colleagues from Western Europe and Israel. The students are from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and possibly from Israel. There are even from Western Europe. It’s too early to talk about details; everything is in the preparation stage. We are planning three weeks of very intensive classes to give students the chance to discover new worlds. I want people to discover something new that may change their worldview and consciousness. I understand that this sounds naive, but changing people’s lives with the help of new knowledge is my long-term goal.

— Finally, please tell us about how your department was created.

— The department was founded by Leonid Efimovich Kogan. He is one of those people who knows how to plan his life 20-30 years in advance. While still a student at the Oriental Faculty in St. Petersburg, he came to us at the Russian State University for the Humanities to give lectures on Semitic philology. In 1996, he entered graduate school at the Institute of Oriental Cultures of the Russian State University for the Humanities. In 1997, Lenya recruited his first group of students in the specialization “History and Philology of Ancient Mesopotamia”, and this was the beginning of our department. In 1999, the “History and Philology of Ancient Syria-Palestine” group was first recruited; I am now in charge of this specialization. Then Arabists appeared at the department, this year there will be a third intake. And our fourth direction is “Ethiopian-Arabic Philology”, where among the living Ethiosemitic languages, Amharic is studied mainly.

— Do you have many students?

— Due to the non-market nature of the specialty, the passing score on the Unified State Exam is low, so at first a lot of people come. Many then drop out, because from the first semester they have to work a lot, cram, “dig the earth with their nose.”

— How does your teaching of Middle Eastern languages differ from training, say, at the Institute of Asian and African Countries?

— I didn’t study at ISAA, I only taught Hebrew and Aramaic there, so I can only judge superficially. At ISAA, the main focus is practical: the emphasis is on the study of living literary languages - say, standard Arabic or Hindi. We do not teach to be simultaneous interpreters, but we pretend to raise scientists, primarily philologists.

— As I understand it, you do special work with students?

- How else?! By the end of the training, we have few students left, although it also happened that six or seven people reached the end of the course, and this is a lot for us. There were cases when only one student remained from an entire class. However, finding a job is not an easy task. The labor market is such that there are no prospects for such rare specialists. A graduate could apply for a job at our institute, but this is difficult to do for obvious reasons, and the further it goes, the more difficult it will be, since budget funding for education, as we know, is being reduced. There is another option: to get hooked somewhere in Germany or France. But there is nowhere to put their young specialists in the Ancient East. Sometimes it seems that our situation until recently was even better than Western Europe, strange as it may seem. This is explained as follows: in the West, things work rather according to the “all or nothing” principle: a scientist either ultimately receives a life-long contract, a “tenure-track position,” or drops out of the profession. In Russia, this is more nuanced: you can work all your life as a senior teacher without an academic degree - there is nothing special about it.

— We, Celticologists, have the same situation: our languages have no practical value and are of little demand.

— Of course, because we are preparing those who will engage in science. At the same time, the labor market does not expand, but, on the contrary, collapses, as funding for scientific research decreases. If a person does not have children and he lives with his parents (in short, he is free from the “housing problem”), then he can still somehow live on the salary of a research assistant - after all, there are always part-time jobs. There are also grants. But the outlook remains chronically unclear. Most likely, sooner or later you will have to look for a job to survive and do science in your free time. But “work for survival,” if it is interesting and requires the use of brains, attracts a person more and more. A capable person (and, as a rule, others do not study with us) begins to represent value in a different labor market. Science is gradually leaving his life. That is, if a person is capable and not ready for life without long-term guarantees, then his strength will go where there will be a material return.

“We have all seen many such examples, but still those working at the Russian State University for the Humanities are those who did not give up their academic activities. How do they survive?

— Our situation is not bad; for some time now we have been paid more. Enough for food. Everyone builds their life differently, I can’t speak for others. If a person receives at least some money for research that makes up the meaning of his life, I consider this to be great luck. I didn’t initially count on this for myself. And I am grateful to my colleagues, students and fate itself for everything that happened and can no longer be taken away.

The main monuments of the Hebrew language are the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh, Old Testament), the Mishnah, as well as rich medieval Jewish literature, poetry, rabbinical literature, historiography, works on mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, chemistry, and natural sciences. Many modern poets and writers also wrote in Hebrew, until its revival as a spoken language, the language of school, media, literature, as well as the official language of Israel.

Hebrew
Self-name	Hebrew
Countries	Eretz Israel, diaspora
Status	literary language, liturgical language
Extinct	from the 2nd century AD e. stopped being conversational
Classification
Category	Languages of Eurasia
Semitic family West Semitic branch Canaanite group
Writing	Hebrew letter
Language codes
ISO 639-1	-
ISO 639-2	-
ISO 639-3	hbo
Ethnologue	hbo
LINGUIST List	hbo
IETF	hbo
Glottolog
See also: Project: Linguistics

The earliest found epigraphic evidence in Hebrew dates back to the 10th-9th centuries. BC e.

About the name

The traditional designation of the language of written monuments that have come to us from the territory of Ancient Israel and Judea and dating back to the period from the 10th century BC. e. to 2nd century AD e. , in Russian Hebraic literature is the “ancient Hebrew language”. This term corresponds to such terms as English. hebrew or German hebräisch. The term "Jewish language", which was widely used in relation to it in the 19th century, in Soviet times was used mainly in relation to the Yiddish language, and is now usually used to designate the entire set of languages, dialects and ethnolects that Jews have used during the last two centuries. more than a thousand years (including Yiddish, Sephardic, Jewish-Aramaic, Jewish-Iranian, etc.). Recently, the Hebrew language is often included in the concept of "Hebrew" (also "Biblical Hebrew" - the corresponding English. Biblical Hebrew), since both in Jewish literature and in European languages the corresponding term (Hebrew) is used for both ancient and modern periods of language development.

Classification

Linguogeography

Range and numbers

The area of distribution of the Hebrew language generally corresponds to the modern borders of the State of Israel, including the West Bank, but excluding the coastal strip from the Gaza Strip to modern Tel Aviv and north of modern Haifa, as well as most of the Negev Desert. In addition, it was used in Transjordan and in the southwestern part of modern Syria.

In this territory it was widespread until the fall of the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. e. and the Babylonian captivity, where it was preserved as a language of intra-group communication. After the return of the Jews from captivity around 500 BC. e. The Hebrew language remained in Judea for several centuries, gradually giving way to Western Aramaic dialects.

Dialects

The language of epigraphic monuments is divided into Israeli (northern) and Jewish (southern) dialects.

Writing

The alphabet of the Hebrew language was Paleo-Hebrew, very close to Phoenician, the oldest alphabetic script in the world. The Paleo-Hebrew script was used until the last centuries of the 1st millennium BC. e., when the so-called "square" or "Assyrian" script, already in use by this time for the Aramaic languages. It is this letter that is now known as the Hebrew letter.

Actually, the Paleo-Hebrew letter was preserved in a slightly modified form among the Samaritans, who use this so-called. Samaritan letter is for sacred purposes only.

In this article, examples are conveyed in traditional Semitic phonological transcription.

Linguistic characteristics

Phonetics and phonology

The Hebrew language is characterized by the presence of 23 consonant phonemes. The non-emphatic plosive phonemes /p, t, k, b, d, g/ had fricative allophones, the use of which in some positions already indicated their transformation into independent phonemes. The simple lateral IPA was still preserved. Compared to the Proto-Semitic state, interdental consonants, one of the lateral consonants (emphatic) and uvulars have disappeared. Vocalism is represented by 7 full phonemes /å, a, ä, e, i, o, u/ and 4 reduced ones (ə, ă, ĕ, ŏ), the phonological status of which is not entirely clear.

The stress was phonologically relevant, although in most cases it fell on the final syllable.

Morphology

In the morphology of names, masculine and feminine, singular and plural are contrasted. For some types of names, when forming plurals. h. ablaut is observed ( melech‘king’ - pl. h. melah-im). Exponent of the dual number - -aim attaches mainly to the names of paired organs of the body of humans and animals and to some other words.

The definite article has the form ha-.

Unlike the ancient Semitic languages of Mesopotamia, nouns in Hebrew do not change their endings when inflected. There are masculine and feminine nouns, which can be singular, dual or plural.

The verb in Hebrew has tense forms, which are conventionally called: perfect, imperfect, inverted perfect and inverted imperfect.

Perfect- past tense perfective and imperfective, as well as present tense.

Imperfect- future, constant action that is regularly repeated (in this case the meaning of time is not expressed in any way and is determined by the context).

Reversed perfect- the future, a sequence of actions regularly repeated in the past.

Reversed imperfect- past tense.

Syntax

Neutral word order is VSO. The Hebrew text consists of sentences connected by an inverted imperfect/inverted perfect into a chain of sentences that make up a single structured text.

Vocabulary

In the vocabulary of Aramaicisms, borrowings from