Talk:History of the Hebrew language

A good hebrew speaking is not so easy to acquire and the semitic roots remain the overwhelming pool of words. There is a wide trend to reject european words and they are defined as "g'ibrish".

english is not an official language in Israel
there are only two official languages in Israel, Arabic and Hebrew, not English


 * depends what you mean by official. English has an offical status in Israel, as of 2000 if I'm correct, replacing the previous official use of French in official state documents.

- Does anybody know about the origins of modern hebrew hand-script? I've heard that is it was invented around year 1500 in a certian Ashkenazi community (I have specific info, but I will not specific, because my source might be baised).

Anyway, there's a big time-gap to be filled about hebrew in diaspora, which obiously went through alot of transformations and specific uses in law and religion. I'm not knowledgable enough, I expect someone else would fill in the gap better.

re: there are only two official languages in Israel, Arabic and Hebrew, not English
According to the Israeli government, only Hebrew and Arabic have official status in Hebrew, and they are the only two languages sanctioned for use in Knesset, for instance. I am sure you can find official Israeli government documents printed in English, French, and even Russian and Spanish, for the benefit of new immigrants who only read well in those languages, but none of those languages are "official"...juist as US government documenst are occassionally translated into Spanish, Chinese and Haitian Creole for immigrant communities' benefit.

You wrote: "depends what you mean by official. English has an offical status in Israel, as of 2000 if I'm correct, replacing the previous official use of French in official state documents. "

re: Russian "atzia" suffix
You wrote: "For example, the Russian suffix -acia is used in nouns where English has the suffix -ation. It is so both in direct borrowings from Russian, for example "industrializacia", industrialization, and in words that do not exist in Russian (thus, colloquial English "cannibalization" turns into Hebrew "canibalizatcia"). "

I suppose you might be right about the tendency of modern Hebrew to appropriate foreign words and add an "atzia" deriving from Russian. In any case, there ia a perfectly good modern Hebrew word for "industrialization" that is more often used than "industrializatzya", with legitimate Semitic Hebrew roots that is used more commonly in contemporary Hebrew...it is "tei'us" (from the root 'ayin, sin, heh). I have never heard "industrializatzya", although it wouldn't surprise me.


 * I don't see the direct relation specificly to Russian, the ~acia suffix in common in many europian languages Latin. Since this is a suffix for latin originated words, I think it's pretty natural.