Adventures of a polyglot

For those of you who know me, it will come as no surprise that language fascinates me.  In English, I consider myself a LEA: Language Enforcement Agent (a much better designation than "Grammar Nazi" and synonymous to the male title, LEO: Language Enforcement Officer).  I hold proper use of the language in the highest esteem and though I cannot explain English grammar, I love the sound of it.  Additionally, I am constantly searching for new words to add to my lexicon like spices in a kitchen; I like to mix and match and turn and twist sounds and syllables in my mouth, and as my fingers tap the keyboard or wield a pen I am thrilled with the opportunity for prose.  I like to experience life through language, narrating in silent monologues to reinterpret my experiences, thereby turning a pretty tree or a bumblebee into a superfluous metaphor.  In this way, my world is rearranged.

But I digress.  What I really want to talk about is Hebrew.  My classmates must think I'm nuts with how excited I was to begin learning the past tense yesterday.  It was like learning how to read all over again, but this time with the profound understanding of what this knowledge would do for me.  I was actually giddy to watch the past two months of learning fall into place for this moment.

Say it with me now:  NERD.

Hebrew is a captivating language to study for a few reasons.  First, it's the only language whose modern version was adapted directly from its ancient version instead of undergoing hundreds or thousands of years of linguistic evolution.  Second, Modern Hebrew is highly influenced by German, Russian, Yiddish, English, Spanish, Ladino, and Arabic, among others, and though this influence is primarily noticeable in the vocabulary it has also shaped some of Hebrew's structure and pronunciation.  Third, Hebrew has an astoundingly systematic structure.  Despite the few requisite exceptions (because no language is complete without some exceptions to the rules), Hebrew's grammatical structure is so crisp and pure that it's almost mind-boggling.

In comparison to English whose exceptions outnumber cases of adherence to the rules, or French with its fourteen tenses and large variety of verb conjugations for each, Hebrew is blissfully simple in terms of its structure.  (It should be noted that while English only has two "true" tenses, there are actually twelve collective tenses when modals and compound tenses are included.  We just never learn them as such.)  Perhaps "simple" is the wrong word; certainly it has its complications.  But it is structured, and almost mathematically so.  How wonderful that my love of language can be combined with my love of analysis!

One of the fascinating things about Hebrew is its system of shoreshim, roots.  Each noun, verb, adjective, and adverb is constructed around a three- or four-letter shoresh which connects it to all the other words with that shoresh.  So for instance, the word עבודה, "work," shares the root letters .ע.ב.ד with the verb עובד and its infinitive לעבוד.  From those root letters derive the past tense of the word in the third-person singular, עבד, and though we haven't gotten to future or imperative tenses, I can assure you they are all permutations of the same shoresh.  Similarly, and perhaps more interestingly, the shoresh for the verb "thinking," חושב is also found in the word for computer, מחשב.  Makes sense, no?

There are also binyanim, "buildings," which are classifications of verbs that all follow specific patterns and rules of conjugation.  In addition, each binyan identifies the voice - whether it's active, passive, causative, reflexive, or any combination thereof - and each verb can be adjusted based on the title of the binyan to adopt that particular voice.  We haven't gotten that far in the grammar yet, but I've learned it's possible.

When we were first learning how to form the infinitives based on the verb (seemly backwards from other languages), our teacher kept telling us to "listen to the music!"  The music?  It took me a while to realize that she was talking about the vowel sounds of the verb groups.  Generally-speaking, it's not the consonants that create the groups but their uniform vowel sounds.  Once we put it all together in a grand table identifying five of the seven binyanim, I fully understood what she meant.  And knowing that makes it astoundingly easier to pronounce new words without the dots and dashes that usually designate the pronunciation.

All of this is interesting in and of itself - this system of roots, verb classifications, and precise rules in gender and quantity that permeate throughout.  But the most fascinating?  That all the grammar has been adapted from the ancient Hebrew of the Tenach, the Old Testament.

As young students in Hebrew school we were taught that Hebrew is not only the language of the Torah but the language of Creation, that of G-d Himself.  And while that does make for a nice, simple explanation to an inquiring 10-year-old, its strength lies in the myriad connections and seeming perfection of the language.

Regardless of the genesis of this language (ha, Genesis, get it?), this was not a language that was created or developed willy-nilly.  There is attention to detail as found in its ineffable structure and plethora of correlations between words and ideas.  There is utter simplicity, confounding interplay, and brilliant mechanisms built into the language in ways that both French and English lack.  There is nothing superfluous, nothing wasteful about this language.

(Except that one darn preposition unique to Hebrew that I just can't quite figure out.)

I don't ask you to agree with me, but there is almost something divine about it all.