"pidgin Hebrew"?

[Biro, Tamas]

Dear all,

During a course today, I came across the following question: what do we
know about "pidgin" versions of Hebrew?

What I have in mind are situations both in the middle ages and in pre-Ben
Yehuda Palestine, when (less educated) Jews spoke Hebrew to each other for
lack of any other shared language. I have vague memories about reading
that Jews on different continents involved in (early) medieval
long-distance trade communicated in Hebrew. The same applies to the
various Jewish communities in 19th century Jerusalem. In both cases, we
have oral communication by people who might have been less versed in
Hebrew than those (typically rabbis) whose written work we are most
familiar with.

Do we have data about these variants of Hebrew? Would it be safe to call
it a pidgin language?

Best,

Tamas

____________________________
|
| Tamás Biró
| biro....@btk.elte.hu
| http://birot.web.elte.hu/

[Jules Levin]

-----Original Message-----
>From: "Biro, Tamas" <biro....@btk.elte.hu>
>Sent: May 16, 2018 3:27 PM
>To: jewish-l...@googlegroups.com
>Subject: [Jewish Languages] "pidgin Hebrew"?
>
>
American Protestant ministers travelling in the Holy Land in the 19th Century, and who knew Hebrew, reported that Hebrew was used as a lingua franca between European and Eastern Jews. It used a simplified phonology: 5 vowels and without the post-velar consonants. In other words, it was the ancestor of modern Israeli Hebrew, despite the Ben-Yehudah mythology--his Hebrew, like Bialik's poetry, was Ashkenazi. Not a pidgin, but definitely a lingua franca.
Jules Levin

[bspolsky]

could we have references?

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[Andrey Rozenberg]

On Hebrew spoken by the old Yishuv: https://academic.oup.com/jss/article-abstract/17/2/237/1668028
There is indeed an opinion that Israeli Hebrew can be considered a creole: http://www.tau.ac.il/~izreel/publications/Emergence_Hary2003(corr).pdf and that the 19th-century Hebrew was a pidgin.

On Ben-Yehuda though - to the best of my knowledge he spoke and was a proponent of the "5-vowel" Hebrew (not least because it was already prevalent in Palestine). Can anyone comment on his pronunciation of/recommendations concerning אהע"ח?

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[Biro, Tamas]

Dear all,

Thank you for all the valuable comments so far. As a side remark:
creolists have recently put to question the pidgins-turned-into-creole
theory. Consequently, my question about pre-Ben Yehuda Jerusalem Hebrew
being a pidgin (spoken typically in trade situations, such as the
Jerusaelm suk) might be somehow independent from the more commonly
discussed question about Israeli [Hebrew] being a creole.

All the best,

Tamas