Why Hebrew Is Different

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In the lesson Why English Needs Vowels, we saw that vowels in English are an essential part of the word and you can't not have them. This is probably so obvious to English speakers that you may think all languages are like that. Surely all languages need vowels in the same way that English does?

No! In Hebrew, things work very differently. The hundreds of ambiguities that would arise if English didn’t have vowels don’t arise at all in Hebrew - or at least don’t arise often enough to become a problem.

How can this be? Well, English is a language that has evolved slowly over time, and accumulated words derived from many different sources, including words of Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic, French, German and other origins. Hebrew, however, is a relatively pure language - it has not evolved, absorbed and changed anything like as much as English has.

What this means is something quite amazing - something that may, in fact, shock you if you are not already aware of it. In Hebrew, words which have the same set of consonants for the ‘root’ or core meaning of the word, are almost always related. We saw in the previous lesson that many vastly different words could stem from the same set of consonants in English - but, in Hebrew, this doesn’t happen!

As an example, let’s take the set of Hebrew consonants yld. A set of related consonants in Hebrew is called a root (shoresh in Hebrew). The root yld means to bear, to give birth. Therefore, all words which stem from this root will, in some way, be related to this core meaning. Even more remarkably, no words using the root yld will mean anything other than the root concept ‘to give birth’.

To demonstrate this phenomenon of the Hebrew language, here are some words that derive from the root yld:

  she gave birth, expressing the root meaning.
  he was born, from the same root. Notice how different the English words are - born and birth.
  begat, engendered, fathered. Again, in English, completely different words are used.
  a boy, something that is given birth to.
  a girl, the feminine form of the above word, again something that is given birth to.
  children, the plural form of boys and girls. Whereas in English, boy, girl and children are completely different words with different derivations, in Hebrew they are all connected. They are, respectively, the masculine, feminine and plural noun forms of the root yld.
  youth/youthhood. Again, the same root meaning; youth is what is given birth to, and what children experience as they grow older.
  midwife, that is, one who assists in giving birth.
  birthday, the day that someone was born.
  generations, genealogies - successions of people who are given birth to.
  land of nativity - the place where someone is born.

This simple example could be multiplied by hundreds, even thousands, of others roots in Hebrew. Notice how different the English words are: birth, born, fathered, boy, girl, children, youthhood, midwife, birthday, generations, land of nativity. But since all these words stem from the same basic concept, in Hebrew they are all related and all have the same root (yld). Exactly how to form words from the root, and how to recognise which root words have come from, is something that a knowledge of Hebrew grammar brings.

In Hebrew, words like those above are formed from the root in very systematic, predictable ways. Once you start to recognise these patterns, you can look at a 'new' word and know what it means just by looking at the structure of the Hebrew word, even if you have never seen it before. Nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are all formed from the root in a completely consistent way.

When Hebrew was first written down, it was written entirely without vowels because everyone understood what was intended, even if vowels were not present. (Remember that Hebrew was the mother tongue of the ancient Israelites, not a foreign language as it is for us). In Israel today, books and newspapers for adults do not come with vowels at all. This illustrates that vowels are not really necessary in Hebrew, even though in English a lack of vowels would cause major problems.

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