Where did the question words go?

The poem KEN LATZIPOR (A Nest For the Bird) performed by Noga

Children literature, like any literature, is a mirror that clearly reflects social and cultural transformations. Looking at Israeli children literature one can see a substantial reduction of issues: While Bialik's Poems and Songs for Children contains poems about nature – such as A Nest for the Bird (KEN LATZIPOR), game songs, lullabies – such as Lay Down, My Toddler, character songs, experience songs and poems of Jewish tradition and folklore – such as For Shabbat, in the children songs of Yehonatan Gefen, Hagit Benziman and Yehuda Atlas it is difficult to find "sun", "wind" and "trees" and if one finds such objects they are all subjected to the condition of child,  the hero of the song.

If the old songs can be defined as describing "how the world looks to the child", the songs these days can be defined as describing how the child, showing off his personality and wishing to sketch his self-portrait, appears in the world. Hence the change in the status of objects such as "games", "toys" or "aunts" and "uncles". In post-modern children songs they all serve the same goal – exposing fundamental features and typical situations of the child's consciousness.

The language and the style of songs for children have changed as well. While in Bialik's songs there are Aramaic phrases and flowery phrases like "hush lest thou awake" (HAS PEN TA'IR), in songs today the language has been lowered as if it strives to a complete identification with the natural language of children: simple and often incorrect.

In current children literature personification and animation – meaning, ascribing human attributes and skills to figures of still objects, plants and animals – are very rare. The question words "what", "who" and "where", which Bialik, Shaul Tchernichovsky and Ya'akov Fichman frequently used for dramatization – disappeared, replaced by the abundant "why" word – either as a rhetorical question in the framework of a "personal confession" by the child speaker or in order to expose the parents' weaknesses.

In classic children songs there is an emphasis on pathos and drama and  on the child's confusion in front of the world. In post-modern songs the child is presented as smart, knowledgeable, confident and as one who allows himself or herself to criticize the elderly. The topics of post-modern songs are daily life, not top of world affairs, and such matters are "natural" to be commented by a child's opinion.

In The Fleece Festival (HAG HAGEZ) by Anda Pinkerfeld-Amir's from the 30's, we read: "In Tel-Yoseph everyone is glad" – so the emphasis is on the whole, the collective. Children poems nowadays emphasize individualism and difference.

In Miriam Yalan-Shteklis' Michael and Alone (LEVADI) from the late 50s' - there is no God and nature. There are only dolls and bears, lifeless and without a response. Alienation. The poetess has already lost faith in God, but still there is a searching for other people to conduct life together.

Later, the inner spiritual mantel content of Man is going lost and he is willingly enslaved to the sensory stimuli. There is no real conversation. Everyone listens to himself or herself or trying to enforce his or her opinion. So are, for example, the songs by Ayin Hillel (Hillel Omer) about a talk between two girls, in which each of them relates only to herself at that moment, without communication, and the song expressing the certainty of each part of clothing hanging on the clothesline to dry that just for him the sun is shining.

An extreme example of this shift in children literature is the song Lights Out (KIBUY OROT) by Moshe Oren:

Some people sleep
with butt to the wall,
some sleep with face,
and some can not decide
and constantly change phase.

"Flea buster" is free

Dror children group of Kibbutz Ein-Hahoresh in the forties (photo: Ein-Hahoresh Arcive). Some half of the children bear Biblical names such as Samuel (SHMUEL) and Judith (YEHUDIT) while the rest bear new Israeli names such as Amira



Who hasn't wondered at some time what the origin of his name is? Who did not happen to wonder about a strange name of another person? The Hebrew book The Origin of Names (MOZA HASHEMOT), by the deceased Avraham Stahl, presents a compilation of historical facts related to the development of Jewish first and last names, seasoned by amusing anecdotes related to the relations between humans and their names.

It turns out that not many years ago most people shared a very small variety of names. Roman men, for example, shared less than a hundred names - among them Gaius, Titus and Marcus. Even an analysis of the Israel telephone directory from 1971-1979, shows that 15 percent of the Jewish men were named after Jacob and his sons: Joseph, Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Dan, Gad, Benjamin etc. The use of a few first names in traditional societies, Stahl explains, reflects the community dominance versus the individual, so there is no interest in emphasizing people's uniqueness.

In 1992 Stahl made a comparison between the names of children in the secular Jerusalem residential district Gilo and the names of the children in the religious community Beit-El. He found that half of the secular boys, but only one religious boy, had new Hebrew names, that is - names that were created from the late 19th century to the present, and the rest of the names were from the Jewish scriptures, mostly from the Bible.

In his book Stahl explains that many of the family names held by Israelis of Ashkenazi descent are related to a law published in 1787 by Emperor Joseph II, ordering all Jews to carry a permanent family name in German. One could have chosen the name from a special list of names, unless his family had already have a name, and in that occasion a payment for the new name should have payed. The most expensive names were those derived from names of flowers or precious metals, such as Rosenthal (rose valley) or Goldstein (gold stone). Names of less privileged materials were sold cheaply: Holz (wood), Stein (stone) or Stahl (steel) - as the author's family name.

And one who could not meet even the low rate, received from the emperor's officials a name for free - a ridiculous and sneered name, such as Ochsenschwanz (ox tail) or Wanzenknacker (flea buster).

Do Scottish children still prefer Hebrew?or: Hungarian children, skip the last paragraph!

HaMoshava HaGermanit is the Hebrew name of the Jerusalem neighbourhood "The German colony": The definite article HA is attached to both the noun and its adjective (photo: Steven C. Bennett)



A Medieval story of King James IV reminds me of the debate concerning the relative simplicity of the American English compared to the Israeli Hebrew

A legend tells that James IV of Scotland (1488-1513) wanted to know what the first language ever was. To find it, he ordered to isolate two newborns in one wing of his palace, and prevent them from any contact with talking people. A nanny was provided to take care of all their needs and treated them devotedly, but never talked to them not even one word. After a while, so the king told, the two children began to talk very good Hebrew ("Spak very guid Ebrew").

Since Hebrew was revived as a spoken language there's a never ending debate if the Hebrew language is indeed more "complicated", "abstract" and "arbitrary" than most western languages, especially the American English.

Some arguments held by the opponents of the mentioned above notion are as following:

* Pronouncing the consonants in English is more difficult due to "hard" consonant sequences - like "str" in the word "street", while Hebrew keeps more harmonious a balance between vowels and consonants.

* the English accentuation system is more complicated: While the Israeli child learns to link certain recurring forms of words with oxytone or paroxytone accentuation (stressing the last syllable of the word or the one-before-last syllable), the English child learns to understand that almost every word has its own rule of accentuation.

* The relations between the singular form and plural form and between the male form and the female form in English are an "arbitrary and illogical tangle" -  e.g. "man" versus "men" or "fish" vs. "fish" – from which the Israeli child is completely exempted.

* The American child must deal with a non-simple system of grammatical rejection: He should choose between a series of organs such as "am", "are", "is" or "do" – to create phrases like "I am not" or "I do not know". Whereas the Israeli child should use only LO (no) or AL (don't).

* The American child's life is more complicated than that of the Israeli child in the aspect of the definite article as well: While the Israeli child learns that a known thing is defined by the short prefix HA (the), his American counterpart should learn a whole series of definite articles: "a", "some", "the" etc.

* The methodicalness and repetition of the "root system" in Hebrew enhances and accelerates the learning process – comparatively to the suffixes and prefixes system in English - by generating simple and logical links between the phenomena: The Israeli child quickly learns to understand the relation between LE'ECHOL (to eat), OCHEL (food) and LE'HA'ACHIL (to feed), while his American counterpart might realize vaguely the connection between "to eat", "food" and "to feed". The Hebrew root system is not only a factor of methodicalness and efficient organization, but also an "economical" factor: While the Hebrew speaker has at his BAYIT (home) AVIRA BEYTIT ("a homely atmosphere"), near the YAM (ocean) MUZE'ON YAMI ("an oceanic museum") and a NESHER (eagle) with AF NISHRI ("eagled nose") - the American speaker is forced to memorize: "home-domestic", "sea-marine", "eagle-acquiline", and such thousands of "illogical" combinations of nouns and their adjectives. 

פלפל - Is it PILPEL (pepper) or FALAFEL?

So are the main arguments of the Israelis finding no special difficulty in Israeli Hebrew comparatively to American English. However, there is still an intuitive feeling that American English is more simple than Hebrew, at least for those learning the two languages as foreign languages. It seems that some of the arguments raised above "for" the simplicity of Hebrew, actually lean on its formal structures rather than its practical use.

So, let's face the contradictory arguments: 

* The issue of consonants: Is the Israeli child, compared to the American child, really exempted from pronunciation complications? So what about the need to learn to pronounce foreign and rare consonants that are unnatural to old Hebrew, such as the English J in the word "jeans", the French J in the word "jacket" and the English W in the word "walkman"? And these are only individual cases of the general difficulty in the way Hebrew assimilates foreign words. While the American child gradually enriches his vocabulary under the auspice of the American English capacity to absorb, convert and assimilate foreign words, the Israeli child is doomed to confront words such as ELEMENTARY (elementary), OTENTI (authentic) or SIMPATI (sympathetic) which are not only heard "foreign" to him but also remain outside the grammatical "options game": It is impossible to say in Hebrew OTENTIYUTO (his authenticity) as naturally as saying TIV'IYUTO (his neutrality) or HU HISTAMPET ALAY (he made me sympathize him) as simple as it is to say HU HITCHABEV ALAY (he made me like him). 

 

* The issue of accentuation: Again, albeit in this aspect Hebrew is more systematic than English and has fixed word structures with fixed accentuations: either paroxytone or oxytone - due to the massive penetration of foreign words, the contemporary Israeli child can no longer enjoy this "theoretical" systematic structure. After he had got used to the fact that there is a paroxytone BOKER (cowboy) and an oxytone BOKER (morning), as there is a paroxytone ROSHEM ("sketch") and an oxytone ROSHEM ("impression"), lately he has to learn words such as TELEPHONE, PELEPHONE (mobile phone), BEYGALE (pretzel), HAMBURGER (hamburger) or MICROGAL (microwave), pronounced as proparoxyton, which is completely alien to the old Hebrew, and many other words without any logic in their  methodicalness, such as: KARAOKE, DISKETTE (floppy), FORUM. Add to it the Hebrew slang which is so "non-Hebrew" and lack any regularity of accentuation: AHBAL (stupid), CHANTARISH (non serious), AWANTA (trying to impress), MASCHARA (dishonest deal), and compare it to the American slang which sounds as an integral part of the American language sound.

* The issue of the singular form vs. the plural form and the male form vs. the female form: The Israeli child is not fully exempted of this complication. He has to learn pairs of nouns like: ISH-ANASHIM (person-people), ISHA-NASHIM (woman-women), PRI-PEROT (a fruit-fruit), CHELO-CHELLI (cello-cellos), MEDYUM-MEDYA (medium-media), and pairs of nouns like: CHAMOR-ATON (donkey-she ass), ARYE-LEVIAH (lion-lioness), TAYISH-EZ (male goat-female goat), GAMAL-NEAKA (male camel-female camel), EVED-SHIFCHA (male slave-female slave); and many many more irregular pairs of nouns lacking the formula: male plural = male singular + IM, female plural = female singular + OT.

* The issue of the negating system: Indeed, the auxiliary verbs in English complicate the negation system in this language, but isn't it much harder to learn the following collection: E EFSHAR (not possible), AL TELECH (don't go), ASUR LE'ASHEN (no smoking), EYN MAKOM (no vacancy), BILTI KARI (non readable), AF ECHAD (no one), SHUM DAVAR (nothing) – than the following collection: not possible, don't go, no smoking, no vacancy, non readable, no one, nothing?

* The issue of definition by article: Does the Israeli child have to learn merely the fact that a thing is defined by the definite article Ha (the) as a prefix? So, what about the difference between BEYT KNESET HAGADOL (Great Synagogue) and BEYT HAKNESET HAGADOL (The great synagogue)? Or between SHITAT CHAMESH HASHMINIYOT (the five eights method) and SHITAT HACHAMESH SHMINIYOT (the method of five eighths)? And where in the following sentence the HA (the) is a definite article, when it is a question article, and when - a direction article: HATEDA (do you know) HA'IM HAYELED HASHOVAV (wehether the naughty child) HAPORETZ HACHUZA (bursting out) HU HAYELED HARISHON HAYOTZE HABAYTA (is the first child going home)?

* The issue of the root system effectiveness comparatively to the prefixes and suffixes system: It's true that the methodicalness and repetition of the root system makes it easier for the child to learn the principle, but since this methodicalness is theoretical and not always practical – because many verbs in Modern Hebrew are not applied in any possible conjugation – a child who learns the principle often fails by "inventing" a word which is not used. After he learned to say LE'ECHOL (to eat) - OCHEL (food) - LE'HA'ACHIL (to feed) and LILBOSH (to wear) - LEVUSH (clothing) – LEHALBISH (to dress up), everyone around woud laugh when he says LISHTOT (to drink) – SHTIYA (a drink) – LEHASHTOT (to give a drink) – because the last word is not used in modern Hebrew, or when he says LIGROV (to wear socks) – LEHAGRIV (to wear socks to someone). Is there any Israeli child who haven't failed by saying ANI HIGADETI RISHON (I was the first one to say) VE'ATA MAGID ET ZE ACHARAY )and you say it after I did)? Now, we all know that there is a word MAGID (say) and it appears many time in Jewish old scriptures, but in modern Hebrew everybody say OMER (say) and not MAGID, although we all use that verb in the future tense: TAGID, NAGID, YAGIDU etc.

* The issue of adjectives derived from the "root system": Indeed, there is AVIRA BEYTIT ("a homely atmosphere"), MUZE'ON YAMI ("an oceanic museum") and AF NISHRI ("eagled nose"), but there isn't the ease with which the American English can make almost every word an adjective by using the word "like"): A house-like tent, a sea-like lake, an eagle-like dove. Nor is the ease with which an English speaker adds a little suffix and makes an adjective out of a noun, as the following: housy, tenty, laky.

* And above all these issues rises up the one of the non-dotted Hebrew spelling, with no letters to mark the vowels. Is there a question that reading signs of consonants without signs of vowels is more difficult than reading combined signs of consonants and vowels? Is it controversial that the Hebrew reader has to decide, according to the context, if it is PILPEL (pepper) or FALAFEL or if it is DUGMA (example) or DOGMA more frequently than he has to decide between strawberry and banan ice cream?

Even the so-called "lack of arbitrariness" of the Hebrew spelling, is a virtue that our language might have had in its Semitic pronunciation phase. But for an Israeli child of our time the following question is a real question: Why one writes TAPUCHA (apple) and pronounce it TAPUACH? Or writes MELAACHA (craft) and pronounce it MLACHA? Or write YEFEHFIYA and pronounce it YEFEYFIYA?

And after all, although there isn't an objective measure of difficulty levels or beauty levels of language, there's a popular inter-subjective opinion about this matter, as reflected in the following joke: When God distributed the languages to the nations, the Hungarians were the last to arrive. So, God said to them: it's too late, there aren't anymore languages to distribute. The Hungarians asked: So how shall we talk? And God said: The way you did till now.