BolshyFaker

Hey if it taught you Mandarin then I guess it is probably pretty good... I should order it asap though if I'm going to use it. Heading out at the start of August so a limited time available to learn!

BolshyFaker

Haha, definitely!

Bevakasha = please
birah = beer?
ani rotzeh ... echad = ??

My phrasebook didn't have any words for alcohol! How weird is that? A whole section on drinks as well. :huh:

premjan

I am surprised that biblical hebrew was successfully resurrected - people tried experiments like this with Sanskrit, but with limited success. I guess the identity factor can't be discounted.

DamnYankees

ani = I
rotzeh = want
echad = one

I don't know the generic word for alcohol, either. I'd probably just use "yayin", the word for wine.

Vicious Love

Hm. Must've screwed up my update notification whatsit, I thought this thread was dead. 'scuse the late reply.

Correct, but "ekhad" is the male form of "one", and beer is a female noun. So "akhat" would be the word to use.

It's "alcohol". Well, technically it's "cohel", but it's from the same Arabic root as "alcohol", and pretty much everyone uses "alcohol", unless they're referring to rubbing alcohol, using the term professionally, or just going out of their way to be correct (if they're news anchors, for instance).

Vicious Love

That was an important factor, but Hebrew never really died in the first place. Granted, a liturgical language is nothing like a spoken language, and the Hebrew vocabulary was in pretty dire need of an update, but Biblical Hebrew was still in constant use by Jewish communities the world over. More importantly, I'm told that certain Sepharadic communities used a variant or pidgin of Hebrew as an actual spoken language, but I haven't looked into this enough to give you any details, or even verify that it was at all widespread.

Vicious Love

Oh, it's very much alive and growing, and even the recently-updated bits of it are very distinct, in their own way. For instance, "yalla" is an Arabic word, and "bye" is English, but "yalla, bye"? Pure Hebrew.

Chris Weimer

Az yalla bai!

Vicious Love

Shmor al atzmekha, capara.

premjan

echad sounds just like ekat (one in Sanskrit) but I am sure it has a different root.