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1. Introduction According to Weinreich (1973:I 32–33; 2008: 29–30) and his followers, Hebrew(-Aramaic) is one of the four components of Yiddish, the other three being Romance, German, and Slavic. Speakers of what would later become Yiddish were in contact with these four ‘stock languages’ (or language groups). Elements of the stock languages that could theoretically have entered Yiddish are called ‘determinants’, and the determinants that did enter it are called ‘components’. The Hebrew determinant and component are also known as ‘whole Hebrew’ and ‘merged He…

1. Introduction Verbs in Modern Hebrew are formed exclusively through one traditional type of discontinuous word-formation, i.e., root-pattern formation, in contrast to nouns and adjectives, which can also be formed through other types of word-formation such as reduplication, prefixation, suffixation, blending, compounding, acronyming and conversion (Word Formation; Derivation). Changes in verbal patterns for a given root bring about changes in diathesis and/or aspect in the resulting verbs. Verbs in Modern Hebrew inflect for tense (past, present, and future), …

1. Introduction Hebrew is a relative newcomer to the Internet, like many other languages that use non-Roman script. When the forerunner of what would later be known as the Internet was launched in the United State in 1969, it used English exclusively and was not open to the general public. English continued to be the official language of the most widely used service of the Internet, the World Wide Web (henceforth: the Web), which made its debut in 1991, and into the decade, as access to the Intern…

Of all the so-called ‘international planned languages’, Esperanto is the only one that functions socially as a neutral second language by speakers of various native languages around the world. It was created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. Although Hebrew was one of the languages he knew, and although he translated the whole Hebrew Bible into Esperanto, words of Hebrew origin in Esperanto are rather few in number; they are limited almost exclusively to nouns, Biblical Hebrew personal names, and place…

A lingua franca, or common language, plays two roles in science: it facilitates scientific communication among researchers from different linguistic backgrounds; at the same time, ironically enough, it also serves as a linguistic ‘litmus test’ for full membership in the worldwide network of scientific communication links. The past few decades have seen English established as the dominant lingua franca in many branches of science, where it has displaced languages that formerly filled this functio…