9YjRuTp-nD0.txt

Speaker 1:          00:00          Can I Hebrew speaker understand an Arabic speaker? Well, the short answer is no. The long answer is Kinda sorta maybe, but not really. No.

Speaker 2:          00:18          The question,

Speaker 1:          00:19          one of the day is how similar our Hebrew and Arabic as someone who has studied both languages, I get asked this question by quite a few people. Um, and it's a good question. It makes me think because I'm not quite sure, but I'll give you my best answer. Basically Hebrew and Arabic are very closely related languages and if you study both, that will become very apparent. You'll see tons of similarities and if you know one well already, that will help you learn the other much more easily, but at the same time they are not mutually comprehensible. That means, uh, you, if you speak one and not the other, that you won't be able to communicate with someone who speaks the other language. So they're not, you can't, you can't communicate as though they're the same language and won't work. Okay. So let's talk about some things that are kind of similar and I'll throw in some differences as I go.

Speaker 1:          01:12          And then I'll talk about how there are not really useful as a communication tool with each other. Okay. So they're similar because of the verbal system and in terms of how you create words in the language. So in both Hebrew and Arabic, they have a system of roots. Now those roots are usually three consonant letters and you take those three consonant letters and you put them into kind of templates that help you create a word. So the templates are patterns. They're like, um, a set of, of a combination of vowels and ethics is that could be a prefix or suffix or even an in fix inside the word. So let's take a three letter root and I'll give you an example. In Hebrew, you've got the root ca to va, that's Katie v. If you recognize it, and in Arabic you've got to book Katie, be romanized it already.

Speaker 1:          02:07          You can see there's a similarity. That route is almost the same. The book and the va are different, but low sounds are equivalent. So if you put them into the templates, you can change it. Let's use a verb conjugation template in the past tense. This is the simplest structure in both languages. So in Hebrew, if you say, I wrote, you would say cut off d in Arabic you would say the top two or in a dialect maybe cut up in Hebrew for the second person, masculine for you, you would say a cutoff in Arabic. Cut Up top. So you can see that's quite similar for the Feminine Second Person Singular in Hebrew, you would say cutoff in Arabic, you would say. Okay, so you could see there there's a similarity here in the way that you put the roots into these templates to conjugate the verbs and you can see that the conjugations are kind of similar.

Speaker 1:          03:02          Uh, the templates are kind of similar but they're not exactly the same. And there could be confusion like, um, for uh, for the one I said for a in Hebrew, it's cutoff date that I wrote, but in Arabic means you wrote, it's when spoken to a female. So you can see there could be a confusion there and you might misunderstand. I think they're talking about someone else. I'm right. But she could see that same kind of system and that that kind of system of templates is used to create nouns to create adjectives, all kinds of words, just the templates are different and have different affixes attached to them and different vowels. So that's one thing is that system of roots and templates, it's the same in both. So if you learn that once for one language, it's just getting that concept down really helps you with the second language that uses that same system because it's a bit mind bending at first to adjust to that route and template system.

Speaker 1:          03:58          Another way that there are similar is in terms of just a lot of vocabulary, you already saw that that one route, the cut, the cut the book. So there's a lot of vocabulary that's the same. It's not the majority of words though. It's not like 80 percent or something like that. It's, I would, I don't know the exact percentage. I would guess that it's about a third that's just off the top of my head from my studying experience. A third, uh, some of the words are very similar or almost the same. And some are, some are clearly related, if you examine the words, but you might not notice that just from hearing them because the phonology of the languages has become different due to the languages history. It's similar in French and Italian, French and Italian. If you read two sentences, um, equivalent centers, this side by side, you can look at them and you can say, oh, this word must be the same as this word.

Speaker 1:          04:52          This one must be the same as this one because the words look kind of similar. They sound different and the spelling is different. But you can look at them and see that they're the same. They have the same meaning because they look similar. Uh, so there are a lot of words like that, like they're the kind of cognates, but they're slightly different. Um, so I'll give you some examples of both types. Like the ones that are very similar, a yad in Hebrew and Arabic, that means hand dumb in Hebrew and Arabic. That means blood, right? Um, there's a lot of words that are similar like that. The, almost the same like that. Some that you can figure out quite easily with the pronouns, like I is an the in Hebrew or in Arabic or in Hebrew, you for a man as a ta in Arabic gets untaught, right?

Speaker 1:          05:39          He is who in Hebrew, it's in Arabic, right? Um, and that might, might depend on the dialect to, in Arabic is different in from country to country. Another one kitchen in Hebrew Mitzvah and in Arabic gets macbook. So pretty close. Just one vowel changes in the Arabic one, uh, some that are a little bit more different, but you can see the similarity, especially if you know the function or meaning of the word, like this one to you or for you in Hebrew is the hot. But in Arabic it's lack. So if you look at the vowels, sorry, if you look at the consonants you can see, okay, l k versus l, C h, those might be the same, right? Of in Hebrew is father Abba in Arabic. So again, you see that be in the V, another one, Ben, his son in Hebrew Eban his son in Arabic.

Speaker 1:          06:32          So if you just look at the consonants that be in the end, you can say, oh, those are related. Another one, rush, rush means head in Hebrew, and last, last means head in Arabic. So that's in rush. Those are clearly related. Another one, tongue in Hebrew, lashawn in Arabic. Listen, the sun, so the sun and the show, maybe there's a change there. And also the, the old became an r sound. So there's some shifts in the sounds going on. Dog in Hebrew is Kelly in Arabic, it's called. So you can see there are a lot of words that have a similar, a similar route or if they come from the same word, but they've shifted and become different. So there's a lot of words like that that you wouldn't necessarily understand when you hear them. And other one, that's this, uh, there are some words that are the same, but they have a different meaning like a Medina or Medina.

Speaker 1:          07:23          In Hebrew, Medina is state like Israel, the state of Israel. But in Arabic Medina means a city. So they're both political entities. There is a connection in the meaning, but it's not exactly the same, meaning the meaning has become different and they're also a lot of words that are just different entirely. For whatever reason. It's always kind of strange to discover words that are exactly the same in Hebrew and Arabic. And then the next word in the sentence is entirely different and you've never seen it before. So like why did this one become the same in both languages, but this one is different. What? So it makes it kind of interesting. I don't always know. You usually don't know the answer, but yeah. Anyway, there's a lot of different vocabulary so you can see that there are quite related and there's a lot of crossover but you won't understand one just by learning the other.

Speaker 1:          08:16          Right. It will help you learn the other. If you make the effort though and if you take what you know and try to apply it to the other language. Well learning. So let me give you an example of when I first went to Egypt in 1997. I went there after having studied Hebrew for a couple of years already and I was visiting Israel and I went to Egypt to, so I tried to use my Hebrew and apply it to Arabic because I only knew a little bit of Arabic. I didn't know enough to really to have a conversation or whatever. So I would try to use my very simple Arabic and insert Hebrew words into it. And I knew the difference in phonology, so I would kind of shift in Arab buys my pronunciation of the Hebrew words. And I was surprised by how often people understood me and the people didn't speak Hebrew.

Speaker 1:          09:04          They weren't seen bruce speakers, but they understood, I guess they could, they could hear the word and think of an equivalent or similar sounding word in Arabic or they could cure the root and maybe that route was used in a different word in there, Arabic dialect or whatever. Uh, so they could figure out what I was saying a lot of the time. And they looked at me strangely. They thought maybe I was a Weirdo or I remember they often asked me if I was from Lebanon, so maybe they thought that my bizarre Arabic pigeon language was Lebanese Arabic. That seemed to be something like that. They kept asking me if I was from Lebanon. Uh, it happened like that in Jordan too. I remember when I was in Jordan the same year, um, that I, I managed to use some Hebrew words in situations where I was surprised that it went across.

Speaker 1:          09:55          So they understood a lot of my Hebrew words when I era buys them. So that's just an example of how the language has crossover and you, you can apply one to the other, but they're generally not mutually comprehensible. You have to make the effort to shift it to change that knowledge into the other language. So that's why there are two different languages, not dialects of the same language. All right. So that's, that's what I wanted to share with you. Just my experience with how similar they are, give you some similarities, differences, and hope you understand a little bit better than before. All right. Thank you for listening. Good Nights.