6KILLER
July 15th, 2007, 05:26 PM
Friends of Christian Israel: It has been apparent to me that the modern European languages were and are heavily influenced by the Hebrew language. When I first stated this proposition in a 2003 radio interview with Pastor Dan Johns, I immediately received hate mail from certain linguists, both Judeo-Christian and secular, who claimed that such an idea is outside the realm of possibility, since "everyone knows that Hebrew is NOT an Indo-European language."
On the contrary, I knew that the modern theories of the linguistic departments of academia are divorced from reality. They entertain the highly suspect notion that "language evolves" in a kind of evolutionary progression, irrespective of the people who take their language with them. (This kind of thinking goes along with the false Quackery of Biological Evolution.) Even if this idea is true, it does not refute the MIGRATORY EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE Theory that I proposed at that time.
The very first Tribe to be exiled from Israel was half the Tribe of Manasseh, the half that lived on the east side of the Jordan River. This occured in the year 745 BC. Since I was aware that the Caucasian people are the literal descendants of the Exiled Tribes of Israel, I knew that these people had to have brought their Hebrew language with them -- at least to a partial extent. Virtually all of the Ten Northern Tribes were taken captive by the year 721 BC., thus placing them all in the area then known as Media, IMMEDIATELY SOUTH OF THE CAUCASUS MONTAIN RANGE. All of our modern history books tell us that the origin of the Caucasian people is some unsolvable mystery. "No one knows where they came from," they say, with palms up in the air. I beg to differ.
As these Israelites moved into Europe and merged with the existing Celtic people, they were referred to by several names, one of them being "Ishaak," often shortened to "Sak" or "Saka." This fulfilled the prohecy that Israel would be known by another name, that of Isaac, our forefather. (Gen. 21:12.) As these Anglo-Saxon Israelites moved into the territory occupied by the Celts, their respective languages had to have merged together. Being aware of such archeological facgts as Hebrew inscriptions on Caucasian burial mounds and monuments, plus the main pass through the Caucasus Mountains being known as "the Pass of Israel," I knew that the modern linguistic theory was hogwash...sheer speculation by paid speculators.
Now, I have unearthed a document which verifies my thesis, showing how the Hebrew language influenced the German language as the Anglo-Saxon Israelites merged with the Celtic Israelites, who had been in Europe for a thousand years before the Anglo-Saxon wave.
Please share this with every Anglo-Saxon you know!!!
Enjoy!!!
Pastor Eli James
Here is the link to article reproduced below:
http://www.originofnations.org/lds%20and%20lost%20tribes/tracing_the_dispersion_by%20Blodgett.htm
http://www.originofnations.org/images/brown.gif
Tracing the Dispersion
By Terry M. Blodgett (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00000.htm)
http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates$fn=default.htm (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates$fn=default.htm)
New linguistic studies help tell us about the scattering of Israel.
Terry M. Blodgett, “Tracing the Dispersion,” Ensign, Feb. 1994, 64
What befell the tribes of Israel’s northern kingdom many centuries ago? That question has been asked by students of the scriptures for generations. Like any important historical topic, it is one that deserves careful and thoughtful study.
Reconstructing ancient history, even religious history, can be compared to putting together a large, complex puzzle with many of the pieces missing. One must locate and assemble as many pieces as possible, then form as accurate a picture of the past as the facts allow. In tracing Israel’s dispersion, therefore, many pieces may be considered: artifacts, vestiges of ancient customs, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and scriptural and historical accounts. This article explores only one such piece—that of linguistic evidence. 1 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00001.htm)
Every Language Evolves
Language is a dynamic cultural phenomenon. It changes and grows. In our day, modern technology, the sciences, and the media have accelerated the acquisition of new words but, at the same time, have standardized spelling and pronunciation. In the past, languages acquired new words more slowly, but they were more likely to experience spelling and pronunciation changes. Some of these changes took only decades; others took centuries.
One of the major sources of language change occurs when two groups of people, each speaking a different language, come in contact with one another. Each language influences the other, becoming a catalyst for change and eventually settling into patterns characteristic of the languages prompting the changes. These patterns serve as clues to help a linguist determine what the language was like before the changes took place and which languages caused the changes.
The basic conclusion of linguistic study into this subject is that as large groups of ancient Israelites left their homeland—first, following the Assyrian captivity of northern Israel (about 700 B.C.) and the Babylonian captivity of Judah in the south (about 600 B.C.), and second, following the Roman conquest of Palestine (about A.D. 70)—their language influenced the languages of some of the countries to which they migrated. This linguistic evidence can help us determine where some of these Israelites went and approximately when. Although ancient Israelites were eventually scattered throughout the entire world (see Amos 9:9 (http://scriptures.lds.org/amos/9/9#9)), at least one general geographical area contains significant linguistic evidence to suggest that Israelite migrations did in fact occur there. That area is Europe.
Linguistic Evidence in Europe
From the Old Testament and other historical sources such as the annals of the Assyrian kings, we learn that the northern kingdom, after years of war and deportation, fell to Assyrian invaders in 721 B.C. Jeremiah emphasized the north countries as being these Israelites’ eventual destination (see Jer. 3:12-18 (http://scriptures.lds.org/jer/3/12-18#12); Jer. 16:14-16 (http://scriptures.lds.org/jer/16/14-16#14); Jer. 23:7-8 (http://scriptures.lds.org/jer/23/7-8#7)) and implied a western route (see Jer. 18:17 (http://scriptures.lds.org/jer/18/17#17); Hosea 12:1 (http://scriptures.lds.org/hosea/12/1#1)). Thus, a natural place to look for what befell those remnants is to study the countries north and west of the Middle East.
It is of interest, therefore, to learn that in Europe, the centuries following 700 B.C. were marked by tremendous outside influence, and language was profoundly affected. During the period between 700 and 400 B.C., numerous languages in Europe underwent major pronunciation changes and absorbed new vocabulary. 2 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00002.htm) This was particularly true of the Celtic languages, which were originally spoken throughout Europe (700-300 B.C.) but gradually became more concentrated in western Europe and Britain, and of the Germanic languages, which were spoken in central and northern Europe and Scandinavia and eventually in England. The gradual evolving of the sounds that make up words in a language, particularly when two languages merge, is known by linguists as a sound shift. The well-known pronunciation changes of the period of time between 700 and 400 B.C. have been called the Germanic Sound Shift, because they were the most pronounced and systematic in the Germanic languages, which include English, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. 3 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00003.htm) Also during this same time period, the total vocabulary in the Germanic languages increased by as much as one-third. 4 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00004.htm)
Linguists have long pondered what caused this sound shift and the increase in vocabulary. 5 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00005.htm) One theory is that the technologically advanced peoples who introduced iron to Europe (seventh century B.C. in Austria; sixth century B.C. in Sweden) also influenced the language changes. Linguistic research supports this idea, as well as the idea that these advanced peoples came from the Middle East, where iron was in use. The research shows that the changes in language resulted from an influx of Hebrew-speaking people into Europe, particularly into the Germanic- and Celtic-speaking areas.
The Germanic Sound Shift
Most of the languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European family of languages; that is, they are part of the linguistically linked group of languages spoken in Europe and spreading as far east as Iran and India. For many years, the peculiarities in the Germanic languages kept linguists from recognizing that the Germanic languages belonged to the Indo-European group. However, early in the nineteenth century, two linguists—Rasmus Rask from Denmark (1818) and Jakob Grimm from Germany (1819-22)—showed that the Germanic languages were indeed part of the Indo-European family but that their differences in pronunciation were caused by a systematic shift in the sound of two groups of consonants—[p, t, k] and . 6 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00006.htm)
At the time of the sound shift, the pronunciation of these six consonants was changed to [ph, th, kh] and [bh, dh, gh], respectively. These new sounds were usually represented in writing by the letters f, th, h (x or ch) and b (v), d (th), g (gh). For example, by applying the rules of the sound shift to the Indo-European te puk—replacing the t, p, and k with th, f, and x—we recognize the English words the fox. Now the relationship between the Indo-European word pater and the English word father becomes more recognizable.
Linguists generally agree that these changes began taking place sometime after 700 B.C., and that the influence causing the sound shift continued to affect the Germanic dialects for several centuries, at least until 400 B.C. and possibly as late as the Christian Era. 7 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00007.htm)
Unfortunately, scholars have not been able to agree upon what caused these changes or where the original homeland of the peoples may have been. Scholars have traced them to the Black Sea area, and to the Caucasus Mountains, but research did not trace them beyond there, because the scholars did not know whether that had been the people’s first homeland or they had come from the east or south of that point. My research took me to the Middle East, and it was there that I found a likely cause for the sound shift—the Hebrew language.
The first thing I noticed was that Hebrew shifted the same six consonants that were shifted in Germanic—[p, t, k] and [b, d, g]. In ancient Hebrew, these consonants carried a dual pronunciation. Often, they did not shift, but when they began a syllable that was preceded by a long vowel, or ended a syllable, then [p, t, k] and [b, d, g] shifted to the sounds [ph, th, kh] and [bh, dh, gh]. Thus, the Hebrew word for “Spain,” separad, was pronounced sepharadh, and the word for “sign,” spelled ‘ot, was pronounced ‘oth.
[B]In 700 B.C., this sound shift was still functional in Hebrew and would have been part of any impact that migrating Israelites would have had on other languages. The fact that the same consonants were involved in similar sound shifts in both Hebrew and Germanic dialects at about the same time is significant. Yet even more significant is that the sounds [ph, th, kh] and [bh, dh, gh], so prevalent in Hebrew, did not exist in Germanic before the sound shift occurred. 8 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00008.htm)
A Comparison of Hebrew and Germanic
The case for a Hebrew influence on Germanic is further strengthened by a close comparison of the two languages, and particularly of the changes that developed in Germanic following the Assyrian captivity of Israel. The changes fall generally into three categories: pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.
1. Pronunciation. In addition to the similar sound shifts just described, there were other sounds common to both Hebrew and Germanic that did not generally appear in the Indo-European languages. For example, when Hebrew and Germanic consonants appeared between vowels, they normally doubled if the preceding vowel was short. This doubling of consonants, referred to as gemination, became a characteristic feature of Germanic but not of other Indo-European languages. In this way, Indo-European media became Old English middel and modern English middle.
Almost half of the Hebrew verb conjugations required doubling the consonant and substituting a shortened vowel preceding the consonant. Compare Hebrew shabar (“to break”) and the related Hebrew form shibber (“to shatter”). Likewise, almost half of the Germanic verbs doubled the middle consonant and substituted a shortened preceding vowel: Indo-European sad- and bad- became settan (“set”) and biddan (“bid”) in Old English. 9 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00009.htm)
2. Grammar.At the time of the Germanic Sound Shift, the Germanic dialects experienced a sharp reduction in their number of grammatical cases, making Germanic more like Hebrew. As in English, the case (or form) of a noun, pronoun, or adjective in a Germanic language indicated its grammatical relation to other words in a sentence. At the time of the Germanic Sound Shift, the Germanic dialects immediately reduced the number of possible cases for a word from eight to four (as in modern German) and eventually to three (as in English, Spanish, and French). These were the same three cases (with possible remnants of a fourth) that Hebrew used before the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities—nominative case (indicating a word is the subject of a sentence), accusative case (indicating a word is the object of a verb or preposition), and genitive case (used to indicate a word in the possessive form). 10 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00010.htm)
Indo-European had six verb tenses. Hebrew, on the other hand, contained only two tenses (or aspects), dealing with actions either completed or not completed. Germanic, likewise, reduced its number of tenses to two—past and present. The other tenses in modern Germanic languages have developed out of combinations of these two original tenses.
Verb forms in the two language groups also contain similarities. The Hebrew verb kom, kam, kum, yikom (“to arise, come forth”), for example, compares favorably with modern English come and came, Old English cuman, and German kommen, kam, gekommen (“to come forth, arrive, arise”). 11 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00011.htm)
3. Vocabulary. Perhaps the most convincing similarity between Hebrew and Germanic lies in their shared vocabularies. Linguists recognize that about one-third of all Germanic vocabulary is not Indo-European in origin. 12 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00012.htm) These words can be traced back to the Proto-Germanic period of 700-100 B.C., but not beyond. Significantly, these are the words that compare favorably in both form and meaning with Hebrew vocabulary. Once a formula was developed for comparing Germanic and Hebrew vocabulary, the number of similar words identifiable in both languages quickly reached into the thousands.
According to this formula, words brought into Germanic after 700 B.C. had a tendency to modify their spelling in three ways:
First, in most Germanic dialects, the words changed in spelling according to the sound shift. Hebrew, on the other hand, changed only in pronunciation; spelling remained the same. For example, Hebrew parah (“to bear oneself along swiftly, travel”) remained parah when written, but was pronounced [fara] if it was preceded by a closely associated long vowel. With that in mind, it is easy to recognize the same word in Old Norse and Old Frisian (a dialect in the Netherlands): fara (“to travel, move swiftly”).
Second, the vowels in the initial syllables were frequently dropped in written Germanic forms because Hebrew words usually carried the accent on the last syllable. Compare Hebrew daraq and English drag. Occasionally, if the initial consonant was weak, the entire syllable dropped out, as in Hebrew walad (“male offspring, son”) and English lad, and in Hebrew nafal (“to fall”) and English fall.
Third, Hebrew used a tonal accent (a vocal emphasis featuring a tone or sound in part of a word) rather than a stress accent (a vocal emphasis featuring increased volume in speaking part of a word), but this changed to a stress accent in the Germanic dialects. However, the effects of the Hebrew tonal accent are evident in Germanic. The Hebrew tone, which usually appeared in the final syllable, was often represented in written Germanic by one of four tonal letters—l, m, n, or r. Compare Hebrew satat (“to place, found, base, begin”) with English start (r represents the Hebrew tone), and Hebrew parak (“to be free, to liberate”) with English frank (“free; free speech”—in which p was shifted to f, the unaccented a was deleted, and n was added for the Hebrew tone).
New Germanic Words from Hebrew Word Roots
Biblical Hebrew contained relatively few root words—originally only a few hundred—but from these roots, words were formed in great variety. Most of these formations were made by exchanging vowels, adding prefixes or suffixes, and doubling consonants according to certain rules. Literally thousands of words similar to these roots, and to the multiple forms that developed out of these roots, appeared in Germanic dialects between 700 and 400 B.C. One example is the Hebrew word dun or don. The root is dwn and is related to the root ‘adan (“to rule, to judge, to descend, to be low, area ruled or judged, area of domain”). The proper name Dan (“judge”) is related to this root. Out of this root also developed the Hebrew word ‘adon (“Lord, Master”). These words remind us of the Anglo-Saxon word adun, out of which the English word down (the noun form means “hill, upland”) developed and the area ruled was don, or its modern counterpart town. It is also interesting to note that the Hebrew word ‘adon (“Lord”) and its root ‘adan (“to rule, judge”) compare well with Odin and Wodan, two names from different dialects for the highest Germanic god.
The High German Sound Shift
The influence of Hebrew on the Germanic languages does not end with the Germanic Sound Shift of 700-400 B.C. About a thousand years after the first sound shift, the Germanic dialects in northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and southern Germany began a second phonetic change involving the same six consonants. Beginning in the south about A.D. 450, this second sound shift, referred to as the High German Sound Shift (since it originated in the highlands of the Alps), spread northward into Switzerland and Austria. By A.D. 750, it had spread to the dialects of southern Germany. This High German dialect continued to grow in popularity (in the sixteenth century Martin Luther used it in his translation of the Bible) until it eventually became the standard form of German.
The major difference between the Germanic Sound Shift of 700-400 B.C. and the High German Sound Shift of A.D. 450-750 13 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00013.htm) was that [t], which shifted to [th] in the first sound shift, shifted consistently to [s] in the second one. This caused the word water, for example, to be pronounced wasser, and white to be pronounced weiss. This shift of [t] to [s] is an important clue to the source of influence for this second sound shift in southern Germanic territory. It leads us, once again, to the Middle East—but this time to the Aramaic language.
On the contrary, I knew that the modern theories of the linguistic departments of academia are divorced from reality. They entertain the highly suspect notion that "language evolves" in a kind of evolutionary progression, irrespective of the people who take their language with them. (This kind of thinking goes along with the false Quackery of Biological Evolution.) Even if this idea is true, it does not refute the MIGRATORY EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE Theory that I proposed at that time.
The very first Tribe to be exiled from Israel was half the Tribe of Manasseh, the half that lived on the east side of the Jordan River. This occured in the year 745 BC. Since I was aware that the Caucasian people are the literal descendants of the Exiled Tribes of Israel, I knew that these people had to have brought their Hebrew language with them -- at least to a partial extent. Virtually all of the Ten Northern Tribes were taken captive by the year 721 BC., thus placing them all in the area then known as Media, IMMEDIATELY SOUTH OF THE CAUCASUS MONTAIN RANGE. All of our modern history books tell us that the origin of the Caucasian people is some unsolvable mystery. "No one knows where they came from," they say, with palms up in the air. I beg to differ.
As these Israelites moved into Europe and merged with the existing Celtic people, they were referred to by several names, one of them being "Ishaak," often shortened to "Sak" or "Saka." This fulfilled the prohecy that Israel would be known by another name, that of Isaac, our forefather. (Gen. 21:12.) As these Anglo-Saxon Israelites moved into the territory occupied by the Celts, their respective languages had to have merged together. Being aware of such archeological facgts as Hebrew inscriptions on Caucasian burial mounds and monuments, plus the main pass through the Caucasus Mountains being known as "the Pass of Israel," I knew that the modern linguistic theory was hogwash...sheer speculation by paid speculators.
Now, I have unearthed a document which verifies my thesis, showing how the Hebrew language influenced the German language as the Anglo-Saxon Israelites merged with the Celtic Israelites, who had been in Europe for a thousand years before the Anglo-Saxon wave.
Please share this with every Anglo-Saxon you know!!!
Enjoy!!!
Pastor Eli James
Here is the link to article reproduced below:
http://www.originofnations.org/lds%20and%20lost%20tribes/tracing_the_dispersion_by%20Blodgett.htm
http://www.originofnations.org/images/brown.gif
Tracing the Dispersion
By Terry M. Blodgett (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00000.htm)
http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates$fn=default.htm (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll?f=templates$fn=default.htm)
New linguistic studies help tell us about the scattering of Israel.
Terry M. Blodgett, “Tracing the Dispersion,” Ensign, Feb. 1994, 64
What befell the tribes of Israel’s northern kingdom many centuries ago? That question has been asked by students of the scriptures for generations. Like any important historical topic, it is one that deserves careful and thoughtful study.
Reconstructing ancient history, even religious history, can be compared to putting together a large, complex puzzle with many of the pieces missing. One must locate and assemble as many pieces as possible, then form as accurate a picture of the past as the facts allow. In tracing Israel’s dispersion, therefore, many pieces may be considered: artifacts, vestiges of ancient customs, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and scriptural and historical accounts. This article explores only one such piece—that of linguistic evidence. 1 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00001.htm)
Every Language Evolves
Language is a dynamic cultural phenomenon. It changes and grows. In our day, modern technology, the sciences, and the media have accelerated the acquisition of new words but, at the same time, have standardized spelling and pronunciation. In the past, languages acquired new words more slowly, but they were more likely to experience spelling and pronunciation changes. Some of these changes took only decades; others took centuries.
One of the major sources of language change occurs when two groups of people, each speaking a different language, come in contact with one another. Each language influences the other, becoming a catalyst for change and eventually settling into patterns characteristic of the languages prompting the changes. These patterns serve as clues to help a linguist determine what the language was like before the changes took place and which languages caused the changes.
The basic conclusion of linguistic study into this subject is that as large groups of ancient Israelites left their homeland—first, following the Assyrian captivity of northern Israel (about 700 B.C.) and the Babylonian captivity of Judah in the south (about 600 B.C.), and second, following the Roman conquest of Palestine (about A.D. 70)—their language influenced the languages of some of the countries to which they migrated. This linguistic evidence can help us determine where some of these Israelites went and approximately when. Although ancient Israelites were eventually scattered throughout the entire world (see Amos 9:9 (http://scriptures.lds.org/amos/9/9#9)), at least one general geographical area contains significant linguistic evidence to suggest that Israelite migrations did in fact occur there. That area is Europe.
Linguistic Evidence in Europe
From the Old Testament and other historical sources such as the annals of the Assyrian kings, we learn that the northern kingdom, after years of war and deportation, fell to Assyrian invaders in 721 B.C. Jeremiah emphasized the north countries as being these Israelites’ eventual destination (see Jer. 3:12-18 (http://scriptures.lds.org/jer/3/12-18#12); Jer. 16:14-16 (http://scriptures.lds.org/jer/16/14-16#14); Jer. 23:7-8 (http://scriptures.lds.org/jer/23/7-8#7)) and implied a western route (see Jer. 18:17 (http://scriptures.lds.org/jer/18/17#17); Hosea 12:1 (http://scriptures.lds.org/hosea/12/1#1)). Thus, a natural place to look for what befell those remnants is to study the countries north and west of the Middle East.
It is of interest, therefore, to learn that in Europe, the centuries following 700 B.C. were marked by tremendous outside influence, and language was profoundly affected. During the period between 700 and 400 B.C., numerous languages in Europe underwent major pronunciation changes and absorbed new vocabulary. 2 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00002.htm) This was particularly true of the Celtic languages, which were originally spoken throughout Europe (700-300 B.C.) but gradually became more concentrated in western Europe and Britain, and of the Germanic languages, which were spoken in central and northern Europe and Scandinavia and eventually in England. The gradual evolving of the sounds that make up words in a language, particularly when two languages merge, is known by linguists as a sound shift. The well-known pronunciation changes of the period of time between 700 and 400 B.C. have been called the Germanic Sound Shift, because they were the most pronounced and systematic in the Germanic languages, which include English, Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. 3 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00003.htm) Also during this same time period, the total vocabulary in the Germanic languages increased by as much as one-third. 4 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00004.htm)
Linguists have long pondered what caused this sound shift and the increase in vocabulary. 5 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00005.htm) One theory is that the technologically advanced peoples who introduced iron to Europe (seventh century B.C. in Austria; sixth century B.C. in Sweden) also influenced the language changes. Linguistic research supports this idea, as well as the idea that these advanced peoples came from the Middle East, where iron was in use. The research shows that the changes in language resulted from an influx of Hebrew-speaking people into Europe, particularly into the Germanic- and Celtic-speaking areas.
The Germanic Sound Shift
Most of the languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European family of languages; that is, they are part of the linguistically linked group of languages spoken in Europe and spreading as far east as Iran and India. For many years, the peculiarities in the Germanic languages kept linguists from recognizing that the Germanic languages belonged to the Indo-European group. However, early in the nineteenth century, two linguists—Rasmus Rask from Denmark (1818) and Jakob Grimm from Germany (1819-22)—showed that the Germanic languages were indeed part of the Indo-European family but that their differences in pronunciation were caused by a systematic shift in the sound of two groups of consonants—[p, t, k] and . 6 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00006.htm)
At the time of the sound shift, the pronunciation of these six consonants was changed to [ph, th, kh] and [bh, dh, gh], respectively. These new sounds were usually represented in writing by the letters f, th, h (x or ch) and b (v), d (th), g (gh). For example, by applying the rules of the sound shift to the Indo-European te puk—replacing the t, p, and k with th, f, and x—we recognize the English words the fox. Now the relationship between the Indo-European word pater and the English word father becomes more recognizable.
Linguists generally agree that these changes began taking place sometime after 700 B.C., and that the influence causing the sound shift continued to affect the Germanic dialects for several centuries, at least until 400 B.C. and possibly as late as the Christian Era. 7 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00007.htm)
Unfortunately, scholars have not been able to agree upon what caused these changes or where the original homeland of the peoples may have been. Scholars have traced them to the Black Sea area, and to the Caucasus Mountains, but research did not trace them beyond there, because the scholars did not know whether that had been the people’s first homeland or they had come from the east or south of that point. My research took me to the Middle East, and it was there that I found a likely cause for the sound shift—the Hebrew language.
The first thing I noticed was that Hebrew shifted the same six consonants that were shifted in Germanic—[p, t, k] and [b, d, g]. In ancient Hebrew, these consonants carried a dual pronunciation. Often, they did not shift, but when they began a syllable that was preceded by a long vowel, or ended a syllable, then [p, t, k] and [b, d, g] shifted to the sounds [ph, th, kh] and [bh, dh, gh]. Thus, the Hebrew word for “Spain,” separad, was pronounced sepharadh, and the word for “sign,” spelled ‘ot, was pronounced ‘oth.
[B]In 700 B.C., this sound shift was still functional in Hebrew and would have been part of any impact that migrating Israelites would have had on other languages. The fact that the same consonants were involved in similar sound shifts in both Hebrew and Germanic dialects at about the same time is significant. Yet even more significant is that the sounds [ph, th, kh] and [bh, dh, gh], so prevalent in Hebrew, did not exist in Germanic before the sound shift occurred. 8 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00008.htm)
A Comparison of Hebrew and Germanic
The case for a Hebrew influence on Germanic is further strengthened by a close comparison of the two languages, and particularly of the changes that developed in Germanic following the Assyrian captivity of Israel. The changes fall generally into three categories: pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.
1. Pronunciation. In addition to the similar sound shifts just described, there were other sounds common to both Hebrew and Germanic that did not generally appear in the Indo-European languages. For example, when Hebrew and Germanic consonants appeared between vowels, they normally doubled if the preceding vowel was short. This doubling of consonants, referred to as gemination, became a characteristic feature of Germanic but not of other Indo-European languages. In this way, Indo-European media became Old English middel and modern English middle.
Almost half of the Hebrew verb conjugations required doubling the consonant and substituting a shortened vowel preceding the consonant. Compare Hebrew shabar (“to break”) and the related Hebrew form shibber (“to shatter”). Likewise, almost half of the Germanic verbs doubled the middle consonant and substituted a shortened preceding vowel: Indo-European sad- and bad- became settan (“set”) and biddan (“bid”) in Old English. 9 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00009.htm)
2. Grammar.At the time of the Germanic Sound Shift, the Germanic dialects experienced a sharp reduction in their number of grammatical cases, making Germanic more like Hebrew. As in English, the case (or form) of a noun, pronoun, or adjective in a Germanic language indicated its grammatical relation to other words in a sentence. At the time of the Germanic Sound Shift, the Germanic dialects immediately reduced the number of possible cases for a word from eight to four (as in modern German) and eventually to three (as in English, Spanish, and French). These were the same three cases (with possible remnants of a fourth) that Hebrew used before the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities—nominative case (indicating a word is the subject of a sentence), accusative case (indicating a word is the object of a verb or preposition), and genitive case (used to indicate a word in the possessive form). 10 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00010.htm)
Indo-European had six verb tenses. Hebrew, on the other hand, contained only two tenses (or aspects), dealing with actions either completed or not completed. Germanic, likewise, reduced its number of tenses to two—past and present. The other tenses in modern Germanic languages have developed out of combinations of these two original tenses.
Verb forms in the two language groups also contain similarities. The Hebrew verb kom, kam, kum, yikom (“to arise, come forth”), for example, compares favorably with modern English come and came, Old English cuman, and German kommen, kam, gekommen (“to come forth, arrive, arise”). 11 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00011.htm)
3. Vocabulary. Perhaps the most convincing similarity between Hebrew and Germanic lies in their shared vocabularies. Linguists recognize that about one-third of all Germanic vocabulary is not Indo-European in origin. 12 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00012.htm) These words can be traced back to the Proto-Germanic period of 700-100 B.C., but not beyond. Significantly, these are the words that compare favorably in both form and meaning with Hebrew vocabulary. Once a formula was developed for comparing Germanic and Hebrew vocabulary, the number of similar words identifiable in both languages quickly reached into the thousands.
According to this formula, words brought into Germanic after 700 B.C. had a tendency to modify their spelling in three ways:
First, in most Germanic dialects, the words changed in spelling according to the sound shift. Hebrew, on the other hand, changed only in pronunciation; spelling remained the same. For example, Hebrew parah (“to bear oneself along swiftly, travel”) remained parah when written, but was pronounced [fara] if it was preceded by a closely associated long vowel. With that in mind, it is easy to recognize the same word in Old Norse and Old Frisian (a dialect in the Netherlands): fara (“to travel, move swiftly”).
Second, the vowels in the initial syllables were frequently dropped in written Germanic forms because Hebrew words usually carried the accent on the last syllable. Compare Hebrew daraq and English drag. Occasionally, if the initial consonant was weak, the entire syllable dropped out, as in Hebrew walad (“male offspring, son”) and English lad, and in Hebrew nafal (“to fall”) and English fall.
Third, Hebrew used a tonal accent (a vocal emphasis featuring a tone or sound in part of a word) rather than a stress accent (a vocal emphasis featuring increased volume in speaking part of a word), but this changed to a stress accent in the Germanic dialects. However, the effects of the Hebrew tonal accent are evident in Germanic. The Hebrew tone, which usually appeared in the final syllable, was often represented in written Germanic by one of four tonal letters—l, m, n, or r. Compare Hebrew satat (“to place, found, base, begin”) with English start (r represents the Hebrew tone), and Hebrew parak (“to be free, to liberate”) with English frank (“free; free speech”—in which p was shifted to f, the unaccented a was deleted, and n was added for the Hebrew tone).
New Germanic Words from Hebrew Word Roots
Biblical Hebrew contained relatively few root words—originally only a few hundred—but from these roots, words were formed in great variety. Most of these formations were made by exchanging vowels, adding prefixes or suffixes, and doubling consonants according to certain rules. Literally thousands of words similar to these roots, and to the multiple forms that developed out of these roots, appeared in Germanic dialects between 700 and 400 B.C. One example is the Hebrew word dun or don. The root is dwn and is related to the root ‘adan (“to rule, to judge, to descend, to be low, area ruled or judged, area of domain”). The proper name Dan (“judge”) is related to this root. Out of this root also developed the Hebrew word ‘adon (“Lord, Master”). These words remind us of the Anglo-Saxon word adun, out of which the English word down (the noun form means “hill, upland”) developed and the area ruled was don, or its modern counterpart town. It is also interesting to note that the Hebrew word ‘adon (“Lord”) and its root ‘adan (“to rule, judge”) compare well with Odin and Wodan, two names from different dialects for the highest Germanic god.
The High German Sound Shift
The influence of Hebrew on the Germanic languages does not end with the Germanic Sound Shift of 700-400 B.C. About a thousand years after the first sound shift, the Germanic dialects in northern Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and southern Germany began a second phonetic change involving the same six consonants. Beginning in the south about A.D. 450, this second sound shift, referred to as the High German Sound Shift (since it originated in the highlands of the Alps), spread northward into Switzerland and Austria. By A.D. 750, it had spread to the dialects of southern Germany. This High German dialect continued to grow in popularity (in the sixteenth century Martin Luther used it in his translation of the Bible) until it eventually became the standard form of German.
The major difference between the Germanic Sound Shift of 700-400 B.C. and the High German Sound Shift of A.D. 450-750 13 (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1994.htm/ensign%20february%201994.htm/Tracing%20the%20Dispersion.htm/pop00013.htm) was that [t], which shifted to [th] in the first sound shift, shifted consistently to [s] in the second one. This caused the word water, for example, to be pronounced wasser, and white to be pronounced weiss. This shift of [t] to [s] is an important clue to the source of influence for this second sound shift in southern Germanic territory. It leads us, once again, to the Middle East—but this time to the Aramaic language.