Amos Oz Quotes About English Language
-
I work in Hebrew. Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages. Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English. The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages. Every language has influences and is an influence.
→ -
The revival of Hebrew, as a spoken language, is a fascinating story, which I'm afraid I cannot squeeze into a few sentences. But, let me give you a clue. Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions. This is not to say that every one of us Israeli writers is a William Shakespeare, but there is a certain similarity to Elizabethan English.
→ -
The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.
→ -
Think about Elizabethan English, where the entire English language behaved pretty much like molten lava, like a volcano in mid-eruption. Modern Hebrew has some things in common with Elizabethan English. It is being reshaped and it's expanding very rapidly in various directions.
→
Related Authors
-
Philip Roth Novelist -
Natalie Portman Actress -
Orhan Pamuk Novelist -
Etgar Keret Writer -
Heinrich Heine Poet -
Hayim Nahman Bialik Poet -
A. B. Yehoshua Novelist -
Franz Kafka Writer -
Alessandro Baricco Writer -
Yehuda Amichai Poet -
Shmuel Yosef Agnon Writer -
Meir Shalev Writer -
Nicole Krauss Author -
Aharon Appelfeld Novelist -
David Ben-Gurion Former Prime Minister of Israel -
Tom Segev Historian -
Yitzhak Rabin Former Prime Minister of Israel -
Bruno Schulz Writer -
David Grossman Author -
Amy Tan Film writer