October 13 - Anniversary of the First Known Conversation in Modern Hebrew

Posted October 13, 2020

The first known conversation in a language???

How is it possible to know the date of the first conversation in a particular language? Aren't languages ancient, and don't they develop slowly over generations? 

Well, modern Hebrew is the only example of a language that was deliberately revived as an everyday language - going from zero native speakers to several million native speaker within a single generation.

You see, Hebrew, like other languages, developed long ago, slowly evolving from the tenth century BCE to around 70 CE. At that point, the Roman army captured the city of Jerusalem and destroyed most of the city, and its Temple. Many Jews fled their homeland and scattered over Europe and Asia. 

Living all over, Jewish people began to speak the languages of their new homes - Arabic, Russian, German, whatever - for everyday concerns. But
Hebrew was still very much alive as a religious language. Rabbis and scholars and practicing Jews used Hebrew for verses of the Torah, the teachings of the Talmud, and for prayers.

That means that for centuries, Hebrew was only a holy language, or liturgical language. Nobody spoke it as their first language. It's like Latin - nobody speaks Latin as their native tongue, but it is used in some Roman Catholic masses.

Starting in 1880, two separate things began to happen:

(1) Jews began to return to Palestine, but they didn't share an everyday language with other newly- arriving Jews, nor with the Jews who had basically stayed put (who mostly spoke Arabic). Since they DID share the holy language of Hebrew, they began the process of reviving it as a natural language that could be used to talk about everyday (non-religious) topics. 

(2) Some Jewish writers living in Europe thought that Hebrew deserved fine literature and began to translate works such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - and of course began to write original works in Hebrew. 

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is often considered "the reviver of the Hebrew language" because he
invented many new words for things that weren't around during ancient times. This includes New World foods such as tomato and maize, plus scientific terms such as electricity.

It was Ben-Yehuda and some of his friends who had that "first known conversation" in modern Hebrew on October 13, 1881. 

Also on this date:

U.S. Navy's birthday 

X-Files Day

Musician Paul Simon's birthday

National Chess Day

Anniversary of the discovery of Whirlpool Galaxy

English Language Day

Rwagasore Day in Burundi

Silly Sayings Day

International Day for Failure

 Ada Lovelace Day in the U.K.

 (Second Tuesday in October)

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• October holidays
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• Historical anniversaries in November