Great Leaders: Are They Made or Born? Essay

Skills such as communications skills, strategic and leadership skills are often questioned whether they are learned or naturally born within a person. These debates are caused by the bipolar opposition of an individual’s growth as influenced by nurture and nature. Human behaviors are studied by psychologists and sociologists to explain the phenomena whether those behaviors are innate or learned and acquired. One of those phenomena is a person’s success in terms of leadership abilities. Leadership skills are enhanced and developed through performance, actions and experiences; thus, triumphant and great leaders are made, not born. Leadership is defined as â€Å"working with and through others to achieve objectives† (qtd. Goldsmith). It means that any person who is in a position and whose success and achievement entails the support of others, can play the role of a leader (Goldsmith). Leaders make possibilities (Avolio 3), so the belief of most psychologists then that leadership qualities are innate are now being debated because of several researches that show the other possibility: leadership skills can be mastered and developed (Avolio). It is not enough to believe in the â€Å"Great Man† theories, which assume that the ability for leadership is inherent and inborn–that great leaders are born, not made. The theories most of the time illustrate leaders as heroic, mythic and fated to ascend to leadership when needed (Wagner). However, it is important to note that it is misjudged and underestimated if people fail to gather and learn from life and personal experiences, which are said to have an impact on developing leadership skills (Avolio 3). Great leaders emerge in a number of forms; however, there are particular characteristics that are common to the quality of leadership–a process of influencing members of the organization to commit and to work hard towards achieving the organization’s goals. Leaders can either be task-oriented–leaders who are interested most in directing behavior, training, performance and winning–or person-oriented, leaders who are enthused more on the interpersonal relationship of the organization (Sugarman 1). On the other hand, in order for a person to be addressed as a â€Å"great† leader, he or she must be both task-and-people-oriented so that every aspect of the organization will be given focus. The quote â€Å"great leaders are people persons† (Banescu), implies that a great leader is someone who likes to be with people, listens to them, relates to them, knows how to communicate well, and speaks their language and does not talk down to them. Moreover, great leaders are knowledgeable and efficient administrators. It means that the leader comprehends the works that are being done in all the areas of the organization: how the areas and the people collaborate. The leader possesses a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the people he or she administers. He or she devotes resources and time to correct the weaknesses and reinforce the strengths (Banescu). It is also essential to take into consideration that a leader needs to have the qualities that the organization is incorporating. For instance, if a leader desires his or her members to be confident and be disciplined, it is essential that he or she must first possess those traits. In order for a person to be called as a leader, he or she needs to lead by example. A leader serves as an influential model for all his or her members, so everything he or she does will be watched and looked at (Sugarman 1). Basically, the skills of a great leader revolve on his or her capacity to manage and lead the members of his or her organization, as well as to fulfill and do his or her own tasks while making sure that the organization functions well in achieving its goals and objectives. Great leaders’ qualities and abilities center on action rather than position. Leaders are in the position to supervise the organization and its members and to make sure that every aspect performs well. Leadership is not primarily about exercising one’s power and extending his or her dominion by abusing his or her authority and manipulating the members of the group. Thus, a leader guides the members of the organization, not rules them. He or she draws a course, bestows direction and enhances and develops the social and psychological milieu (qtd. Sugarman 2). Given the aforementioned premises, then, how great leaders are made? Being a leader especially a triumphant and great one is a matter of choice, a matter of priority and a matter of challenge. Of course, every individual desires to become a leader and sees him or herself as a catalyst of change. However, albeit the dreams and visions of becoming one, only those who follow their heart and who make the move have evolved to become leaders. Nevertheless, becoming a great leader is more challenging than just turning into an ordinary and usual leader. â€Å"Great† is a very powerful and strong adjective that describes the whole capacity and leadership abilities of a person. It is how a person makes use of his or her leadership capabilities as well as how he or she maximizes his or her strengths and potentials in order to manage and lead the organization properly. It is also about utilizing his or her leadership skills in order to create and discover new strategies and techniques. As what the old saying goes, â€Å"A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trial;† this statement is very much suitable with regards to the explanation of making great leaders. It means that a person needs to learn from his or her personal experiences in accord to his or her leadership potentials. The acquired knowledge and experiences will definitely be of great help to an individual’s leadership development. So in order to become a great leader, a leader must first be beaten with a lot of trials and challenges during the process. Great leaders: are they made or born? That question has been commonly asked and has been studied for several decades. Psychologists then insist that great leaders are born because leadership skills are acquired from one’s ancestors. The leader’s abilities are intact on their genes. However, that notion with leadership is said to be dangerous because it promotes self-delusion and irresponsibility. It crafts an escape on one’s responsibility for taking action or for learning how to take action when he or she has seen the need of the organization or the community (Heifetz 20). On the other hand, current researches show and reveal that great leaders are made, not born. Because even though the person has been born with skills and abilities, but he or she fails to utilize them and fails to apply it in his or her experiences and leadership struggle, still, his or her innate capacities have no use. But if a person is already born with excellent skills on leadership and chooses to enhance and develop those skills, he or she has the power to transform him or herself into a person that he or she yearns for him or herself to be – a proficient leader. Great leaders are made because of several things that triumphant leaders accomplish. Such things involve getting 390 degrees feedback on his or her present effectiveness, picking the most essential behaviors for change, asking the members of the group for suggestions on how he or she can do a better job, listening to the members’ ideas, and following up and measuring change in efficiency over time (Goldsmith). Given that, an excellent leader provides a serene atmosphere where members can learn and grow. At the same time he or she gives responsibility to the group and fosters independence (Sugarman 2). Great leaders are made because they make use of their skills and abilities and apply what they have learned and what they have experienced in the course of their leadership process and development. They do not just sit on their table and order the members to do their jobs and to accomplish the organization’s goal; hence, triumphant leaders work together with their members. They motivate the group, not manipulate it. Great leaders are made because such leaders are open for crafting possibilities and achieving the unexpected. They make things happen by doing actions and taking responsibilities. They do not just allow a thing to materialize in itself; rather, they do something for it and they strive for it. Leadership is not a just a matter of choice; it is a matter of priority and willingness to act. Works Cited Avolio, Bruce. Leadership Development in Balance: Made or Born. London: Routledge, 2005. Avolio, Bruce. 1999. â€Å"Are Leaders Born or Made. † Psychology Today. 05 March 2009 . Banescu, Chris. 2007. â€Å"Key Characteristics of Great Leaders. † Orthodoxnet. com Blog. 05 March 2009 . Goldsmith, Marshall. 2008. â€Å"Great Leaders Are Made, Not Born. † Harvard Business Publishing. 05 March 2009 . Heifetz, Ronald Abadian. Leadership Without Easy Answers. United States: Harvard University Press, 1994. Sugarman, Karlene. 2008. â€Å"Leadership Characteristics. † Ottewell School. 05 March 2009 . Wagner, Kendra Van. 2009. About. com: Psychology. 05 March 2009 .

Hebrew Ehe Eternal Language

HEBREW: THE ETERNAL LANGUAGE WILLIAM CHOMSKY HEBREW : THE ETERNAL LANGUAGE Varda Books 5761 / 2001 skokie, illinois, usa Copyright  © 2001 by Varda Books Original copyright  © 1957 by THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA All Rights Reserved Second Printing, 1958 New ISBN 1-59045-441-3 Library PDFNo part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage retrieval system, except for brief passages in connection with a critical review, without permission in writing from the publisher: Varda Books, 9001 Keating Avenue, Skokie, Illinois, USA Prepared as an ebook by Varda Graphics, Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. : 57? 8140 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To My Children >Home | TOC | Index PREFACE There has long been need for a book on the origin of the Hebrew language, its struggle for survival in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles, and i ts survival as a spoken vernacular in our own day. I confess to having for many years cherished the hope that it would some day be given me to write this story. At the same time, I shrank from undertaking a task so vast and important, so basic to the Jewish cultural heritage, and involving so many aspects of Jewish life and history.When, therefore, the Zionist Organization of America approached me several years ago with the request that I prepare a pamphlet on the subject, Hebrew, The Story of a Living Language, I allowed myself to be persuaded for the very reason that the discussion would be brief and tentative. Yet some of my friends at once began urging me to expand that pamphlet into a full-sized book, and this is the result. The account is far from exhaustive. It is designed primarily for the intelligent reader rather than for the scholar. In the process of popularization much had to be diluted, omitted or condensed.In many areas the presentation is very sketchy, though, I hope , authentic and accurate. A more comprehensive account will have to await more auspicious circumstances. In the writing of this book I had to resort to various sources of information and to the help of individuals who are expert in certain specific areas, and I herewith wish to pay grateful acknowledgment. I am, of course, primarily indebted to Dr. Solomon Grayzel for his stimulation and encouragement, criticism and advice, in the preparation of this book.My thanks are due to the following individuals for helpful counsel and information: Judah Lapson, Chairman of Hebrew Culture Service Committee for American High Schools and Colleges; A. Leo Oppenheim, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago; Cecil Roth, Oxford vii > Home | TOC | Index viii Preface University, England; E. A. Speiser, Chairman, Department of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania. I also wish to make appreciative acknowledgment of the following publications from which illustrative materials were taken: The He brew Scripts, S. A.Birnbaum; Millon ha-Lashon ha-Ibrit, Eliezer Ben Yehudah; The Field of Yiddish, edited by Uriel Weinreich, Linguistic Circle of New York; Semitic Writing, G. R. Driver, Oxford University Press; A Study of Writing, I. J. Gelb, University of Chicago Press. Recognition is also due to Historische Grammatik der Hebraischen Sprache, Hans Bauer and Pontus Leander, Verlag von Max Niemeyer, which provided a model for the illustration of Branches of the Semitic Languages, on page 22. It is my hope that this volume will stimulate new interest in the Hebrew language among those who know it as well as those who do not.May the story of the ancient tongue prove as fascinating to my readers as it has always been to me. W. C . March 1, 1957 > Home | TOC | Index CONTENTS INTRODUCTION—The Role of Hebrew in Jewish Life, 1 PART I—How the Language Began to Be Spoken CHAPTER 1—Hebrew and the Languages of Mankind, 17 CHAPTER 2—How the Hebrew Language Began, 32 CHAPTER 3—The Early Non-Biblical Sources of Hebrew, 50 PART II—How the Written Language Took Form CHAPTER 4—How the Hebrew Alphabet Originated, 73 CHAPTER 5—How Did the Vowel-System Evolve? 3 CHAPTER 6—How the Study of Hebrew Grammar Began and Developed, 117 CHAPTER 7—How Was the Text of the Hebrew Bible Preserved? 139 PART III—How the Language Was Preserved CHAPTER 8—How Did the Hebrew Language Grow? 157 CHAPTER 9—How the Hebrew Language Has Kept Abreast of Changing Needs, 172 CHAPTER 10—How Hebrew Evolved as a Modern Vernacular, 184 CHAPTER 11—Did Hebrew Ever Die? 206 PART IV—How the Language Meets Modern Needs CHAPTER 12—The Struggle for Revival, 231 CHAPTER 13—Hebrew in America, 245 EPILOGUE—Hebrew for American Jews, 270 Notes and Bibliography, 281 Index, 313 ix gt; Home | TOC | Index > Home | TOC | Index LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page 1. Hittite Hieroglyphic Writing. Courtesy o f I. J. Gelb, A Study of Writing (University of Chicago Press), 1952, page 83 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Branches of the Semitic Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geographical Distribution of the Semitic Languages . . 21 22 23 2. 3. 4. Transcription of the Mesha Stone. Courtesy of I. J. Gelb, A Study of Writing (University of Chicago Press), 1952, page 134 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Hieroglyphic Inscriptions found in Sinai. Courtesy of G. R. Driver, Semitic Writing (British Academy, London), 1954, page 94 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hittite Hieroglyphic Writing. Courtesy of I. J. Gelb, A Study of Writing (University of Chicago Press), 1952, page 82 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 75 6. 77 81 7. The Contents of a Mezuzah. An example of hand-written Hebrew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. Inscriptions from the Sinaitic Peninsu la.Courtesy of G. R. Driver, Semitic Writing (British Academy, London), 1954, page 94 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From Hebrew to the Latin Alphabets . . . . . . . . . . 83 87 9. 10. Three Vowel Systems: 1. Babylonian; 2. Palestinian; 3. Tiberian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 11. The Masoretic Text as prepared by the Ben Asher School. Courtesy of S. A. Birnbaum, The Hebrew Scripts, Fasc. 2, page 92 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 12. A Page from the Rabbinic Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 xi > Home | TOC | Index xii List of Illustrations Between pp. 242 and 243 13. Hebrew Calendar from Gezer. Courtesy of S. A. Birnbaum, The Hebrew Scripts, no. 2 14. Sinaitic Writing. Courtesy of G. R. Driver, Semitic Writing (British Academy, London), 1954, pl. 38 15. The Siloam Inscription. Courtesy of S. A. Birnbaum, The Hebrew Scripts, no. 14 16. The Mesha Stone. Courtesy of The Louvre, Paris 17. Lachish O straca. Courtesy of S. A. Birnbaum, The Hebrew Scripts, nos. 23, 24 18. Coins of the Second Commonwealth.Courtesy of S. A. Birnbaum, The Hebrew Scripts, nos. 56, 58, 61 19. Stamps of Modern Israel 20. The Nash Papyrus. Courtesy of Cambridge University Library 21. An Aramaic and Yiddish Version of Had Gadya. Courtesy of The Field of Yiddish: Studies in Yiddish Language, Folklore and Literature Published on the Occasion of the Bicentennial of Columbia University, ed. by Uriel Weinreich, Linguistic Circle of New York, 1954 22. Eliezer Ben Yehudah. Courtesy of Millon ha-Lashon ha-lbrit > Home | TOC | Index HEBREW: THE ETERNAL LANGUAGE >Home | TOC | Index > Home | TOC | Index INTRODUCTION THE ROLE OF HEBREW IN JEWISH LIFE Hebrew as a Modern Vernacular Barely a decade or two ago there were people who maintained that Hebrew was not a living language. Now, the â€Å"sacred language† of the past is the daily vernacular of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel. There the language liv es in the mouths of school children, bootblacks, busmen, cab drivers, cabaret singers, lawyers, doctors and officials, of the religious, irreligious and anti-religious—indeed, of everyone.The thick horizontal strokes and thin verticals of the Hebrew alphabet are blazoned all over the country on posters, advertising signs, stamps and coins; on highways, shops, stores and hotels. Hebrew slang, colloquialisms and even curses are freely coined; while the Hebrew Language Academy (formerly, Vaad haLashon), composed of outstanding scholars and writers and sponsored by the Israel government, is vigilantly on guard against the intrusion of any solecisms or barbarisms that might impair the purity of the language.From time to time, moreover, this Academy publishes lists of technical terms covering every branch and aspect of science, industry, technology and the like: some ten thousand new words have gained currency since the establishment of the State of Israel. At least four theatrical companies offer regular performances—all, of course, in Hebrew. Thou1 > Home | TOC | Index 2 Hebrew: The Eternal Language sands of books, magazines, newspapers and brochures on every conceivable topic are in daily circulation.Close to two hundred periodicals are published there in Hebrew, including fifteen dailies and the rest weeklies, monthlies, quarterlies and annuals. Hebrew books are published in Israel at the rate of more than three a day. The air waves of Israel vibrate to the rhythm of the classical tongue. Outside of Israel, the most significant center of Hebrew culture is America. The language is read, understood and spoken by thousands of American Jews. There are Hebrew periodicals of popular as well as scholarly character; Hebrew books, fictional and scientific; Hebrew language instruction on elementary and college level.Schools, camps and clubs encourage the speaking of Hebrew. Can there be any question as to the vitality of the Hebrew language? None of the mode rn attempts to revive old languages, such as Gaelic, Welsh and Indi, can boast of anything approximating the progress made by Hebrew. Yet the Irish, Welsh and Indians have been rooted on their own soil and are free from political, physical and economic difficulties with which the young struggling Jewish community in Israel has had to cope.Sources of Vitality of the Hebrew Language How was the Hebrew language able to exist and function as an effective instrument of creative self-expression and intercommunication for about two thousand years, without such an essential ingredient for survival as a state or territory? How could Hebrew retain its vitality and elasticity over such a long period of time in the face of such adverse conditions? The answer to these questions may be discovered by considering the unique character of Judaism and its relation to the Hebrew language.Hebrew has not been a denationalized universal tongue, the medium of a specific religion, in the sense that Latin ha s been the official language of the Roman Catholic Church. Nor has it been merely a folk tongue like other living languages. As a matter of fact, it has persisted as a living lan- > Home | TOC | Index The Role of Hebrew in Jewish Life 3 guage for many centuries after it had ceased to be a spoken vernacular in the accepted sense of the term, as will be demonstrated in a later chapter in this volume.Hebrew has been the sacred language of the Jewish people—the language of its religion, culture and civilization. It has been, in sum, the language of Judaism and intimately identified with the national and religious experiences of the Jewish people throughout the generations. The Jewish people can no more be dissociated from Hebrew than they can be dissociated from their own spiritual identity—Judaism. Relationship between Language and Culture An analysis of the nature of language and of Judaism may help to clarify this point.Language is not merely a means of expression and c ommunication; it is an instrument of experiencing, thinking and feeling, as well as a means of self-expression and personal growth. In investigating the origin of language and â€Å"after tracing back its history as far as we can, we see that the earliest language was anything but intellectual, that it was indeed a sort of half-way house between singing and speech with long almost conglomerations of sounds, which served rather as an outlet for intense feelings than for an intelligible expression of them . . †1 Indeed, even in modern days language is employed â€Å"by children (and often by grown people), not so much to formulate and express thoughts as to give vent to feelings . . . †2 Our ideas and experiences are not independent of language; they are all integral parts of the same pattern, the warp and woof of the same texture. We do not first have thoughts, ideas, feelings and then put them into a verbal framework. We think in words, by means of words. Language and experience are inextricably interwoven, and the awareness of one awakens the other.Words and idioms are as indispensable to our thoughts and experiences as are colors and tints to a painting. Our personality matures and develops through language and by our use of it. Defective linguistic growth is known to go hand in > Home | TOC | Index 4 Hebrew: The Eternal Language hand with stunted intellectual and emotional development. Deaf and dumb people are, as a rule, intellectually retarded and, in some degree, even callous, unless given means of adequate communication.What is true of language in relation to individual growth is equally true in the case of the cultural growth and development of a people. Indeed, students of language have come to recognize that the experiences of a group, its mental and emotional habits, its modes of thoughts and attitudes are registered and reflected in the words and idioms of the group’s language. Thus, for example, the word shalom, usually render ed by â€Å"peace,† has in effect little in common with its English equivalent. Shalom does not have the passive, even negative, connotation of the word â€Å"peace. It does not mean merely the absence of strife. It is pregnant with positive, active and energetic meaning and association. It connotes totality, health, wholesomeness, harmony, success, the completeness and richness of living in an integrated social milieu. When people meet or part they wish each other shalom, or they inquire about each other’s shalom. Similarly, the Hebrew words ruah (spirit) and nefesh (soul) do not have the implications of a disembodiment, such as are indicated by their English equivalents. There is no dichotomy in the Hebrew mind between body and spirit or soul.One is not the antithesis of the other. These Hebrew words have dynamic, life-giving and motor-urgent connotations. Every living being has a ruah, even the beast possesses a ruah (Ecclesiastes 3. 21). The same is true of the sy nonym nefesh, which is generally rendered by â€Å"soul. † But nefesh, too, is the property of all living beings (Job 12. 10), including the beast (Proverbs 12. 10). Even the netherworld has a nefesh (Isaiah 5. 14). Furthermore, every living creature, man as well as animal, is designated as nefesh (Genesis 1. 0, 21, 24, 12. 5, 14. 21, etc. ). Both nefesh and ruah often signify strength and vigor, both in a material and a spiritual sense. Voracious dogs are said to possess a strong nefesh (Isaiah 56. 11); and the horses of Egypt, the prophet warns, are weak: they are â€Å"flesh and no ruah† (ibid. , 31. 3). > Home | TOC | Index The Role of Hebrew in Jewish Life 5 There is likewise a far cry between the Hebrew word tzedakah (from the stem tzadak, to be just or righteous), with its implications of social justice, and the English word â€Å"charity. In the case of â€Å"charity† the recipient sees himself beholden to the donor, whose action is voluntary. Tzedakah, on the other hand, has to be performed as a matter of obligation and the recipient is in no way indebted to the donor. The needy have a right to tzedakah, while those possessing means have a duty to give it. Indeed, even a poor person who receives tzedakah must in turn give tzedakah (Gittin 7b). There is, likewise, a wide semantic gulf between the Hebrew rahamim or rahmanut and the English equivalent â€Å"pity† or â€Å"mercy. The Hebrew word connotes love, family feeling (see Genesis 43. 30, etc. ), even motherliness, since it is related to rehem (mother’s womb) of the same stem. None of these connotations is implied in the English equivalents. Similarly, the richly meaningful and historically hallowed implications of the Hebrew torah are totally absent in the English equivalent â€Å"law. † The Hebrew term torah embraces the totality of Jewish creative labor throughout the ages. Just as inadequate is the English translation â€Å"commandment† for the Hebrew mitzvah.In one of his hasidic3 stories, the Hebrew writer Yehudah Steinberg depicts a hasid expressing astonishment at the ignorance and stupidity of the resha‘im (the wicked or the disbelievers ). The main motive for committing wicked deeds, reasons the hasid, is the search and pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment. But is any greater pleasure or joy conceivable than that of performing a mitzvah? Hence, he continues, if the resha‘im were sufficiently wise to realize this, they would abandon their wickedness and would all become tzaddikim (righteous or strictly observant Jews), just for their pleasure’s sake.This type of reasoning was not unique among traditional Jews. Simhah shel mitzvah, the joy of performing a mitzvah, constituted an integral element in the pattern of the Jewish way of life. To be sure, the word mitzvah originally meant no more than a command in the accepted sense. But the specific reli- > Home | TOC | Index 6 Hebrew: The Eternal Language g ious experiences of the Jewish people, their feeling of exultation in the performance of religious responsibilities, invested this word with a cluster of associations and connotations not originally inherent in it.Is it conceivable that one could get a thrill out of performing a mitzvah if it were merely a â€Å"commandment†? Every language, including English, has a stock of words which are charged with the emotional and intellectual experiences of the people employing it. To illustrate, within our own experiences, the English word â€Å"fireside† came to assume a new connotation as a result of listening to the fireside chats inaugurated by the late president, Franklin D. Roosevelt.Similarly, the word â€Å"filibuster,† originally signifying a freebooter or pirate, is now employed in the United States in the sense of hindering legislation by means of long speeches or other parliamentary tricks. One may also add, as examples, such expressions as â€Å"go to bat, † â€Å"strike out† and the like. The richer and the more intense the historical experiences of a people, the greater is the number of such words in its language and the more emotionally charged they are. When translated into another language, they become devitalized and almost meaningless.Such words are not mere linguistic units; they are cultural deposits. But they cannot be transmitted in isolation. They take on their meaning and gain in richness of association and connotation only through the context of experience. In the past some Hebrew words and expressions survived in the vernacular of the people long after the Hebrew language had ceased to be popularly spoken. They were kept alive by the intimate contact which the majority of the people continued to maintain with the Hebrew literary sources and by the persistence of Jewish forms of living and habits of thinking.Furthermore, one can readily quote a host of expressions and idioms which, though composed of words i n the vernacular, encase, in effect, Hebraic thought-patterns. It would seem that as long as the Jews were rooted in their traditional patterns of life, they were sensitive to the inadequacy of the vernacular in expressing and conveying the emotionally charged meaning > Home | TOC | Index The Role of Hebrew in Jewish Life 7 of certain Hebrew words. They therefore persisted either in retaining the original words and expressions, or in investing the Hebraic mental pattern or idiom with the garb of the vernacular.In this manner a great many words and expressions, as well as idioms, found their way into the various vernaculars employed by the Jews throughout the history of their dispersion. Such dialects arose as Judaeo-Greek, Judaeo-Arabic, JudaeoPersian and the like. The best known of these dialects, surviving to this day and incorporating a considerable proportion of these Hebraic elements, are Ladino, a Judaeo-Spanish dialect employed by the Jews in the Balkan States and Morocco, an d, especially, Yiddish.At present, however, especially in this country, Jewish patterns of life no longer provide a suitable functional context for these words and expressions. The distinctive features of the Jewish climate characteristic of traditional Jewish ghettos, especially those of Eastern Europe, have almost completely disappeared. The specific vocabularies and idioms of Jewish life no longer function; they have been translated into English equivalents. Yamim nora’im are High Holy Days, a siddur is a prayerbook, a mahzor is a High Holy day or Festival prayerbook.Yom tov has been replaced by holiday. Such traditional Hebrew terms as hazzan (cantor), shammash (sexton),’aron kodesh (holy ark), menorah (candelabrum), sefer torah (scroll of the Torah), gabbai (an elder in the synagogue), etc. , once commonly employed, have fallen into desuetude. A good Jew is no longer mekayyem a mitzvah, or is a shomer shabbat. Instead, he is performing a command or good deed and i s a Sabbath observer. He does not drink le-hayyim (to life or health); he drinks to happy days, and so on.The contact with the literary Hebraic sources remains, therefore, the only avenue to these cultural deposits. The Meaning of Judaism The meaning of the terms â€Å"Jews† and â€Å"Judaism† has, likewise, been a source of confused thinking. Are the Jews a race, > Home | TOC | Index 8 Hebrew: The Eternal Language a nation, a religious group, or what? Is Judaism only a body of beliefs and practices, or of nationalistic symbols and slogans, or of cultural ideas and literary compilations, such as could be conveyed by one linguistic vehicle or another?Much futile argumentation relative to these matters may be found in our recent literature. The disputants seem to ignore the fact that a feeling of kinship exists among Jews of all â€Å"races† and colors, of all parts of the world, regardless of whether they are orthodox, reform or even atheistic. To be sure, some o r all of the elements mentioned above may be found in the Jewish group or in Judaism, as the case may be, not in an additive sense, but rather in an integrative or chemical sense.Hence, the whole is not like any of the parts, just as common salt is not in the least like the sodium and chlorine of which it is compounded; or just as water is nothing like its elements, oxygen and hydrogen, of which it is a compound. The compound ABC is larger than the sum of the parts and different in character from each of them as a result of their integration and reciprocal influence. In such a compound the individual component elements are changed and modified. Removing one of these elements or substituting one for another will destroy or change the whole compound.All this is equally true of the cultural, national and religious elements that make up Judaism. Jewish religion is, in effect, a distinctive, dynamic life-pattern, constantly and progressively adapting itself to changing needs and circumst ances; it is accordingly intimately bound up with the Jewish people, their history, culture and civilization. It is in this vein that Judah Halevi interprets the very first Commandment, where the Lord is referred to as â€Å"thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt,† and not as the God who created the universe and humanity.This purports to emphasize, Halevi asserts, the close identification of the Torah with the Jewish people and their historical experiences. 4 It is significant that neither biblical nor mishnaic Hebrew possesses a term for either â€Å"religion† or â€Å"Judaism. † To this day > Home | TOC | Index The Role of Hebrew in Jewish Life 9 no specific term for â€Å"religion† is to be found in Hebrew, while the concept â€Å"Judaism† (Greek Judaismos) stems from alien soil. It was invented by the Jews of the Hellenistic Diaspora to indicate the contrast between their faith, or way of life, and â€Å"Hellenism† (Hellenism os). The Hebrew term for this concept (yahadut) was probably coined by Rashi (1040–1105). The traditional term for this concept, employed in the Bible and in the Talmud, is â€Å"Torah. † Now this term, as has been said, embraces the totality of Jewish beliefs and practices, ideals and ideas, in fact, all the products of the Jewish creative genius through the centuries. â€Å"The Commandments,† according to one source, â€Å"imply all that is included in the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud, whether legal or homiletic in character.In fact, any interpretation which at any time a faithful student is likely to offer before his teacher was already presented to Moses on Mount Sinai. †6 When the rabbis were in doubt about the legality of certain rituals and practices, they would say: â€Å"Go and see how the people conduct themselves. †7 The conduct of the people in a normal traditional environment served as a guide for establishing and codifying certain l aws and rituals; indeed â€Å"a custom may nullify a law. †8 No religion in the accepted sense of this term would permit such latitude.Significantly, the Hebrew term for law, whether ritual, ethical, criminal, or civil, is halakhah, a word which signifies â€Å"conduct. † Peculiar historical circumstances, the analysis of which is outside our province, have operated in the case of the Jewish people in such a manner as to merge race, nationality, culture and religion into a composite unit, which is articulated in a distinctive language, with the result of modifying the individual characteristics of each of the components. Hence, the laws applying to each of them in isolation will not apply to any or all of them in integration.Thus, although Christianity may continue to function without a distinctive language, the Jewish religion cannot do so, because it is too intimately fused with elements of race, nationality and culture, all of which are in turn rooted in the Hebrew language. It is inconceivable that any of the > Home | TOC | Index 10 Hebrew: The Eternal Language traditional Jewish prayers, in translation, could evoke the same historical associations, cultural allusions and national memories, as they do in the original Hebrew. Because Jews of old wanted those associations they continued to pray in Hebrew and study their literary sources in Hebrew.They preserved the language and the language preserved them. Hebrew as the Language of Judaism In sum, Judaism may be defined as the ongoing historical experience of the Jewish people, in which are compounded religious, national and cultural elements. This unique historical experience has been articulated in distinctive words and idioms of the Hebrew language, with which it has become inextricably blended. Disassociate this historical experience from the Hebrew language, and the result is a pale, anemic reflection, a dilution and sometimes even an adulteration of the original experience.Indeed, some Je wish scholars maintained that the deviations of Christianity from Judaism may be directly traceable to the translations of the Bible into Greek. The original Hebrew words took on, in the Greek translation, connotations which were not intended by the Hebrew authors, with the result that they suggested views and ideas entirely alien to the Jewish spirit. One of the many glaring examples is the origin of the virgin-birth dogma in Christianity, a concept which was associated with the mistranslation of the word ‘almah (Isaiah 7. 14).In Hebrew the word merely means â€Å"young woman†; in the Greek translation it was rendered by parthenos which means â€Å"virgin. † Another example is the word ruah, which in the Greek translation connoted the un-Jewish concept of spirit-versus-body. In the course of their long and rich history, the Jewish people have gone through intensive intellectual and emotional experiences. They have experimented with life and its problems; problem s of the relationship of man to man, of man to God, problems of human destiny and of the impact of cosmic forces upon mankind. They have known joys and suffering, hope and despair.They have given voice to all these experi- > Home | TOC | Index The Role of Hebrew in Jewish Life 11 ences in their own distinctive Hebrew idiom. Language and experience have become intertwined so that one cannot be fully mastered without the other. Who can render in suitable translation the overtones, the cluster of associations and allusions attached to such expressions as shema‘ yisrael, kiddush ha-shem, hillul ha-shem, mesirut nefesh, and a host of others? It cannot be done. Yet such expressions symbolize the warp and woof of our historical religious and national experiences.These expressions stir in every conscious Jew feelings and images such as could never be evoked in any other language. In the words of Shema‘ Yisrael, for example, we hear echoes and reverberations of the agonized cries of our martyrs from the days of Akiba down to the â€Å"rebels† of the Warsaw Ghetto. In comparison the English equivalent, â€Å"Hear, O Israel,† sounds flat and insipid. Similarly, the terms kiddush ha-Shem (sanctification of the Name) and hillul ha-Shem (profanation of the Name) are the obverse and reverse of a concept which epitomizes Jewish martyrology throughout the ages.This concept has been a mainspring of traditional Jewish conduct, by word or act, with the view of hallowing God’s name, even at the risk of death, through proper conduct and avoiding deeds which might profane the name of God. The term mesirut nefesh, likewise, connotes the idea of self-sacrifice and readiness to devote one’s life to an ideal. The English equivalents of these terms fail completely to convey even a shade of the meaning of these repositories of Jewish experiences. Language is, of course, the symbol of meaning, or the expression of ideas by means of articulate sounds or graphic representations of these sounds.Yet, meaning is not inherent in the sounds or the words, but rather in our personal and group experiences which are fused with the particular words. In themselves words have no meanings; it is our reactions to them or our experiences with them that lend them their meaning. What the words â€Å"mean† or convey to us depends on the nature, extent and intensity of our experiences, direct or vicarious, with > Home | TOC | Index 12 Hebrew: The Eternal Language them. The word â€Å"democracy,† for example, means one thing to an American, and something entirely different to a Russian communist.The term â€Å"crusade† awakens in the minds of Jews clusters of historical memories and associations totally at variance with those in the minds of Christian peoples. Words are set in the orbit of the experience of the people employing them. When transposed from one experiential orbit into another by means of translation or borrowing, t he words change their â€Å"meaning. † Sometimes our experiences are blended and associated with specific forms of the word, with its particular pronunciation or configuration, and only these forms will convey to us meaning to its fullest extent.A radical change in the form, even of the same word, such as a difference of pronunciation or spelling, may at the outset fail to evoke our experiences associated with the particular word. Hence there is often resistance to spelling reforms or to changes in pronunciation, as for example, in the case of Hebrew, from Ashkenazic to Sephardic, and vice versa. An attempt by Itamar Ben Avi and others, several years ago, to change the Hebrew to Latin script proved abortive in the face of serious opposition. It should therefore be clear that language cannot be taken as a sort of currency or medium of exchange.Words in one language cannot be rendered by their equivalents in another language without losing something vitally and essentially pecu liar to the mentality and genius of the people employing the tongue. It is a delusion to assume that one can fully understand the essence of Judaism in any language but Hebrew. As indicated previously, one cannot get the pristine and genuine message of the Bible in a translation, however effectively executed. Our Sages likened the day on which the Bible was translated into Greek to the day when the Golden Calf was made, â€Å"for the Torah does not lend itself to an adequate translation. Dr. Max L. Margolis, editor of the Jewish Publication Society Bible translation, asserted: â€Å"It frequently happens that the translator, vainly seeking an equivalent for a Hebrew word or phrase, > Home | TOC | Index The Role of Hebrew in Jewish Life 13 realizes that translation deals not so much with words as with civilizations. † Consequently, some of the most significant and indispensable sources of Judaism must remain in a certain sense â€Å"sealed books† to those who do not kn ow Hebrew.The wisdom of the Sages, the poetry of Ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi, Bialik and Chernichovski; or the prose of Mendele, Peretz and Agnon can never be rendered adequately in English or any other language. Nearly every word, every turn of expression or locution employed by these masters of Hebrew literature, springs from the bed-rock of Jewish experiences, literary sources and Jewish folklore, and stirs within us memories, associations and images, such as no translations, however artistically done, can duplicate. > Home | TOC | Index > Home | TOC | IndexART PART ONE How the Language Began to Be Spoken > Home | TOC | Index > Home | TOC | Index CHAPTER ONE HEBREW AND THE LANGUAGES OF MANKIND Ancient Attempts to Identify the Original Language How many languages are there in the world? How did these languages arise? Did they evolve from one primeval language, or are they to be traced to several basic languages? What was this primeval language, or which were the basic languages? The se questions have attracted wide attention among the inquisitive minds of the ancients as well as of modern scholars.The Greek historian Herodotus reports an experiment conducted by Psammetichus, king of Egypt (sixth century B. C. E. ), with the object of discovering what race of men was first created or evolved. He took two newborn babes, haphazardly selected, and placed them in the charge of a goatherd with strict instructions to bring them up on goat’s milk and to isolate them from any human contacts, so that no word of human speech might reach their ears. In this manner, the king hoped, the children would eventually yield to the promptings of nature and break out into human speech representing the primeval language of the original human race.The experiment succeeded, according to Herodotus. One day, after two years had passed, as the 17 > Home | TOC | Index 18 Hebrew: The Eternal Language goatherd opened the door of the lonely hut to serve the children their daily portion of milk, they cried out â€Å"Bekos! † and held out their hands. The goatherd reported this to the king, and upon investigation the king discovered that bekos was the Phrygian word for bread. He thereupon concluded that the Phrygians were the first race of men.The story bears, of course, the earmarks of pure racial propaganda. It is calculated to demonstrate the superiority of the Grecian race, the kinsmen of the Phrygians according to Greek tradition, by attributing to them a higher rank in antiquity than that of the Egyptians. But this experiment was not unique. Similar experiments are said to have been conducted in later ages: by the Mongol emperor Akbar Khan (sixteenth century), the German emperor Frederick the Second (thirteenth century), and King James IV of Scotland (fifteenth century).The last-named is reported to have shut two infants up with a dumb woman on the island of Inchkeith and ordered them kept there until they were old enough to speak perfectly. These chil dren are said by some to have spoken a pure Hebrew, although the chronicler himself entertained some doubts on the subject. Hebrew—the Mother of Languages There was, indeed, a time when Jews as well as Christians believed that all the languages of mankind derived from Hebrew, the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is, of course, to be inferred from the biblical accounts.Thus Eve was called Hawwah â€Å"because she was the mother of all living† (hai, Genesis 3. 20). Similarly, the woman was called ishshah â€Å"because she was taken out of man† (ish, ibid. , 2. 23). 1 In no other language besides Hebrew, the rabbis argued, do we find the terms for man and woman derived from the same root. The Hebrew language, it is therefore to be assumed according to them, was created simultaneously with the world and was the language employed by God in his conversations with Adam and Eve. 2 When Abraham was born, all > Home | TOC | Index Hebrew and the Languages of Mankind 19 he dignitaries of Nimrod’s court wanted to destroy him, says an old midrashic account, and he was hidden in a cave for thirteen years. When he came out of the cave he spoke Hebrew. 3 â€Å"It (Hebrew) is, according to tradition, the language in which God spoke to Adam and Eve and in which they spoke between themselves† (Judah Halevi). This traditional view is reiterated time and again during the Middle Ages and later by both Jews and non-Jews. Among the theses offered by the first class of Harvard graduates in 1642 was one entitled Hebrea est Linguarum Mater (Hebrew is the mother of the languages).Non-Jewish sources resorted to all sorts of whimsical etymologies to prove that the origin of European languages is to be found in Hebrew. 4 In his introduction to the Pentateuch, Moses Mendelssohn restates the view of the primacy of Hebrew and attempts to adduce additional proof in its corroboration. It was only after the fiasco of the Tower of Babel, according to the biblical tradition, that â€Å"the Lord did there confound the languages of the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth† (Genesis 11. ). Thus, says rabbinic tradition, evolved the languages of mankind, numbering seventy-two (or seventy), twentytwo of which were spoken by the descendants of Japheth, twenty-four by the children of Ham, and twenty-six by the children of Shem. 5 Modern Studies of Indo-European Languages Toward the end of the eighteenth century the study of linguistic science was given strong impetus by the discovery of Sanskrit and the recognition of the relationship of this language to Greek and Latin. It was then and during the major part of the ineteenth century that the Aryan or Indo-European languages were identified and subjected to careful study and scrutiny. No one knows how many languages there are in the world. They certainly can be counted in the thousands. Many of them > Home | TOC | Ind ex 20 Hebrew: The Eternal Language are unrecorded in writing and may disappear without leaving a trace, as many unrecorded languages have undoubtedly disappeared already, while others are known from very scanty records. The majority of the languages of the world are probably those which have never been committed to writing by any of their native speakers.The most thoroughly investigated language family is the IndoEuropean. This family includes such languages, and language groups, as Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Armenian, Albanese, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic and Germanic. The Germanic group, to which English belongs, is probably the most widely employed, and English is now the most widespread of all languages in the world. However, the language which is known to have retained the greatest number of original forms of the Germanic dialect is Icelandic, a language spoken today by about 100,000 persons.Similarly, Lithuanian, one of the two surviving languages of the Baltic branch, spoken by sever al million people who live on the borders of Prussia and Russia, is said to have â€Å"preserved many of the forms of Indo-European speech in a less corrupted condition than any of its European cogeners, aye, than any dialect of the entire family which is not at least two thousand years older†6 All these language groups have been identified as divergent forms of a single prehistoric language, hypothetically named Primitive Indo-European.No records of this primitive language are available, but this may be a mere historic accident. The oldest known member, or near relation, of this family is an extinct language, spoken by the Hittites, a people widely mentioned in the Bible and even regarded by the prophet Ezekiel as among the ancestors of the Hebrew people (Ezekiel 16. 3, 45). The available documents in that language already deciphered are written in a form of the cuneiform syllabary—a wedge-like form of characters having syllabic rather than alphabetic value. These doc uments date back to about the fifteenth century B.C. E. Other Hittite documents, written in hieroglyphic script, have already been virtually deciphered. > Home | TOC | Index Hebrew and the Languages of Mankind 21 Hittite Hieroglyphic Writing From I. J. Gelb, A Study of Writing (University of Chicago Press), 1952, page 83. Semitic Languages The language family which concerns us most at this time is that designated since 1781 as Semitic. The origin of this designation is the genealogical record of Genesis 10. 21–31, according to which the peoples employing these languages were descendants of Shem, son of Noah.These peoples occupied a territory extending from the Mediterranean to the other side of the Euphrates up to the Tigris, or Mesopotamia, and from the mountains of Armenia to the southern coast of Arabia. Through conquests and migrations these languages spread also to parts of Africa and Europe. The Canaanites (Phoenicians, etc. , Genesis 10. 15–20) are traced in the Bible back to Ham, probably on account of their being a mixed race and also because, owing to their paganism, they were regarded with contempt by the biblical writers. However, their language is clearly a branch of the Semitic family, and the prophet Isaiah (19. 8) refers to > Home | TOC | Index 22 Hebrew: The Eternal Language Branches of the Semitic Language > Home | TOC | Index Hebrew and the Languages of Mankind 23 Geographical Distribution of the Semitic Languages > Home | TOC | Index 24 Hebrew: The Eternal Language Hebrew as the language of Canaan (sefat Canaan). Most of these languages are now dead, some having left important literary legacies. The only languages of this family still spoken, besides Hebrew, are: Arabic, Ethiopic, and, to a limited extent, Syriac or Aramaic.The Semitic languages are generally divided into the following branches: A. East Semitic: Assyrian-Babylonian or Akkadian. This language is known now from inscriptions on stone and clay, in cuneiform writin g, dating back to about 2500 B. C. E. In this language were written the Code of Hammurabi (around 1800 B. C. E. ), the Amarna letters (1400 B. C. E. ) and other important documents. It was at one time widely in vogue in the Orient in official circles. It was there a sort of lingua franca, an international language. Later, around the middle of the first half in the last millennium B.C. E. , it was superseded by Aramaic. B. Northwest Semitic 1. Aramaic Branch. a. Eastern Aramaic or Syriac, of which the language of the Babylonian Talmud is a Jewish modification. b. Palestinian or Western Aramaic, which is represented by portions of the Palestinian Gemara and the Targumim (Bible translations generally included in the traditional Jewish editions of the Bible). The Aramaic portions of the Bible may also belong in this category, although some modern scholars challenge the possibility of establishing the local identity of these portions.At that early period, when these documents were writte n, no distinction between Eastern and Western Aramaic existed, according to these scholars. The oldest documents in the Aramaic language date from the eighth century B. C. E. A few centuries later, especially around > Home | TOC | Index Hebrew and the Languages of Mankind 25 the beginning of the Christian Era, Aramaic gained wide currency over large tracts of Western Asia, superseding several languages, among them Assyrian, and to a considerable extent also Hebrew.The theory held by some Jewish and non-Jewish scholars that Aramaic had completely displaced Hebrew is without any foundation and has been effectively disproved. But Aramaic undoubtedly exercised a tremendous influence on the evolution of the Hebrew language, and left its impress upon it. For about a millennium (from about 700 B. C. E. to around 650 C. E. ) Aramaic was employed as the official language of the Near East, until it was replaced by Arabic as one result of the Mohammedan conquests (of the seventh century C. E. ). When Assyria conquered the Aramean states and incorporated them into its empire, it adopted the language of the anquished. The spread of this language was facilitated especially by the Persian Empire which flourished during the fifth to third centuries B. C. E. The imperial policy of Persia was generally favorable to the preservation of the national mores and culture of its subject peoples. The Persian chancery accordingly chose to correspond with the provinces of Western Asia in their own peculiar dialect, Aramaic. Aramaic is still spoken by a few thousand Syrian Christians and Jews in Kurdistan, and various other isolated localities in the Orient on the borders of Persia, Iraq, Turkey and in Syria near Damascus.A considerable number of the Aramaic-speaking Kurdish Jews have recently immigrated into Israel. 2. Middle Semitic or Canaanite Branch. a. Moabitic, known especially from the famous inscription of King Mesha, ninth century B. C. E. The character and significance of this inscription will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. b. Phoenician, the language spoken in Phoenicia, as well as in the Phoenician colony of Carthage in North Africa, close to the present site of Tunis. The Phoenicians continued to identify themselves as Canaanites down to the Roman period.Its oldest known inscriptions are of the > Home | TOC | Index 26 Hebrew: The Eternal Language twelfth or fourteenth century before the Christian Era. Around the early part of the first millennium B. C. E. , Phoenician enjoyed the status of an international language in Syria and nearby coastal Asia Minor, until it was replaced by Aramaic by the end of the eighth century. It continued to flourish in Carthage until several centuries into the Christian Era, and was still spoken in the time of Augustine in the fifth century C. E. c.Hebrew. The oldest portions of the Hebrew Bible probably date back to about 1300 B. C. E. , and the language has never ceased to be employed in most Jewish localities as a literary medium, as well as for purposes of written (if not spoken) intercommunication. In oral use it has been restricted largely to houses of worship and study, although there is ample evidence to prove that even for conversational purposes oral Hebrew has been employed, in a limited degree and in certain localities, throughout the history of the Jewish people.Furthermore, many words and expressions dealing with intimate personal and national experiences have been incorporated into the various languages spoken by the Jewish people in the lands of their dispersion. Similarly, many Hebrew idioms have infiltrated, in translated forms, into the various Jewish dialects, such as Yiddish and Ladino (a Judaeo-Spanish dialect), and have persisted there to this day. In modern times the vitality and adaptability of the Hebrew language have been demonstrated to a remarkable degree, as a spoken language in Israel, and in many Jewish communities outside of Israel. . Ugaritic. A vast and signif icant literature has been > Home | TOC | Index Hebrew and the Languages of Mankind 27 unearthed since 1930, shedding much light on biblical literature and language, in modern Ras Shamra, on the coast of Syria, opposite Cyprus. This Canaanitic literature was written in an alphabetic cuneiform script, indicating consonants and even some vowels. It contains epic poems typical of ancient Canaanite religion and civilization during the Late Bronze Age, when Ras Shamra was the site of Ugarit, the wealthiest Canaanite city.In language and style, this literature resembles to a remarkable degree the poetic portions of the Bible. Biblical literature and language must have been influenced tremendously by the highly developed culture and civilization of Ugarit. 3. South Semitic. a. Arabic and its various dialects. The earliest records of Arabic are of the third century B. C. E. Since the seventh century C. E. the territory of the language has extended, as a result of the Mohammedan conquests, to embrace large tracts of Asia and Africa. It is now in oral and written use by nearly forty millions of eople, besides serving as the sacred and official language of Islam. b. Ethiopic and its dialects. This language is used on the east coast of Africa (Abyssinia). It emerged into the light of history towards the beginning of the fourth century C. E. , immediately after the conversion of the Abyssinian Kingdom to Christianity. The language is still used in Abyssinia in modern dialects. Uniformity vs. Diversity in Languages Attempts were made by students of language to discern relationships between the Indo-European and the Semitic lan- gt; Home | TOC | Index 28 Hebrew: The Eternal Language guages. These attempts stem from the assumption that both these language families evolved from the same parental stock. In proof of this assumption scholars adduce the examples of the Hebrew banah (built) and the Latin pono (compare English â€Å"exponent,† â€Å"expound†); also baâ €˜ar and Greek pyr from which originate the English â€Å"pyre,† â€Å"pyro-,† and â€Å"fire†; Hebrew yayin (wine), Greek oinos, Latin vinum, Arabic waynun; Hebrew sheba, Sanskrit saptan, Latin septem, English â€Å"seven. A medieval Jewish scholar collected over two thousand Hebrew words, which, in his opinion, were the basis of a similar number of words in Latin, Greek and Italian. 7 Such attempts are now largely discredited. If there is a relationship between the two language families, and there may be, the available evidence is inadequate and inconclusive. Mutual borrowing and mere accident may account for these relationships. The division of languages is, according to biblical tradition, a curse or punishment inflicted upon mankind for the daring attempt of the people of Shinar to erect there â€Å"a tower, with its top in heaven† (Genesis 11).To this day the multiplicity of languages is viewed by some people as an affliction responsible for mis understanding and dissension among individuals, groups and nations. If people spoke a common language, it is held, discords would disappear, wars would be eliminated, peace and good will would reign in the world. Unsuccessful attempts have accordingly been made to devise a universal language, or to urge the adoption of one of the most widespread languages as a common language. That the adoption of a common language will serve as an effective instrumentality of peace is highly questionable.History can record many wars among peoples employing the same language. But it is a matter of grave doubt whether the adoption of a common language is feasible. Even if the peoples of the world would consent to adopt such a language, it would in the course of time split up into various, mutually alien languages and dialects. We may note, as an illustration, the tendency of American English to deviate in its development, both > Home | TOC | Index Hebrew and the Languages of Mankind 29 in idiom and v ocabulary, from British English.Even in the same country the people of certain generations find it difficult or impossible to understand the language of their ancestors several generations back. It may, incidentally, be seriously questioned whether the adoption of a common language would be desirable from a cultural point of view, even if it were possible. A common language would impose, to a considerable degree, common cultural and literary patterns. Witness the influence of English culture and literature on early American life and literature. Such a language would certainly result in the impoverishment of world culture and civilization.The Trend in Language towards Diversity Language (Sprache in German, lashon or safah in Hebrew), as indicated by its etymology, is basically a speech experience. It is transmitted by word of mouth from parents to children. We speak and pronounce words as we hear them spoken and pronounced by our elders, who in turn learned them from generations prec eding them. It seems quite obvious to us that we speak exactly as do our parents and elders, and they believe they do the like with reference to the generation which preceded them. Yet, over a period of several generations there have been evident linguistic changes and modifications.The language of Shakespeare is no longer the English we speak; while the fourteenth century English of Chaucer, and far more so the English of Alfred the Great of the ninth century, are to us virtually foreign tongues. When, for example, was the Latin senior reduced to the French sire and the English â€Å"sir†? When did the Anglo-Saxon deofol (Latin diabolus) evolve into the modern English â€Å"devil†? How did these radical changes in form and pronunciation occur? When did they inject themselves into the language? Each generation of speakers would certainly disclaim responsibility.Evidently the process of language transmission is imperfect. Both our hearing and our capacity for articulati ng or imitating > Home | TOC | Index 30 Hebrew: The Eternal Language the sounds which we hear are imperfect and inexact. Hence language is subject to modification and change. Both growth and decay are characteristics of language development, as they are of biological development. Some phonetic elements gradually disintegrate and disappear, while new ones sprout and emerge. Occasionally, the variations are so great as to produce an entirely new offshoot, a new dialect or a new member of the language family.Two main factors generally operate as controls in the process of linguistic change: (1) isolation and (2) possession of written records. A people occupying a circumscribed territory and relatively unexposed to contacts with other races or peoples is more likely to preserve the original forms of its speech than a people bent on expansion, migration or collision with other races and peoples. Similarly a common literature often exercises a strong conservative influence on the language and shields it from the intrusion of alien elements and from radical phonetic and dialectical divergencies.For this reason, the changes in English since Shakespeare’s time are not as pronounced as those during the interval between his period and that of Chaucer, and they are especially less significant than the changes during the five centuries preceding Chaucer, when England was assimilating the Normans. 8 Reason for Relative Unity in the Hebrew Language The literary control on linguistic change is particularly marked when, as in the case of the Hebrew language, the common literature is integrated with the religious traditions and experiences of the people.The Hebrew people were thrown into contact and collision with other people. Its vocabulary was considerably enriched by the admission of numerous foreign words borrowed from the many peoples among whom they dwelt. Yet the original linguistic pattern of Hebrew remained more or less intact. Thus we speak of biblical Hebrew as a unitary phase of the language, distinguished by typical characteristics of grammar and style. Yet, the interval between the earliest biblical documents, such as the Song of Moses or the > Home | TOC | Index Hebrew and the Languages of Mankind 1 Song of Deborah, on the one hand, and the books of Koheleth and Esther, on the other, is as long as the interval separating the period of Alfred the Great from our own day. Furthermore, the twenty-two centuries subsequent to the biblical period failed to impair the pristine pattern of the language. The result is that modern Hebrew writers may choose to employ biblical Hebrew as the medium of their literary expression, without the need of apology and without fearing that their writings will be incomprehensible or even regarded as unduly archaic.What is the explanation, in the case of Hebrew, of this unique linguistic phenomenon? How did the Hebrew language escape the transmuting effects of time which are in evidence in other languages? To be sure, the fact that the ancient biblical texts lacked a fixed system of vocalization and were very scantily supplied with vowel-signs is in large measure responsible for the seeming phonetic uniformity of the Hebrew language. But it cannot be doubted that the Bible and the esteem with which it has been cherished throughout the centuries, counteracted and prevented fundamental changes in the structure of the language.Unlike Latin, which has been the language of the Catholic church, that is, of the clergy, without becoming the language of the faithful or of the multitude, the study of biblical Hebrew has been pursued throughout the generations by young and old with more or less zeal and assiduity. A great many new wordcoinages, word-forms and idioms have indeed been added to the language since the days of the Bible. Yet the original organic pattern of the language remains intact.To this day children in elementary grades are trained and grounded in the intricacies of biblical Hebre w, while in the writings of practically every Hebrew author one may find a goodly number of word-structures, phrases, and turns of expression typical of the Bible. As a matter of fact, modern Hebrew sometimes shows preference for biblical usages over mishnaic or medieval usages. The biblical phrases and expressions of thirty-five centuries ago pulsate with vitality and vigor almost on a par with the language spoken in Israel today. >Home | TOC | Index CHAPTER TWO HOW THE HEBREW LANGUAGE BEGAN Aramaic Background of Hebrew Some forty centuries ago, during the first half of the second millennium B. C. E. , a family or clan led by a chieftain named Terah, emigrated—so the biblical tradition has it—from UrKasdim, a city of immemorial antiquity in Babylonia, to Haran in northwestern Mesopotamia, with the intention of proceeding from there â€Å"into the land of Canaan† For unspecified reasons Terah and his clansmen settled in Haran and apparently abandoned the idea of journeying on.It must have been a long time after settling in Haran that one of the sons of Terah, named Abram (later renamed Abraham), after his father’s death, received a call from God saying: â€Å"Get thee out of thy country . . . unto the land that I will show thee. † Whereupon Abram, heeding the call, resumed the journey into Canaan, taking with him â€Å"Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran . . . and into the land of Canaan they came. † This clan, headed by Abram, was by no means a nomadic or bedouin band.It was made up of settled or semi-settled herdsmen, who migrated with their wives and children and with their servants, cattle and other belongings. Abram must, ac32 > Home | TOC | Index How the Hebrew Language Began 33 cordingly, have achieved in Haran considerable status and authority. Jewish tradition explains his departure from there by attributi ng to him a revulsion from the idolatrous practices prevalent in his native land and by the â€Å"call† to go forth and establish a new and â€Å"great nation† in the â€Å"land of Canaan. † It was to be a rather peaceful venture.Yet, we find Abram capable of mustering fighting forces among his clansmen and allies adequate to attack and defeat the armies of four victorious kings, and thus retrieve his nephew Lot and all the booty that had been captured from five defeated kings headed by those of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 14). Furthermore, Abimelekh, the Philistine king of Gerar, was eager to conclude with him a treaty of peace; the native Amorites, Mamre, Eshkol and Aner, were his confederates; while the Hittites accorded him honor and referred to him as â€Å"a mighty prince† (ibid. 23. 6). In the traditions of the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, and other peoples, Abram would undoubtedly have been described as a mighty chieftain leading a victorious inva sion. His heroic exploits and glorious feats of conquest would have constituted the theme of epic sagas and poems. But the Torah, as the etymology of the term implies, is primarily designed to teach moral and religious lessons, not to tell stories or report historical events.Hence, all these warlike exploits in the life of the â€Å"fathers† of the Jewish people are glossed over and mentioned only incidentally. During a period of famine, Abram and his clansmen traveled to Egypt, but only for a brief sojourn. As soon as conditions improved they returned to Canaan, where they were to make their permanent home. They were part of a wave of migration that gravitated from the north and the east during the first half of the second millennium B. C. E. toward the grasslands of the more fertile South, with the object of conquest and occupation.This desire to seek â€Å"fresh woods and pastures new† was undoubte

Wireless Articles 1 Essays

Wireless Articles 1 Essays Wireless Articles 1 Essay Wireless Articles 1 Essay There is no doubt that times have changed from the first time Alexander Graham Bell thought of inventing a telephone. Nowadays, telephones are not merely for voice calls because it has evolved to become one of the greatest communication tools in history with Internet, messaging, and music capabilities. More and more technological advances are being done in the telecommunication field every year.One of this advances is called 3G, which is â€Å"the third generation of mobile phone standards and technology that enables network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency.†[1] It was first launched in Japan in 2001 developed after 1G and 2G technologies to offer faster and better communication to consumers. Currently, even with the development of 4G technology, mobile phone companies like Apple, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson produce their phones with 3G capabilitie s since many of their consumers look for this service when choosing a phone. However, not all is positive with 3G. Concerns including the cost of licenses, cost of 3G mobile phones, lack of coverage, expense of the service and Internet fees, and high power usage are being debated by both providers and consumers.[2]The article does not include a specific author making it hard for the information to be trusted. Also, the fact that Wikipedia is an online group community that can be accessed by anyone and everyone decreases its reliability in terms of the information indicated. The same cannot be said with the topic, however, because 3G is known to be one of the best development in the mobile phone industry at this time. This is most helpful to businessmen and women who need the Internet access at any time of the day. This technology also affects those who have families and friends out of the country because communicating not just by voice calls can be done. Although 3G still has its ow n issues to deal with, it is still one of the best advancements in technology during this time.Wireless Articles 2Communication is an essential part of the everyday lives of humans. It is not only through voice communication or through hand-written or typed documents because there are just those data that are too large or too long to be typed, written, or spoken. Fortunately, the Internet has been made available to everyone, which makes the exchange of large data much easier. However, some people still find computers and the Internet too time-consuming, which is why wireless devices such as Bluetooth were developed.â€Å"Bluetooth (BT) wireless technology provides an easy way for a wide range of devices to communicate with each other and connect to the Internet without the need for wires, cables, and connectors.†[3] Not only is it used in mobile phones, but several devices including laptops and cars are also being installed with Bluetooth services. It was first developed in 1 994 by a team of researchers and at this time, it is known to â€Å"allow two Bluetooth-enabled devices within 10 to 100 meters range to share data†[4] without the need of wires or Internet connection. Because this technology works by sharing data, it is very important to know proper security measures to avoid transmission of data to the wrong party or receiving malicious and harmful content. To address this concern, the developers had consumers the option to display or hide their devices from other devices. There is also the feature of requiring a passcode for the two devices to connect first before sending the data. Still, there are those applications that are made to hack these devices and gather private and important information. Manufacturers also do not take much time in specifying addresses for their Bluetooth-enabled products, which makes it easier for hackers to determine the addresses. The article also states that consumers who have little knowledge about Bluetooth are at risk of having their devices hacked or acquiring viruses.There is no doubt that Bluetooth is a helpful tool when it comes to sharing information, especially when time is of concern. However, the author is right when he stated that people, consumers most notably, should remember that they should always research and try to secure their devices because there are numerous individuals who have negative intentions and abuse their power and knowledge in technology.Wireless Articles 3The Internet is one of the most important technological developments in mankinds history. It has paved way for more advanced communication, data exchange, and information access. Because of its great importance and use in peoples personal lives and the business world, more and more organizations offer the service through wireless connection.In 2007, Intel announced that it will â€Å"support WiMax and 802.11b/g/n on the same piece of silicon with the Montevina mobile platform, but will also offer a WiMa x-only card.†[5] Contrary to the current WiFi service, â€Å"WiMax can provide broadband wireless access up to 30 miles for fixed stations, and 3 to 10 miles for mobile stations.†[6] This improvement in the hardware from WiFi to WiMax by Intel will surely attract consumers and providers especially those who greatly use the Internet to work, study, or get in touch with their loved ones. Intel is trusted by consumers and although WiMax is only getting started in the field, one can anticipate the impact it will bring once the hardware is made available in the market.WiMax-enabled computers and other devices will make studying, working, or communicating a much easier task for those concerned. It also contributes to the history of technology and marks as an evidence that through technology, distance is of no issue. It even contributes to faster and more efficient working since it allows â€Å"download speeds of 2 to 4 Mbps.†[7] To evaluate, the article seems to be pro viding a good news to those who depend on mobility in terms of using their devices, as well as in terms of being able to function whenever and wherever it is needed.Wireless Article 4With the vast amount of developments in technology today, it is important to know the best and economical applications, software, and hardware that exist in the market. Knowledge of such things makes it easier what to buy and what service to use because it suits ones lifestyle and needs better. Not only will it provide a way to choose what is better but it also enhances a persons knowledge regarding technology.Because mobile phones are very much popular and in demand these days, companies make sure that they keep up with what the consumers need and want. They enable their products with different kinds of capabilities and services so that users do not have to look somewhere else. Two of the features that mobile phone companies provide are the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and CDMA (Code D ivision Multiple Access) network technologies. Both are excellent in providing what customers need, which is telecommunication capabilities, but they differ in terms of how the provide it. The GSM technology allows consumers to choose from a variety of mobile phones, use a SIM card from mobile network providers, and use a better international roaming service while CDMA technology makes its consumers buy an entire package from a service provider that contains the handset and the service.[8]In summary, both technologies are excellent in providing what the consumers need or else they would not be used by major network providers. A person just has to weigh what is more suitable for his lifestyle when choosing what kind of mobile phone service to avail. Flexibility is one of the major features of a GSM network while clarity and efficiency can be depended on with CDMA networks.Wireless Article 5With the numerous mobile phone manufacturers today, it cannot be helped that mobile phone servi ce providers are also increasing. There is no country that offers only one service provider, which makes it hard for consumers to choose what kind of service they want. Fortunately for most people who are not contented with one service provider or for those who need more than just one, there are companies that can unlock mobile phones and make it possible for a user to use multiple SIM cards in one mobile phone. Of course, one has to have a GSM enabled phone to be able to do this since CDMA phones are locked to a specific network.There are many reasons why an individual want to have his or her phone unlocked: one is wanting to change the current wireless provider in the United States and still keep the phone; two is changing a provider with a new phone but still want to keep the other provider; and three traveling outside the country without having to pay for higher international roaming fees.[9] Whatever the reason is, it always comes down to not having to choose a certain service provider simply because every available provider can be used. Several companies and individuals offer users a way to unlock their mobile phones either by proving a code or by using an application.Unlocking phones are useful for those who need it and for those who require it. However, it should still be remembered that there are numerous malicious individuals who can try to abuse this kind of flexibility. SIM cards, in most countries, are readily available and does not require a person to register and provide security information thus making it hard for them to be tracked down when they use their SIM cards for illegal acts because they can simply throw the cards away without anyone tracing it back to them.BibliographyBangeman, Eric. â€Å"WiMax Coming to Intel Laptops in 2008.† ARS Technica, April 16, 2007.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070416-wimax-coming-to-intel-laptops-  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   in -2008.html (4 August 2008).Bialoglowy, Marek. â€Å"Bluetooth Security Review, Part 1.† Security Focus, April 25, 2005. securityfocus.com/infocus/1830 (4 August 2008).Hick, Matthew. â€Å"Cell Phone Unlocking – What Purpose Does It Have?† Articlebase, January   Ã‚  Ã‚   1, 2008. articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/cell-phone-unlocking-   what-purpose-does-it-have-294032.html (4 August 2008).Sharma, Mohit. â€Å"GSM vs. CDMA Mobile Technology.† Articlesbase, January 5, 2008.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/gsm-vs-cdma-mobile-  Ã‚   technology-400824.html (4 August 2008).Wikipedia. â€Å"3G.† Wikipedia, August 3, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G (4 August   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   2008).[1]  Ã‚  Ã‚   Wikipedia, â€Å"3G,† August 3, 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G (4 August 2008).[2]  Ã‚  Ã‚   Ibid.[3]  Ã‚  Ã‚   Marek Bialoglowy, â€Å"Bluetooth Security Review, Part 1, † April 25, 2005. securityfocus.com/infocus/1830 (4 August 2008).[4]  Ã‚  Ã‚   Ibid.[5]  Ã‚  Ã‚   Eric Bangeman, â€Å"WiMax Coming to Intel Laptops in 2008,† April 16, 2007. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070416-wimax-coming-to-intel-laptops-in-2008.html (4 August 2008).[6]  Ã‚  Ã‚   WiMax.com, â€Å"What is WiMAX?† wimax.com/education (4 August 2008).[7]  Ã‚  Ã‚   Eric Bangeman, â€Å"WiMax Coming to Intel Laptops in 2008,† April 16, 2007. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070416-wimax-coming-to-intel-laptops-in-2008.html (4 August 2008).[8]  Ã‚  Ã‚   Mohit Sharma, â€Å"GSM vs. CDMA Mobile Technology,† January 5, 2008. articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/gsm-vs-cdma-mobile-technology-400824.html (4 August 2008).[9]  Ã‚  Ã‚   Matthew Hick, â€Å"Cell Phone Unlocking – What Purpose Does It Have?† January 1, 2008. articlesbase.com/cell-phones-articles/cell-phone-unlocking-what-purpose-does-it-have-294032.html (4 August 2008).

The 9 Most Inspirational Spanish Quotes About Life

The 9 Most Inspirational Spanish Quotes About Life SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips One of the best ways to practice a language is to read it. It’s even better when you read idiomatic phrases that don’t always translate directly into English. That helps you learn more than just vocabularyit teaches you to unlock the meaning behind the words, too. It’s definitely a skill you’ll definitely need to ace your AP Spanish Language exam or your AP Spanish Literature exam! (It’s also pretty great practice for the SAT Spanish Subject Test, too.) Today, we’re going to introduce you to 9 of the best inspirational Spanish quotes about life. Reading through these will help you practice your advanced reading and comprehension skills...and it might just give you some food for thought, too. For each quote, we’re going to give you: The Spanish quote The English translation of the quote A short discussion of why the quote is inspirational  ¿Listos?  ¡Bien, empecemos! Spanish Quote 1: A Quote About Courage Nunca sers capaz de cruzar el ocà ©ano hasta que pierdas de vista la costa. In English, it translates like this: â€Å"You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.† This quote is a great way to start learning some Spanish quotes about life...especially since you’ll need to have some courage while you’re studying. (It’s not easy, after all.) The quotation above also eases you into the process because you can translate it literally, which means that when you translate the sentence, it means exactly what it says! We love this quote because it’s a good reminder that sometimes you have to take risks to achieve your dreams. Even though it’s tempting to stick with what you’ve always known, success often means you have to sail over the horizon! Spanish Quote 2: A Quote About Money Just like in English, there are lots of great Spanish quotes about lifeand moneythat could have ended up on our list. But our favorite is this one: A los tontos no les dura el dinero. The literal translation of this line is â€Å"Money does not last for fools.† It’s the Spanish equivalent of the English saying, â€Å"A fool and his money are soon parted.† (Your parents may have told you this a time or two. Not that we’re speaking from experience or anything.) The truth of life is that money matters. This Spanish quote definitely reminds us that making money is only half the battle: being wise about our financial decisions is important, too. Spanish Quote 3: A Quote About Choosing Your Words La lengua no tiene hueso, pero corta lo ms grueso. This is an example of a Spanish quote where there’s a big difference between the literal translation and its meaning. Literally, this sentence translates to â€Å"The tongue doesn't have a bone, but it cuts the thickest thing.† What does that even mean?! But if you think about it, even idioms in English don’t make much sense. After all, if you’re not familiar with English, you’d be really confused if someone told you that you were â€Å"the pot calling the kettle black† or that you shouldn’t â€Å"throw stones at glass houses.† So in the case of this Spanish quote about life, we have to look past the literal phrasing to the meaning underneath it. Let’s break it down starting with the first part of the sentence. When you say â€Å"the tongue doesn’t have a bone,† it means that the tongue isn’t as strong as your arm or leg. You can’t physically hurt someone with your tongue! And yet, the second half of the sentence says that it’s somehow still able to cut through â€Å"the thickest thing.† In other words, our tonguewhich Merriam-Webster explains can also mean â€Å"language†has the power to do significant damage to other people. In other words, this quote is the equivalent of the English saying, â€Å"The pen is mightier than the sword.† Spanish Quote 4: A Quote About Willpower No existe gran talento sin gran voluntad. When you’re studying, you need lots of willpower to stay focused. That’s why we love this inspirational quote- in Spanish or in English! This quote translates to â€Å"There is no great talent without great will.† Sometimes we think that people are just born with talent, and if we aren’t, then there’s no way we can achieve our dreams. But this Spanish quote teaches us that’s not true. Willpower, and the drive and focus that comes with it, can help us develop our talents. Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian journalist and author, determined that for some people, it can take 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill.That translates to 417 days of practice! Even the most talented person would need a lot of willpower to get through that amount of work. Consequently, this quotation explains that doing great things in life requires as much hard work as it does talent. Spanish Quote 5: A Quote About Going For It Lots of idioms rhyme to help it stick in our memories. (Two good English examples are â€Å"fake it ‘til you make it† and â€Å"you snooze, you lose.†) Science has shown that rhymes help our brains remember information. Given that, it makes sense that inspirational quotes in Spanish and in English use rhyming to make their messages to help us remember them. Here’s one of our favorite rhyming inspirational quotes: Despuà ©s de los aà ±os mil, torna el agua a su carril. Here, â€Å"mil† is pronounced with a long e sound. That means it sounds more like â€Å"meel† in Spanish. The same is true for â€Å"carril,† which would be pronounced â€Å"carreel.† So as you can see, the two clauses of the sentences rhyme perfectly, so people can remember it better. The literal translation of this quote is, â€Å"After one thousand years, returns the water to its track.† But more accurately, this quote translates like this: â€Å"In a hundred years we will be dead anyway.† That’s pretty morbid! But what this quote really means is that people’s memories are short, so you shouldn’t worry about what people think. Don’t let others’ judgements or a fear of embarrassment keep you from pursuing your passions! Spanish Quote 6: A Quote About Patience For many people, patience is a tricky thing. That’s why one of our favorite Spanish quotes has to do with the value of being patient. Here it is: Con el tiempo todo se consigue. This quote literally translates to, â€Å"In time, everything is acquired.† But more accurately, this quotation tells us that patience is key to getting what you want in life. Patience comes in many forms. For instance, when you’re studying Spanish vocabulary for your AP or SAT subject exam, it can be tempting to be impatient and move quickly through your flashcards. But that means that you might not have committed the definitions to memory, which can make a huge difference when you’re trying to ace the test. Being patient, however, helps you study more thoroughly. That can help you earn top test scores, which will get you into your dream school, which is a huge step on the path to achieving your dreams. In other words, patience pays off in the end! Spanish Quote 7: A Quote About Endurance This quotation is a little different. When you’re looking for Frida Kahlo quotes, Spanish versions are definitely the most accurate and authentic! Our favorite inspirational Frida Kahlo quote is this one: â€Å"Lo que no me mata, me alimenta.† In English, this means â€Å"What doesn’t kill me, nourishes me.† This is a play on Nietzche’s famous saying, â€Å"What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.† Frida Kahlo- one of the most famous Mexican artists of all time- would definitely know a lot about surviving tragedy. Despite her talent, Kahlo’s life was a difficult one: she was disabled by polio and, later, by a terrible traffic accident that also left her infertile. As a result, she struggled with depression as well. But she channeled that into her art, which she said â€Å"completed her life.† That’s why this is one of the best inspirational quotes in Spanish. It shows us how to turn our suffering into something good, which is one of the most important life lessons we can learn. Spanish Quote 8: A Quote About Perseverance Sin prisas, pero sin pausas. This quote literally translates to â€Å"without hurry, but without stopping.† In English, we might translate this to another common aphorism: â€Å"slow and steady wins the race.† This quotation goes really well with Spanish Quote 6, which is about patience. In this case, we’re reminded that moving forwardeven if it’s slowis the key to progress. In fact, slow progress can often lead to success! Consider the story of Angus Macfadyen. In 2007, he was in an accident that left his leg in a cast. But that didn’t stop him from running the London Marathon on crutches! It took him 7 hours and 13 minutes to reach the finish line...but he still finished the race. The best quotes about life help us better understand the hurdles in our way. In this case, overcoming obstacles might take time, but we can still succeed if we persevere. Spanish Quote 9: A Quote About Love Our last Spanish quote about life tackles one of life’s best parts. After all, Spanish is a romance language...so it’s not surprising that some of its best quotes have to deal with love! Quien bien ama, tarde se olvida. This is another quote where the literal translation is a little confusing. Word for word, this quote means, â€Å"He who loves well, forgets the afternoon.† But the idiomatic translation is actually, â€Å"True love never grows old.† This quotation makes us think of one of our favorite tear-jerking scenes of any movie: the opening few minutes of Pixar’s Up. iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F2bk_9T482g" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen/iframe In this scene, viewers watch a couple in loveCarl and Ellieas they celebrate life’s highs and lows. Unfortunately, Ellie passes away before she can achieve her lifelong dream of visiting Paradise Falls. But Carl won’t let her dream die, and he keeps his promise to Ellie by taking her scrapbook- and her house!- to Paradise Falls in one last, grand adventure. Carl may be old, but his love for Ellie never fades...which is maybe the best life lesson of all. (Who’s chopping onions in here?!) What's Next? If you’re studying Spanish, then you know conjugating verbs is half the battle. Irregular verbs can be tricky, though, since they don’t follow the rules. For those, it’s all about memorization! That’s why we’ve put together complete conjugation charts for the most common irregular verbs in Spanish. Why not start your studying off with our conjugation list for ser? And while you’re at it, you should take a look at our vocabulary lists, too. This one’s all about the parts of the body you need to know before you take an SAT or AP Spanish exam. We know you’ve heard of the Spanish Language and Spanish Literature exams, but what about the SAT Spanish Subject Test? Learn everything you need to know about the SAT Spanish Subject Test here. Additionally, this article gives you an insider’s opinion about how hard the exam really isso you might add it to your reading list, too!

The Delivery of Patient Care by Meditech Article

The Delivery of Patient Care by Meditech - Article Example The delivery of patient care is very much dependent on the information gathered on patients. For nurses and doctors administering care for the patient, the importance of accessing such notes and orders with the assistance of Meditech cannot be overstated (Wedel, et.al., 2007). The ease of accessing laboratory values, radiology results as well as doctors’ notes is ensured by Meditech. By allowing easy access to these data, the nurses and doctors would have more time allocated to other more important tasks (Wedel, et.al., 2007). Moreover, they can access the data anytime and anywhere in the hospital facility, negating the need for accessing computers in nurses’ stations. The coordination of information is also less tedious because the nurses or doctors do not have to personally consult with the radiologist in order to get results of tests; moreover, they do not also have to take up too much time with the radiology department or with the medical technicians by securing the results of diagnostic tests personally (Starfield and Shi, 2002). Time is an important commodity in the health care setting because of the issues with limited staff and significant patient admissions, often more than hospitals can handle efficiently (Starfield and Shi, 2002). Sparing any time for health professionals is therefore an important addition to the efficient delivery of health services. In effect, the use of Meditech is a welcome addition to the health care practice. The importance of Meditech in prevention of allergic reactions and potential reactions is also highlighted (Wedel, et.al., 2007).

No topic Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 16

No topic - Assignment Example Another wrong assumption is the relation of the Cuban missile crisis to with the Missiles being installed in Turkey. Sergei Khrushchev is of the view that it had no co relation to it and it was a total different event and affair in the context of global politics. Another wrong assumption, fear and beliefs are attributed to the Russian mindset. This is done so on the account of fact that Russians have always gone with a consistent mindset regarding thwarting their enemies if they reach your borders. The actual account was the fact that Russians decided to engage the Americans through installation of missiles in their neighborhood as the past had shown the United States of America enjoyed safety on account of its geography. A general perspective is presented in the form of how the governments undertake the threats. For example the 9-11 incident, the Sputnik were all brought about with specific goals which were part of the Cold War. Another mystery or miss assumption is clarified through the co relation to the 9-11 or the overall Missile Crisis as it was the first time that the American borders were faced with the direct threat. The information regarding Vietnam war and Cuba event gives an account of how the overall Cold war was engaged. It tells us of the nature of the war that lasted for over nearly five decades. It shows the peculiar nature of the war that was at hand for half a century. The case of Vietnam was an instance where a proxy war was fought and Vietnam was a smaller force to reckon with, yet it gave United states of America real tough time and making it its first defeat of the 20th century through the history (Kort, p .177). Secondly, the Cuban missiles crisis reveal the fragile nature of the global politics that was existent in those days. This gave rise to concepts and wise counsels stressing for reduction in the arms and bringing about agreements such