"International" forms of Biblical Hebrew personal names: Their adoption and adaptation in the international planned language Esperanto

Tsvi Sadan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The present study attempts to examine what presumably guided Zamenhof in choosing "international" forms for Biblical Hebrew personal names when he translated the whole Hebrew Bible into Esperanto. A comparison of these names graphically and phonetically with their equivalents in eight possible source languages, i.e., Hebrew, Latin, Italian, French, English, German, Polish and Russian, reveals a preference for Hebrew, German and Polish forms in descending order as possible etymons ascribable to Zamenhof 's own linguistic background. The morphological adaptation of these names is conditioned by the phonetic characteristics of their etymons.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)253-268
Number of pages16
JournalLanguage Problems and Language Planning
Volume32
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2008

Keywords

  • Biblical Hebrew
  • Esperanto
  • Lexical internationalism
  • Personal names

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