Language
Song of Songs for the first time gives literary representation to the everyday post-exilic vernacular. It contains loan words from languages with which Hebrew had contact in post-exilic times, such as Persian, Greek, and Aramaic, and contains numerous items of vocabulary that are otherwise unknown in Biblical Hebrew but are known from Rabbinic Hebrew, and these expressions give the impression of being part of a living language and not the result of an archaic or artificial style. There are longer phrases that are typical of Rabbinic Hebrew in word order and are different from Biblical Hebrew.
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Famous quotes containing the word language:
“All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“Please stop using the word “Negro.”... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven variety of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really truly colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.”
—Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)