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Well I'm playing with the Qarthadastim right now and I'm amazed by how similar is their language to Hebrew. Almost all names of their units and buildings sound exactly like in Hebrew.

For example: Mishteret Izrahim Feenikim -משטרת אזרחים פיניקים
Ha'Abbirim Ha'Qdosim sel Astarte -האבירים הקדושים של אשתורת
Qala'im Numidim -קלעים נומידים
and so on.
I'm only disappointed of the lack of voicemod, and as a native Hebrew speaker, if I could help in any way, I'll be glad to.

Modern Hebrew is not connected with Ancient Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is closely related to the Punic dialect of the Phoenicians of Carthage. There is a Punic voicemod that is very close to completion.

Foot

As a matter of fact: Ancient Hebrew is dead. In fact, ~14 AD it was already for all practical intents and purposes: dead.

The language spoken in Israel is a modern recronstruction based on Punic invention.

Maybe they are speaking yiddish?
from what words I used to know in Yiddish, it was similar to mordern hebrew...a bit.

isn´t yiddish not more related to german? a mix-language of german jews in the holy roman empire.

Yiddish is written in hebrew letters but it sound a lot like german.

I was also very surprised to see that Carthaginian unit and building names sound exactly like Hebrew ones. At one point I even thought that EB team didn't have enough historical evidence about Carthaginian names and decided to use Hebrew ones.

P.S. And Yiddish is indeed a modified middle-German medieval dialect mixed with some Hebrew words (at least that's what I know about it).

It is in fact an older German dialect. Native German speakers should have no troubles understanding it. At least I am more able to follow a conervsation in Yiddish than for example in Pennsylvania Deutsch.

Quite a bit older, in fact. Best estimates are that Yiddish came about/evolved/developed in the 10th or 11th century in the Rhineland. How developed, I don't know, but that still gives some kind of estimate of how long the language has been around in some form.

ancient hebrew wasnt dead. it continued on well until the destruction of the 2nd temple.

btw, the translation for the holy temple in jerusalem is wrong.
it should be "the house of holiness."
in hebrew it translates backwards. so "beit hamikdash" isnt "the holy house" its "the house of holiness"
and thats a literal translation.

btw yiddish is a mixture of hebrew, german, and a bit of russian, no matter what wikipedia says

Can't second that. I gotta say (living in southwest Germany) yiddish has many similarities with the German language, but it's no way easy to follow a yiddish conversation if you were risen with dialect-free German as I was (hell, I have problems understanding the Fränkisch the people talk in my village )

Well, my bad. I never played as carthage and didnt bother reading the names, so I didnt know it was hebrew. Besides...I was told, when my grandma taught it to me, that yiddish was and old jewish language.

Definitely, Hooahguy. It started out as German/Hebrew only, but when it expanded east, it did eventually incorporate a bit of Russian.

Several of my (older) relatives used to speak bits of Yiddish. They were from Germany, and emigrated in the 1930s. I never could understand what they were saying when they switched from English to Yiddish. Their Yiddish had almost no Slavic component, and was almost all German based. My wife's family is more from Eastern Europe, including Russia and parts of Poland. Their Yiddish, while essentially the same, has a much heavier Russian influence. Lots of people would have you believe that Yiddish used to have different dialects, but that they contracted back into one main form. Not so, at least according to my experience which is admittedly not a scientific study.

in school i have to write an essay in history about this. many jews had to immigrate to eastern europe because of religious treatments in central europe in the 15th 16th 17th and mostly it was not allowed for jews to settle free in towns, so they lived in the "städtle" for there own and the language was a little bit protected by the times.
but i think it´s more polish than russian, but i don´t know if there are big differences...

hmm. this is all very intreguing. anybody here with a knowlege of ancient hebrew?

I've been holding an argument same with TA up there, only in another forum. It would help a lot.
anyone want to PM? thanks in advance.

There is some Polish in there too, but it's more minimal than German or Russian, I think. Not a true scholar on the subject by any means, so I could very well be wrong.

You're point about the migrations to Eastern Europe is well-taken. Interestingly, one of the theories (and it is only a theory as far as I know) about why Jews were involved in moneylending and other capital-intensive industries has to do with the fact that Jews were forced to migrate so often. Because they might be forced out of an area at the drop of a hat, they couldn't afford to have heavy merchandise that had to be loaded and transported quickly. Rather, they could only take what they could carry or load quickly, and money was often the easiest item to move and had currency everywhere.

There are of course other equally plausible factors that could explain it, either in whole or in part (the Christian prohibition against usury comes to mind), but I think it's an interesting theory nonetheless.

The only occasion I heard people talking in Yiddish to each other was when I was in New York on a holidays. Certainly I did not understand every single word but understood what they were talking about.

AFAIK Jews were [often] not allowed to possess any land; and this may have had something to do with it as well?

Yes, there were certainly restrictions against what Jews could and couldn't do/own, and the restriction against holding land would certainly be a contributing factor. Still, I think it is important to remember that those restrictions didn't hold in all places at all times. For example, we tend to think of the Spanish kingdom as one of the more restrictive states toward medieval Jews due to the expulsion in 1492. However, until roughly the 1300s, Jews were allowed to hold real estate in Castillian Spain, and many (some of whom were conversos) were individually very well-respected in their communities, even if the Jewish community as a whole was not.

One of the few things that did not change from place to place was the myth of the blood libel. The short (medieval) version is that Jews would kidnap a young Christian boy, and then commit human sacrifice, usually at night, as part of a religious ritual. This was such a fear, that the Venetian ghetto only had two bridges in or out of it, and these were raised from dark until dawn. The blood libel led to many pogroms against Jews throughout history, even into the 20th century in Eastern Europe and Russia, and the myth is still advanced in some parts of the world. (Interestingly, the first account of the theory comes from 1st century Alexandria, where a writer (whose name escapes me) claimed that Jews murdered young Greeks in the temple in Jerusalem.)

Circling back around, that is why I think the theory I mentioned above, while certainly not the whole story, has some merit. Yes, the prohibition against usury would contribute, and yes restrictions on land-holding would contribute as well (as would other factors), but the fear/persecution of Jews has a lot to do with the "career-choices" in my very humble opinion.

I see no way that this blood libel is true; why would a religion explicitly and vehemently ban human sacrafice (a.k.a story of Abraham and his son (which one is dependant on religion), turn around and slaughter greeks/ christians/ palestinians or something? It simply makes no sense. that's like Islam banning Alcohol(true), then turning around and everyone is drinking like selim the sot.

then again, bigotry or hatred warrants no logic to it unfortunately.

Isn't it exactly the same way for christians and muslims? ;)

did anyone hear the joke Lewis Black made about this?

i LOL'ed @ that one.

I don't see how that's possible considering we know almost nothing about Punic. As far as I've heard Ivrit (Modern Hebrew) is a development of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Hebrew dialects as they existed in the late 19th century (the difference between the two, and between them and the Temani/Yemenite Hebrew dialect, is in pronunciation). It's mostly Ashkenazi in pronunciation officially; Temani Jews pronounce things very differently, for instance. The connection between Biblical and Modern Hebrew is direct, though it went through many intermediate stations over the milennia, of course.

That's the story as far as I've heard it. And, no offense, but I doubt I've been living in a dream world all this time.

Bah at least Judism is recognized as a major religion... My Hellenistic Pagan beliefs are barely recognized anymore. :(

From this thread over at the TWC.

Foot

Very interesting, Foot. Thanks!

hm... ill ask my dad about this....
he would know better than anyone else here....

Errm?

Is this a classic "My dad can beat up your dad" ?

or in this case

"My dad can beat up your eb team member"

or indeed

"My Dad can beat up your Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages"

Foot

Note the following from here:

Foot

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