If you know English, you automatically know quite a bit of Hebrew.
Anyone who knows a few languages can see that there are a lot of words that are similar, in what is defined academically, as very different languages, from different ‘root’ bases. For example, milk in Russian is ‘Malako’, the consonanst MLK are the same, but the standard academic answer is that there is no connection between the languages.
Twenty years ago my husband, (who is a very good researcher, especially with search engines, where I am a moron at this), was able to trace back to the first German scholar who patched together this whole Indo European root thing that we are supposed to believe. And this scholar didn’t give too much to back up this theory-- and nobody that we found seemed to challenge him.
This took place at the same time that much of early American history was taken off the shelves (it was known in the 19th century that the Vikings had at one point colonised the Northeast, and that Roman coins were found in America—check out Barry Fell for starters on this. He will blow your mind- if truth is what blows your mind).
Also in the 19th century a famous American-- Noah Webster put out a dictionary in which he gave Hebrew roots (he called them Semitic roots) to English words. His dictionary stood until the Indo-European fad took over the campuses. Those of you who believe academia to be a world of pure thoughts and idealism and unprejudiced searching for the truth, well I have news for you,it just ain’t so.
But let’s get back to Hebrew. An English professor Isaac E. Mozeson who had a Yeshiva (Jewish school) background wrote a book called The Word (Shapolsky Publishers NY 1989). Mozeson said that he couldn’t help noticing the correspondence between Hebrew words and English ones. He wrote a very interesting book, and my only criticism of it is, that because he was an academic he looked for complex things and missed a lot of the more simple relationships.
For example, the English word raven: he thought that it came from the Hebrew Orev (raven) by a transformation of letters. I think that this is pushing it, especially since I think that Raven comes from the Hebrew word Re’avon, or Hunger—they both sound nearly the same and ravens are ravenous aren’t they?
The word “over” in English is almost exactly the Hebrew work O-ver, which means to “cross over, go over, pass over”. The word ‘damage’, well that’s a fun one, the --age is an ending,(man-age, spill-age, vill-age); the word ‘dam’ in Hebrew is blood, but it also has the meaning of money when it is written ‘Damin’, with secondary meanings of a fine –for damage done for instance. Another word which is close is gosling, in Hebrew baby birds that are born featherless are “goslim”.
Other words that are similar in meaning and sound are mobil in English and Movil in Hebrew which means moving something from one place to another, The word to bo or ‘boos’ and the Hebrew ‘boz’ to scorn or ridicule,is another and so are the word pore, and the Hebrew word Pior, which has to do with a hole, the word sum and the Hebrew sium, or end (product), the word Brooch and the Hebrew Bri-ach or lock and many others.
Placenames also have Hebrew correlations, Sheffield, (if Shef is what is was and not some shortening of a Latin multisylable (like Worster for WestChestershire)—“Shefi” in Hebrew is bountiful, prosperous. And the word Shire in English, fits the Hebrew Shi-or or portion, just as Parish is very close to Pa-rish a hermit, and if you have read the history of the Celtic Church you will remember that the original missionaries were monks or hermits.
These were words that we or our friends ‘discovered’ and now I’ll give a few from The Word :”cane” from the Hebrew “ca-neh” or reed, “mill”, from the Hebrew verb “Malal” (mll), to break down, “mite” from the Hebrew word “Mi-oot” or minority, “tiara” from the Hebrew “Atara”, or crown, and “rum-ble” from Raam, thunder.
There are correlations between English and other languages, not only the Germanic, as I mentioned, English and Russian, and there are correlations between Hebrew and French, Russian, Gealic, etc. For example, the English word direction, (direct) and the Russian Daroga or road and the Hebrew Derech, which is both road and direction is a double whammie all based on DRG/CH.
I’m wondering if people out there may know any other language correlations, for example French and Persian (a hunch of mine) Basque and ?, Japanese and ? (there are supposedly 11,000 Hebrew words in Japanese, and with my very very very very limited skim-only-knowledge I found a few myself --any Mekora readers out there?) or Lakota and? Cree and ? etc.
The internet, one Rabbi said, is the new tree of knowledge, which we can use for good or for evil. If everybody uses this wonderful tool for looking for truth about all sorts of things, we may finally find a way of uplifting the trait of curiosity that downed our mother Eve (by the way Eve might have bitten a fig or a grape, not necessarily an apple).
