Language
Agnon's writing often used words and phrases that differed from what would become established modern Hebrew. His distinct language is based on traditional Jewish sources, such as the Torah and the Prophets, Midrashic literature, the Mishnah, and other Rabbinic literature. Some examples include:
- bet kahava for modern bet kafe (coffee house / café)
- batei yadayim (lit. "hand-houses") for modern kfafot (gloves)
- yatzta (יצתה) rather than the modern conjugation yatz'a (יצאה) ("she went out")
- rotev (רוטב) meaning soup in place of modern marak (מרק)
Bar-Ilan University has made a computerized concordance of his works in order to study his language.
Read more about this topic: Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)