Big love for this man's lectures very informative and also enjoy the jokes thank you Henry Abramson

Darn, I was going to grab you an analysis of that phrase "we heap blame" in the second poem you quoted from Qasmuna. I tried finding the original Arabic in order to do some etymological analysis, but my results failed once I realized I don't have access to some of the prime articles at institutions like Cambridge. However, I did find in, "Jewish History: The Big Picture" that it was also translated as "We always mound blame on fate's decree." So maybe you can treat it like the story of the different Torah scrolls as we see in Talmud. Just go with the text that is (relatively) the same and assume that the original Arabic more appropriately translates to blaming than assigning responsibility. On a side note, as far as I know, Arabic does have something similar, and quite a bit more extended, to Hebrew's binyanim. So maybe the act of assigning blame can be expressed in many different conjugations. Say blaming someone as an intensive form with assigning responsibility being a simple form. I don't know. Maybe the next time I'm in Miami I'll have an answer.

Fantastic, as always. However... could you please - if you can - share some of your Yiddish phrases with some English translation so that those of us not fortunate enough to have been born with this interesting language can partake of it's wit. :*)

I got bumped several times trying to view this. I want to know everything about my people!

A bit confused about that. I would think it would be more semitic languages. There was so much high-level rabbinic writing in Judeo-Arabic, and Aramaic (as well as a nice bit of Greek and Latin) has since the Talmud basically become embedded in Hebrew, including a high percentage of modern Hebrew. I am no linguist in any way, but is seems to me that semitic languages are rather close to each other. But, yes, without Hebrew one couldn't start.

It's a voiceless *VELAR* fricative. But ח should properly should be pronounced as a voiceless pharyngeal fricative

Could you tell me the original Hebrew (with nekkudot) for "show me a translator and I will show you a liar"? You're not going to attribute the the last dog joke to Old Jews Telling Jokes? I know someone sent you the CD. You mentioned it in an earlier lecture. International Sino-Judaic Friendship Day does have a nicer ring to it with all classical roots. I used to call it International Sino-Jewish Friendship Day but realized that this is largely a North American phenomenon so dropped the international. Chinese people in China have no clue about this or about Jews more generally, though to my surprise VOA Chinese did report on it on Christmas with a humorous 20 sec. clip of Justice Kagan from a congressional committee hearing you can see here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/btFpfLSBkqu0eps.html I think you rather exaggerated the exchange on the Chanukkah video. I imagine I'm the only practicing linguist who watches your lectures regularly, and I don't comment on the various linguistic errors I notice simply out of courtesy not to mention the complexity of describing even the most trivial of errors. If you are willing to wade through a lengthy letter, I could write you in detail about them and the other errors I've noticed which I've kept along with the other notes I take during your lectures. I only felt the need to comment because the user rosencjb was demonstrably ignorant of basic linguistic description and not qualified to discuss the matter though he may have some background in philology. He threw around a meaningless term "voiceless fricative" so as to give a false impression to non-specialists of linguistic competence which you clearly fell for. Furthermore, linguists generally don't throw these terms around outside of the field, because they are not widely known or understood. Look at wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heth#Hebrew_.E1.B8.A4et It clearly states it's a "voiceless uvular fricative." The term "voiceless fricative" doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, because it is practically never used except in rarefied circumstances, and this one does not number among them. Calling the sound "guttural" is like saying that Riga is in the Baltics which is perfectly alright, but his comment was analogous to saying that "Riga is not in the Baltics! It is the capital of a country!" It's utter nonsense. There are lots of capitals of countries (voiceless fricatives). You don't have "Latvia" (uvular) it's quite meaningless. His criticism was baseless, uninformed, and didn't even mention the actual (trivial) errors in the video. I was simply coming out in your defense against a baseless accusation.