A Bit More Detail

• Architectuul talks about the remarkable and distinctive housing estates of south London, like Alexandra Road, currently under pressure from developers and unsympathetic governments.


• Bad Astronomer Phil Plait takes a look at Bennu, set to be visited by the OSIRIS-REx probe.


• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about meeting people you've met online via social networks, making friends even. Myself, I've done this all the time: Why not use these networks to their fullest in a fragmented vast world?


• Centauri Dreams celebrates the now-completed mission of the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope.


• D-Brief looks at the distinctive seasons of Triton, and the still-open questions surrounding Neptune's largest moon.


• At JSTOR Daily, Nancy Bilyeau writes about the import of the famous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, something often underplayed despite its potential for huge change and its connection to wider conflicts.


• Language Hat notes the name of God in the Hebrew tradition, Yahweh. Where did it come from?


• Language Log shares an interesting idea for helping to preserve marginalized languages: Why not throw a language party celebrating the language?


• Lawyers, Guns and Money considers the question of what historical general or military leader would do best leading the armies of the living dead.


• The NYR Daily looks at the problems with Erdogan's big investments in public infrastructure in Turkey, starting with the new Istanbul airport.


• Starts With A Bang's Ethan Siegel considers the possibility of life in the very early universe. Earth-like life could have started within a billion years of the Big Bang; Earth life might even have begun earlier, for that matter.


• Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps shows a map of Europe identifying which countries are the more chauvinistic in the continent.


• Window on Eurasia notes the strength of the relatively recent division between Tatars and Bashkirs, two closely related people with separate identities grown strong in the Soviet era.

• Anthropology.net looks at the genetics of how the Inuit have adapted to cold weather.


• 'Nathan Smith's Apostrophen shares the author's plans for the coming year.


• Beyond the Beyond's Bruce Sterling shares Margaret Atwood's commitment to fighting for freedom of expression.


• Crooked Timber asks its readers for recommendations in Anglophone science fiction.


• D-Brief notes the discovery of the human mesentery.


• The Dragon's Gaze looks at the protoplanetary disk of LkCa 15 disk.


• Far Outliers looks at some lobsters imported to Japan from (a) Christmas Island.


• Joe. My. God. notes Janet Jackson has given birth.


• Language Hat examines the contrast often made between indigenous and immigrant languages.


• Language Log looks at the names of the stations of the Haifa subway.


• Steve Munro notes Bathurst Station's goodbye to Honest Ed's.


• The Planetary Society Blog examines the Dawn probe's discoveries at Ceres in the past year.


• Window on Eurasia looks at how the permafrost of the Russian far north is melting and endangering entire cities, and contrasts the prosperity of the Estonian city of Narva relative to the decay of adjacent Ivangorod.

• Bloomberg notes how an economic boom will let Sweden postpone hard decisions, looks at the popularity of the Korean Wave in China, suggests that subsidies are going to be a big issue for cash-short Arab governments, looks at the investigation in Bulgaria of groups which arrest refugees, and looks at the long-term problems of the Russian economy.


• CBC reports on a Saskatchewan woman who has a refuge for pet rats.


• Global News illustrates the dire social conditions in the Ontario North, hitting particularly strongly First Nations groups.


• The Guardian reports on speculation that Neanderthals may have died in significant numbers from African diseases brought by human migrants.


• MacLean's notes a study of handwriting styles in ancient Israel which suggest that literacy was reasonably common.


• The Mississauga News reports on a new PFLAG support group for South Asians in Peel.


• National Geographic notes the strong pressures on island birds towards flightlessness.


• Science Mag notes subtle genetic incompatibilities between human women and male Neanderthals which would have hindered reproduction.


• The USA Today network has a story examining the recent HIV outbreak in Indiana.


• Vice reports on the huge cleavages within the NDP, something also examined at the CBC.

• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly asks readers how they define their community.


• Centauri Dreams looks at the Rosetta probe's unusual comet.


• Crooked Timber notes the death of Brian Friel.


• The Dragon's Gaze reports that hot Jupiter 51 Pegasi b apparently does not have rings.


• The Dragon's Tales suggests the bright spots on Ceres are salt deposits.


• Language Hat wonders where the sabra accent of Hebrew comes from.


• Languages of the World suggests grammar is a better guide to language history than words.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at the Russian deployment in Syria.


• The Map Room's Jonathan Crowe exposes the failings of the Mercator projection.


• Marginal Revolution wonders if there might be a South Asian free trade zone soon.


• Out There notes that Earth's near-twin Venus is important for many reasons, not least as a guide to exoplanets.


• Window on Eurasia looks at population growth in the North Caucasus and examines xenophobic rhetoric in Russia.

• Centauri Dreams anticipates Ceres.


• Crooked Timber notes Big Oil is turning against Big Coal.


• Geocurrents shares Martin Lewis' slides on Nigeria.


• Language Hat, reflecting on Irish and Hebrew, considers language change and shift.


• Language Log examines the historical American broadcast r-less accent.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money wants a good history of the Occupy movement.


• The New APPS Blog wonders what philosophical work might look like as technology and modes of scholarship evolve.


• The Power and Money's Noel Maurer looks at Mexico's political parties.


• Towleroad notes controversy in Houston over elderly LGBT housing and relations with police.


• The Volokh Conspiracy argues against the policies that led to Orange Telecom's withdrawal from the Israeli occupied territories.


• Window on Eurasia looks at Russification, notes how Russia's satellite program depends on American imports, and looks at the military incapacity of Tajikistan versus foreign threats like ISIS.

Little more than 100 years have passed since Hebrew first began to rediscover its tongue. Last spoken in Old Testament times, it now is firmly established as the primary language of about 5 million Jewish Israelis, not to mention some 2 million additional Hebrew speakers scattered through the world.

The once-dead language possesses a rich, modern vocabulary, extensive enough to support a 16-volume dictionary, with an even more comprehensive work on the way.

Its speakers can swear, sing, argue, mate, conduct wars, negotiate peace treaties, publish newspapers and carry out any of the countless other human activities that profit from the use of words.

Hebrew also boasts a thriving literature, including a Nobel laureate--Shmuel Agnon in 1966--plus a host of prominent contemporary writers, led by Amos Oz.

This, in any language, would constitute a mouthful. In the case of Hebrew, however, the transformation is extraordinary.

A parlance last used in oral form by biblical prophets has accommodated itself in only a few decades to a world of six-lane highways, reality TV and the Internet.

Born in 1858, Ben Yehuda arrived in the Holy Land in the early 1880s as a pilgrim from czarist Russia.

At the time, not a solitary person on Earth used Hebrew as a means of communication for daily affairs. In fact, barely a soul had done so for more than 2,000 years.

True, the language survived in written form for liturgical purposes, but nobody spoke it at the dinner table, during sporting contests or while preparing for bed.

Depending on where they lived, Jews in modern times spoke a variety of languages, ranging from Yiddish, Ladino and Arabic to an array of European tongues.

Inspired by the early stirrings of Zionism, Ben Yehuda decided that what Jews really needed in order to become a nation--apart from a land of their own--was a common means of communication.

Quixotically perhaps, he settled on Hebrew, which had ceased to be the spoken language of the Jews several centuries before the birth of Christ, according to Frieden.

By the time of the Romans' destruction of the second temple in 70 AD--the event that sparked the flight of the Jews into the Diaspora--those fleeing souls mostly spoke Aramaic.

Nonetheless, on his arrival in Jerusalem in the years of Ottoman rule, Ben Yehuda somehow convinced his wife that they should converse exclusively in Hebrew, both between themselves and with their children. Their first son, Yitzhak, is credited with the first child whose first language was Hebrew in two millennia.

"This is what they did," says Birnbaum. "This was the start of the whole thing."

Other Jews were moving to the Holy Land, many of them inspired by the Zionist dream, and Ben Yehuda managed to persuade neighbouring families to take part in what quickly became his life's central project.

Although not a linguist, Ben Yehuda set about coining thousands of words to describe daily phenomena--articles and activities missing from Hebrew's ancient vocabulary.

"There wasn't a vernacular in Hebrew," notes Frieden. "How do you speak a language that only exists as a religious language?"

Against great odds, Hebrew began to catch on among Jews as a means of conversing about their day-to-day affairs.

In 1914, eight years before Ben Yehuda's death, an association of Jewish teachers in the Holy Land decided to make Hebrew the official medium of instruction in their schools, a critical milestone in the language's journey back from the dead. By the time Israel was established as a state in 1948, it was home to 600,000 Hebrew speakers.