Alternative vocabulary
By Herb Keinon

One of the central functions of the Hebrew Language Academy, located at Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem, is to coin new words.

Indeed, since its establishment in 1953, it has come up with thousands of new words, based on everything from Biblical roots to manuscripts from the Middle Ages to usage by Agnon.

Some of the words stick, while others - for one reason or another - never catch on.

"Our working assumption is that every language can absorb a certain number of words that are completely foreign to it," said the Academy's academic secretary, Ronit Gadish. "But there is a saturation point, and that is when the Hebrew alternatives enter."

Amnon Shappira, a researcher involved with the academy's ambitious Historical Dictionary Project, said that most of the new words being minted today have to do with specific spheres areas like technology, physics, physiology and not general words for everyday discourse.

"There are not many general words that people feel are needed. It is in the specialized fields that words are being developed," he said.

The most difficult field, Gadish said, is computers, where the pace of new terminology is dizzying, and many of the terms are based on initials, making it difficult to come up with a Hebrew alternative that makes sense.

Nevertheless, a great number of computer-related words cooked up in the Academy's labs have taken hold. For example, the word for computer itself, mahshev, is widely used, while in Russia and Italy, for example, a computer is called just that, "computer." There is, however, no Hebrew word for Internet.

Other computer words that have caught-on include, achbar for "mouse," atar for an Internet site, and masach, for "computer screen." At the same time, there are a slew that never made it.

For example, if the Hebrew Language Academy had its way, we would all talk not about a hi-tech industry, but rather a ta'asiya elit; one would walk into a computer store and ask for a mot higui, not a joy stick; and a computer window would be called a "halon tzatz."

It is not only in hi-tech that Hebrew yields the right-of-way to English. Consider the following words the academy has suggested over the last few years, but have remained pretty much in use only in its professional journals, with a Hebraicized English version of the word preferred - for one reason or another - by the public.