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H E B R E W   -   E U R O P E A N

SIMILARITIES

AVOIDING COMPLICATED THEORETICAL RULES

Languages, words and roots undergo nearly infinite changes. This has led to the necessity to reconstruct often complicated rules or "laws" of change and passage from language to language, in time and space, that can help to understand kinships between words that present themselves as totally different.

We have thought that if a common origin exists between European and Semitic tongues, it must be possible to find at least a considerable number of cases , in which two words from the two different language-groups show a certain similarity both in the way they sound as well as in the concept or meaning they represent. That means we will for the time being renounce to attempts to reconstruct complicated rules of change between the Groups, that might allow us to hypothesize unknown common roots.

SELECTIVE APPROACH

We realize that this approach and these demands limit very much the total quantity of evidence of kinship we will be able to find. But on the other hand that evidence will be stronger, more clear and more easy to understand. We submit to the reader’s judgment a list of over a 1000 numbered entries, presenting this kind and degree of similarities between Hebrew roots and their Indo-European relatives.

We will not claim that all entries give proof of the relationship we are looking for. Some of them may look fairly certain, others more doubtful. Probably many of them require further investigation before we can establish full certainties.  

NO LOANWORDS

There also exist lists of many Semitic roots, Arabic as well as Hebrew, that are at the basis of words used in modern English. Those remain out of our field of investigation, as they have led to loanwords. And loanwords from one language into another have nothing to do with a possible common origin of the two tongues

FACT FINDING ONLY

This list is in itself not a conclusion. It should be considered as simple fact-finding. After that we will have to reflect about the conclusions that may be drawn on the basis of the similarities that have been found.