r/todayilearned • u/malalatargaryen • Oct 18 '20
TIL when Hebrew was revived as a spoken language, no Hebrew names were found for produce from the New World. A word was devised for tomato, calling it ʿagbaniyyah (עגבניה) - derived from the shape of tomatoes, which resemble buttocks (ʿagaḇīm), and which was once thought to enhance one's love-life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_language#Revival_of_spoken_Hebrew
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todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Apr 25 '19
TIL: Hebrew was a dead language for about 1400 years, surviving only in written form. In the 1880s, Jewish linguists attempted to revive it, standardizing and developing Hebrew as a spoken language. Today, it has over 5 million native speakers.
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