Oldal 77 [77]
THE HEBREW LANGUAGE AND COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS...
By way of introduction his Ratiocinatio mentioned the previous grammar
writers, Szenczi Molnár, Geleji and Medgyesi, as scholars who were correcting
“abusum & corruptelarum” “to give a good example in urging their nation to
apply the correct use of language in speech as well as in writing.””' This is also
the goal of Tétfalusi Kis, who declared his opponents illiterate (rudiores), and
maintained that the Bible translations were made on the behalf of the com¬
mon people, since “those who understand Latin and other languages could use
the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles.””* Latin, Greek and Hebrew are the most
natural sources of reference for the Ratiocinatio to illustrate with parallels the
correct pronunciation and writing of Hungarian.
Considerable knowledge of Hebrew is expected of his readers by Tötfalusi
Kis,”? who uses Hebrew characters and does not explain his Hebrew gram¬
matical references.“ Consequently we can presume that by the end of the
seventeenth century it was natural to use the characteristics of Hebrew gram¬
mar when teaching Hungarian grammar. Throughout Ratiocinatio elements
of Hebrew grammar are employed: pronomen affixum (pp. 28, 30, 38),”° status
constructus (p. 28), radix/thema (pp. 30, 38-50, 64), radix as the 3" person sin¬
gular (p. 40, 72),”° Hebrew conjugation (Kal: pp. 40, 56, 68; Pihel [sic!]: pp. 40,
56, 66, 68; Hiphil: p. 40), the tripartite division of the parts of speech: nomen,
verb and particle (p. 48, 56, 62), the use of the particle x1 (p. 50), litterae servile
(p. 60), Hebrew phonetics (pp. 72-92: begadkefat letters, s°wa’ mobile, mater
lectionis, maqgef, dagesh lene, dagesh forte).”’
We can assert, therefore, with Robert Dan, “that in Hebrew philology Mikldés
Totfalusi Kis exceeded the knowledge required for Bible translation, and as a
71 “ut inducer possent gentem ad curam linguae suae habendam, tum in loquendo, tum in scri¬
bendo." ZSILINSZKY, Tótfalusi: Ratiocinatio, 24.
"...gui linguam Latinam vel etiam alias lingvas intelligunt, illi possunt etiam Bibliis Hebraic.
Graec. vel Latinis uti & utuntur” Ibid., 78-80.
Dän assumes that “... the knowledge of Hebrew, though on an elementary level, was attainable
in Hungary." DÁN, Róbert, A héber stúdiumok háttere Magyarországon, in R. Dán (ed.), Huma¬
nizmus, reformáció, antitrinitarizmus és a héber nyelv Magyarországon, Budapest, Akadémiai,
1973, 25-36, especially 34.
Cf. Tétfalusi’s remark: “ut tacea de Hiphil, quod omnibus notum est” (except Hiphil, that is known
by all). Zs1L1nszky, Totfalusi: Ratiocinatio, 40.
The invention of Tétfalusi is to differenciate between the root (radix) and the affix. Cf. the note
of C. Vladar in ZSILINSZKY, Tótfalusi: Ratiocinatio, 100, n. 8.
Tótfalusi differenciated the Hebrew radix as 3rd person singular perfect tense from the Hun¬
garian radix as 3rd person singular present tense. ZSILINSZKY, Tótfalusi: Ratiocinatio, 40.
In this section Tótfalusi explains the orthography of Biblical personal names alone, conseguently
only Hebrew and Greek phonetic rules are referred to.
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