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Comments on Are questions purely about Hebrew in-scope?
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Are questions purely about Hebrew in-scope?
On Mi Yodeya, questions about Hebrew that aren't clearly about Judaism are considered out of scope. Should that be the case here, or should questions about the Hebrew language be ipso facto on-topic?
Questions to consider (please edit in more if you see fit):
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Is Modern Hebrew treated differently than Rabbinic, Mishnaic, Biblical Hebrew, etc.?
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Are other languages of the Jews, such as Aramaic, Yiddish, and Ladino, treated similarly?
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What about comparative Ancient Near Eastern linguistics?
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Are questions like "how does one conjugate this verb into this tense" on topic?
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Are questions like "what does this Hebrew tattoo mean" on topic?
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Are questions like "please translate this sentence into Hebrew" on topic?
Given that this site is for Q&A's about Judaism, it would seem appropriate that any Hebrew (or Aramaic) language questio …
4y ago
We should allow any Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic questions with no restrictions, even ones that clearly have no …
4y ago
Speaking personally, I agree with the other posts which propose allowing questions related to these Jewish languages but …
4y ago
One solution is a Hebrew Language category. See here. Potentially all your examples would be in scope in that category.
4y ago
I think that questions about Hebrew and Jewish languages should be allowed. Knowledge of Hebrew/JL is useful for studyin …
4y ago
Post
Speaking personally, I agree with the other posts which propose allowing questions related to these Jewish languages but not related to Judaism as a religion.
Speaking as a moderator, I just want to emphasize that the help center mentions that you should do some basic research before asking your question. Presuming for the sake of example that these types of questions are, everything else being equal, allowed:
- Translation wouldn't be allowed because of the ease by which any of these languages can be translated with a Google search (yes, there are actually Aramaic to English translators out there!).
- Spelling questions should similarly be off-topic, but asking why a word is spelled the way it is would not be. (Compare "how do you spell the name Ahasuerus in Biblical Hebrew" with "why is Ahasuerus spelled אחשורוש in some locations in the Megillah, but אחשורש in others.")
- Verb conjugation would be off-topic because of the ease by which one could search for that. Alternatively we might have a post at the introduction of this policy which gives a brief description of the verb conjugation rules, and all later conjugation questions can be closed as duplicates unless they demonstrate why that word is an exception to the general rules.
- "What does this word say" should similarly be off-topic considering the fact that there's a number of free apps which allow you to take a picture of a foreign language and will automatically translate it for you.
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