Comments on: Shibboleths and Traitors, or, Death and Expulsion as Categories of Historical Phonetics

By: Monthly Gleanings: October 2008, Part Two : OUPblog

Monthly Gleanings: October 2008, Part Two : OUPblog — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:30:21 +0000

[...] as shibboleth (see the post for September 17). Our correspondent’s comment on this Dutch place name is right. From an [...]

By: biblicaltext dot org » Blog Archive » Shibboleths and Traitors, or, Death and Expulsion as Categories of Historical Phonetics

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:35:07 +0000

[...] from and Oxford Etymologist on phonetics as a discriminator of ethnicity and geography, using the Jephthah story of shibboleth [...]

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:07:27 +0000

Dear Professor Liberman,
Pertinent to your wonderful article, may I mention a story that I heard from my Dutch friend. According to him, the name of a Dutch town Scheveningen was used as a shibboleth during World War II, to identify German spies. These would pronounce the initial “Sch” differently from Dutch native-speakers.

For details, please see:
McNamara, Tim. “21st century shibboleth: language tests, identity and intergroup conflict”. Language Policy 2005 (4): 351–370. Springer Netherlands. 2005.

By: Matt Wolf

Matt Wolf — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:56:19 +0000

An interesting post. But surely you mean “Old Testament” (first paragraph). I’ve never thought of Jephthah and his daughter as belonging to the same class of story as Beauty and the Beast. Would that make YHWH the beast, then?

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:44:42 +0000

I am no Hebraist, but I suppose that by “passages of the Jordan” is meant the fords of the river, all of which would be well-known and easy to guard. Not that many people can cross a ford simultaneously, certainly not enough to make it impossible to question each in turn.

I do agree that the specific number given, like most specific large numbers in ancient sources, is improbable.