Part 3: Language in a Pluralistic Society: 8. Attitudes toward Foreign Words in Contemporary Hebrew.

Foreign words are not integrated into Hebrew. They tend to avoid formations such as verb inflections, the construct state, and possessive pronominal suffixes. Etymologically and morphologically, they remain extraneous to the language. A study examined attitudes toward foreign words in contemporary Hebrew. Regarding absorption of Hebrew equivalents into the language, attitudes toward the social factors that influence the differences of this absorption appear to tend to the social rather that to linguistic factors. Two kinds of linguistic attitudes are discernable, namely, those regarding the language as a value, a symbol of national identification, and those for whom language is a communication instrument serving their personal needs.