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Is the Nonsensical Language in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ Derived From Hebrew?

A new paper from a professor of English Literature at the University of Houston proposes some interesting linguistic theories about the 1726 satire

by
Jonathan Zalman
August 17, 2015
20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox

Dr. Irving N. Rothman, an English literature professor at the University of Houston, recently published an article called, “The ‘Hnea Yahoo’ of Gulliver’s Travels and Jonathan Swift’s Hebrew Neologisms,’ in the annual Swift Studies publication. In it, Rothman, who also teaches Jewish Studies courses, outlines his theory that Swift used Hebrew words throughout the four-part novel, reported The Guardian’s Alison Flood on Monday.

Lemuel Gulliver’s travels take him to all over the world. After a shipwreck in part one of the book, Gulliver, a half-pint of brandy deep, passes out. When he awakens, he finds himself giant-like, a prisoner to the six-inch tall inhabitants of Lilliput: “I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same manner.”

In time, Gulliver hears the Lilliputians speak, as he narrates thus:

They brought me a second hogshead, which I drank in the same manner, and made signs for more; but they had none to give me. When I had performed these wonders, they shouted for joy, and danced upon my breast, repeating several times as they did at first, Hekinah degul. They made me a sign that I should throw down the two hogsheads, but first warning the people below to stand out of the way, crying aloud, Borach mevolah; and when they saw the vessels in the air, there was a universal shout of Hekinah degul.

Let’s begin with “Hekinah degul.” Reported Flood:

“Degul”, writes Rothman, is the Hebrew word for “flag”, and the verb “hikinah” in Hebrew means “to transfer, impart, or give.” “Thus,” writes Rothman, “one might deduce that Hekinah Degul pronounces a militant stance, offers a display of colours, and urges Gulliver’s capitulation to the Lilliputian flag.”



He also suggests that adding an “s” to “hekinah” gives the Hebrew word for “God or inspiration”. “The Lilliputians may have thought that they were in the presence of a miraculous being, Gulliver, and sought to claim him for their own.”

And as for “Borach mevolah?”

As for the Lilliputians’ cry of “Borach mevolah” after Gulliver’s drinking prowess, meanwhile, Rothman says that “baruch” is the Hebrew word for “blessed” and “mivolah,” spelled in Hebrew “mivolim”, means “complete defeat,” arguing that “Gulliver’s drinking all that liquor leaves him helpless and in a drunken state.”

Rothman also addresses the language of the “Yahoos”—Rothman describes them as “the antithesis of the godhead”—who appear in the novel thus:

I did indeed observe that the Yahoos were the only animals in this country subject to any diseases; which, however, were much fewer than horses have among us, and contracted, not by any ill-treatment they meet with, but by the nastiness and greediness of that sordid brute. Neither has their language any more than a general appellation for those maladies, which is borrowed from the name of the beast, and called hnea-yahoo, or Yahoo’s evil; and the cure prescribed is a mixture of their own dung and urine, forcibly put down the Yahoo’s throat. This I have since often known to have been taken with success, and do here freely recommend it to my countrymen for the public good, as an admirable specific against all diseases produced by repletion.

Writes Flood:

Rothman agrees with earlier interpretations that the word “yahoo”, which describes the bestial creatures of the fourth book in the novel, is derived from the four-letter holy Hebrew name of God, YHWH, pronounced “Yahweh”. But he goes one step further to analyse why Swift might have used the name of God to describe the “unquestionably evil beings” with “the biblical name of God”.



The Yahoos, he argues, are described as “hnea Yahoo”, and if the word “hnea” is read from right to left, like Hebrew, the word becomes “ayn”, meaning “not”.



“Critics have recognised the venal and sinful nature of the Yahoos, but none have noted the fact that the name Hnea Yahoo could represent the Yahoo as the antithesis of the godhead,” he writes.

The kicker?

“[Rothman],” writes Flood, “said he first realised that Swift might be using Hebrew when he observed that the alphabet in the land of the giants, the Brobdingnags, has 22 letters:

“No law in that country must exceed in words the number of letters in their alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty,” writes Swift. The Hebrew alphabet also has 22 letters, Rothman points out, and Swift had studied Hebrew at Trinity College, as an Anglican minister.

Related: Plot Heavy

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.