What’s in a Word?

speech

language

שפה · לשון · לשון הקודש

Bottom line

Both mean language, and both are body parts taken over for speech: safah is the lip, lashon the tongue. Rav Dessler: the lip is outside the body and the tongue inside, so a lashon is a language whose speakers have taken its inner content into themselves, while a safah is one they hold only externally, its mechanics without its values. That is why Hebrew is Lashon HaKodesh, and why the generation of the Haflagah, who spoke the same words with none of their content, had one safah (Bereishis 11:1). When translating, keep the body image where a derashah leans on it; elsewhere "language" serves for both.

Distinctions

safah (שפה)

Literally the lip, the outer organ. Rav Dessler: a tongue is called a safah when its speakers carry only its technical, outward features and not its core values. Bereishis 11:1 says the pre-Haflagah world was of one safah: they spoke Lashon HaKodesh but applied it only on the surface, without its essence. In modern Hebrew safah is the ordinary word for language, and Hebrew is called HaSafah HaIvris; the older usage does not work that way.

lashon (לשון)

Literally the tongue, the inner organ. Rav Dessler: a language earns the name lashon when its speakers internalize what it means. Hence Lashon HaKodesh and Leshon Ivri, since we strive to take in the moral and esteemed values the language signifies.

Yosef and Lashon HaKodesh

Bereishis 42:23: the brothers spoke freely before the Egyptian viceroy, Reuven telling them their troubles were a punishment for what they had done to Yosef, because they did not know he understood them, a translator standing between them. Rashi (there): Yosef deliberately used a translator throughout, since he pretended to know only Egyptian and they knew only Lashon HaKodesh, so the interpreter had to know both, which implied to them that the viceroy could not follow Lashon HaKodesh on his own. Many commentators, Rashi among them, hold that when Yosef revealed himself he spoke to them in Lashon HaKodesh, without an interpreter, as proof of who he was. The Ramban (to Bereishis 45:12) objects: that proves nothing, since the Canaanites next door spoke Lashon HaKodesh (the column notes in passing that Yeshayahu 19:18 calls it the language of Canaan) and a king is commonly familiar with the languages of nearby countries, as Nevuchadnetzar spoke Hebrew though his advisers answered in Aramaic (Daniel 2:2-4). The Chasam Sofer answers with what the column calls a novel interpretation, and it turns on the nature of Hebrew rather than on the two words. He begins from a historical observation: the Jews of Poland, Lithuania and Russia spoke Yiddish, a form of Judeo-German, though the local populations knew no German at all, because they descended from the Jews of Western Europe ousted in the First Crusade (whence Ashkenazim, literally Germans), and every family raised its children in that dialect for hundreds of years. Yet after a mere seventy-year exile to Bavel, Hebrew was forgotten so fast that only half the returnees could still speak it (Nechemiah 13:24). Hebrew is unlike other languages: it is preserved only by one who maintains a certain degree of kedushah, and a lapse in kedushah loses it, while German passes down for generations. Yosef speaking Lashon HaKodesh therefore proved that after all his years in Mitzrayim he had kept the purity and holiness the language requires, and had not defiled himself with the promiscuity Egyptian culture stood for. In this way, the column concludes, he typified Hebrew held as a lashon, taken inside, rather than as a safah.

Rendering guidance

  • Either word standing alone: "language." In a translated pasuk, "one language" for Bereishis 11:1 is right; add "one lip" only in a note if the derashah is being quoted.
  • Lashon HaKodesh: leave it transliterated, or "the Holy Tongue." Not "Hebrew" where the sanctity of the language is the subject.
  • Where safah and lashon stand together or are contrasted, English "language" will absorb both. Render one "tongue" and the other "language," or keep the Hebrew and gloss, since Rav Dessler's whole distinction is which organ the word names.
  • Trap: lashon has other uses in rabbinic Hebrew (a wording, a manner of speech, lashon hara), and "tongue" will not carry them. Translate by what the passage is doing, not by the body part.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Speaking in Tongues," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 5 Teves 5778 (2017-12-23): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/speaking-in-tongues; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/7548-speaking-in-tongues.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 11:1; Bereishis 42:23 with Rashi; Bereishis 45:12 with Ramban; Yeshayahu 19:18; Daniel 2:2-4; Nechemiah 13:24. Rav Dessler and the Chasam Sofer are cited by the article without a locus.