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Here's an idea: for long periods of time, we spoke Hebrew alongside other languages: Aramaic, etc., and Hebrew was in fact spoken only be the educated elite. In particular, in the Haggadah, the pas...
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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42645 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Here's an idea: for long periods of time, we spoke Hebrew alongside other languages: Aramaic, etc., and Hebrew was in fact spoken only be the educated elite. In particular, in the Haggadah, the passage "Ha lachma ania" (הא לחמא עניא) is in Aramaic so everyone would understand (because Aramaic was the _lingua franca_, whereas only the educated spoke Hebrew), and in, I think, the Book of Jeremiah, during the siege of Jerusalem, there's a scene with a foreign ambassador, and the King's representative asking him to speak Hebrew, so the commoners wouldn't understand. Could a similar setup work for your story? Would it work if the children did not, in fact, have a good grasp of Hebrew, while "magically understanding" the common languages of the place and time they are transported to? It could even be symbolic of their detachment from their roots.