Shibboleth
A shibboleth is any custom or tradition—usually a choice of phrasing or single word—that distinguishes one group of people from another. Historically, shibboleths have been used as passwords, ways of self-identification, signals of loyalty and affinity, ways of maintaining traditional segregation, or protection from threats. It has also come to mean a moral formula held tenaciously and unreflectingly.
Origin
The term originates from the Hebrew word , which means the part of a plant containing grain, such as the ear of a stalk of wheat or rye; or less commonly 'flood, torrent'.Biblical account
The modern use derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect used a different first consonant. The difference concerns the Hebrew letter shin, which is now pronounced as . In the Book of Judges chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead under the command of Jephthah inflicted a military defeat upon the invading tribe of Ephraim, the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the river Jordan back into their home territory, but the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. To identify and kill these Ephraimites, the Gileadites told each suspected survivor to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimite dialect resulted in a pronunciation that, to Gileadites, sounded like sibboleth. In Judges 12:5–6 in the King James Bible, the anecdote appears thus :Phonetics of the biblical test
Shibboleth has been described as the first "password" in Western literature but exactly how it worked is not known; it has long been debated by scholars of Semitic languages. It may have been quite subtle: the men of Ephraim were unlikely to be "caught totally napping by any test that involved some gross and readily detectable difference of pronunciation"; On a superficial reading the fleeing Ephraimites were betrayed by their dialect: they said sibbōlet. But it has been asked why they did not simply repeat what the Gileadite sentries told them to say – "they surely would have used the required sound to save their necks", since peoples in the region could say both "sh" and "s". "We have yet to learn how the suspects were caught by the catchword." A related problem is how the test spared neutral tribes with whom the Gileadite guards had no quarrel, yet pinpointed the Ephraimite enemy.Ephraim Avigdor Speiser therefore proposed that the test involved a more challenging sound than could be written down in the later biblical Hebrew narrative, namely the phoneme . Present in archaic Hebrew but later lost in most dialects, the Gileadites, who lived across a dialect boundary, had retained it in theirs. Thus, what the Gileadite guards would have demanded was the password thibbōlet. The phoneme is difficult for naive users – to this day, wrote Speiser, most non-Arab Muslims cannot pronounce the classical Arabic equivalent – hence the best the Ephraimite refugees could manage was sibbōlet. Speiser's solution has had a mixed reception, but has been revived by Gary A. Rendsburg.
John Emerton argued that "Perhaps could pronounce š, but they articulated the consonant in a different way from the Gileadites, and their pronunciation sounded to the men of Gilead like s." There is a range of ways of pronouncing the two phonemes. "An old clergyman of my acquaintance used to say 'O Lord, save the Queen' in such a way that it sounded like 'O Lord, shave the Queen'", and analogies could be found amongst Hebrew users in modern Lithuania and Morocco. Berkeley scholar Ronald Hendel agreed, saying the theory was supported by a document recently dug up near modern Amman. It tended to show that, across the Jordan, the pronunciation of the phoneme "sh" was heard as "s" by Hebrew speakers from the opposite side of the river. "This is why Gileadite šibbōlet is repeated by the Ephraimites as sibbōlet: they simply repeated the word as they heard it." Other solutions have been proposed.
David Marcus has contended that linguistic scholars have missed the point of the biblical anecdote: The purpose of the later Judean narrator was not to record some phonetic detail, but to satirise the incompetence of "the high and mighty northern Ephraimites". "The shibboleth episode ridicules the Ephraimites who are portrayed as incompetent nincompoops who cannot even repeat a test-word spoken by the Gileadite guards."
Modern use
In modern English, a shibboleth can have a sociological meaning, referring to any in-group word or phrase that can distinguish members from outsiders. It is also sometimes used in a broader sense to mean jargon, the proper use of which identifies speakers as members of a particular group or subculture.In information technology, Shibboleth is a community-wide password that enables members of that community to access an online resource without revealing their individual identities. The origin server can vouch for the identity of the individual user without giving the target server any further identifying information. Hence the individual user does not know the password that is actually employed – it is generated internally by the origin server – and so cannot betray it to outsiders.
The term can also be used pejoratively, suggesting that the original meaning of a symbol has in effect been lost and that the symbol now serves merely to identify allegiance, being described as "nothing more than a shibboleth". In 1956, economist Paul Samuelson applied the term shibboleth in works including Foundations of Economic Analysis to mean an idea for which "the means becomes the end, and the letter of the law takes precedence over the spirit". Samuelson admitted that shibboleth is an imperfect term for this phenomenon.
Examples
Shibboleths have been used by different subcultures throughout the world at different times. Regional differences, level of expertise, and computer coding techniques are several forms that shibboleths have taken.There is an anecdote in Sicily that, during the rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the inhabitants of the island killed the French occupiers who, when questioned, could not correctly pronounce the Sicilian word cìciri "chickpeas".
There is a legend that before the Battle of the Golden Spurs in May 1302, the Flemish slaughtered every Frenchman they could find in the city of Bruges, an act known as the Matins of Bruges. They identified Frenchmen based on their inability to pronounce the Flemish phrase schild en vriend, "shield and friend", or possibly gilden vriend, "friend of the Guilds". However, many Medieval Flemish dialects did not contain the cluster sch- either, and Medieval French rolled the r just as Flemish did.
Following Mayor Albert's Rebellion in 1312 Kraków, Poles used the Polish language shibboleth Soczewica, koło, miele, młyn to distinguish the German-speaking burghers. Those who could not properly pronounce this phrase were executed.
Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries was a phrase used by the Frisian Pier Gerlofs Donia during a Frisian rebellion spanning from 1515 through 1523. Ships whose crew could not pronounce this properly were usually plundered and soldiers who could not were beheaded by Donia.
Newspaper advertisements in 18th-century America seeking absconding servants or apprentices frequently used the shibboleth method to identify them. Since most runaways were from the British Isles originally, they were identified by their distinctive regional accents, e.g. "speaks broad Yorkshire". Studying a large number of these advertisements, Allen Walker Read noticed an exception: runaways were never advertised as having London or eastern counties accents. From this he inferred that their speech did not differ from the bulk of the American population. "Thus in the colonial period American English had a consistency of its own, most closely approximating the type of the region around London."
In Japan during the 1923 Kantō Massacre, in which ethnic Koreans in Japan were hunted down and killed by vigilantes after rumors spread that they were committing crimes, shibboleths were attested to having been used to identify Koreans. The Japanese poet Shigeji Tsuboi wrote that he overheard vigilantes asking people to pronounce the phrase jūgoen gojissen. If the person pronounced it as chūkoen kochissen, he was reportedly dragged away for punishment. Both Korean and Japanese people recalled similar shibboleths being used, including ichien gojissen. Other strings attested to were ga-gi-gu-ge-go and ka-ki-ku-ke-ko, which were thought difficult for Koreans to pronounce.
In October 1937, the Spanish word for parsley, perejil, was used as a shibboleth to identify Haitian immigrants living along the border in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, ordered the execution of these people. It is alleged that between 20,000 and 30,000 individuals were murdered within a few days in the Parsley Massacre, although more recent scholarship and the lack of evidence such as mass graves puts the actual estimate closer to between 1,000 and 12,168.
During the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, the Dutch used the name of the seaside town of Scheveningen as a shibboleth to tell Germans from Dutch.
Some American soldiers in the Pacific theater in World War II used the word lollapalooza as a shibboleth to challenge unidentified persons, on the premise that Japanese people would often pronounce both letters L and R as rolled Rs. In Oliver Gramling's Free Men Are Fighting: The Story of World War II the author notes that, in the war, Japanese spies would often approach checkpoints posing as American or Filipino military personnel. A shibboleth such as lollapalooza would be used by the sentry, who, if the first two syllables come back as rorra, would "open fire without waiting to hear the remainder". Another sign/countersign used by the Allied forces: the challenge/sign was "flash", the password "thunder", and the countersign "Welcome". This was used during D-Day during World War II due to the absence of the voiceless dental fricative and voiced labial–velar approximant in German.
During The Troubles in Northern Ireland, use of the name Derry or Londonderry for the province's second-largest city was often taken as an indication of the speaker's political stance, as it is known as "Derry" to Irish republicans and "Londonderry" to Ulster unionists. As such, the name the speaker used frequently implied more than simply identifying the location. The pronunciation of the name of the letter H is a related shibboleth, with Catholics pronouncing it as "haitch" and Protestants often pronouncing it "aitch".
During the Black July riots of Sri Lanka in 1983, many Tamils were massacred by Sinhalese youths. In many cases these massacres took the form of boarding buses and getting the passengers to pronounce words that had at the beginning and executing the people who found it difficult.
In Australia and New Zealand, the words "fish and chips" are often used to highlight the difference in each country's short-i vowel sound and asking someone to say the phrase can identify which country they are from. Australian English has a higher forward sound , close to the y in "happy" and "city", while New Zealand English has a lower backward sound , a slightly higher version of the a in "about" and "comma". Thus, New Zealanders hear Australians say "feesh and cheeps", while Australians hear New Zealanders say "fush and chups". A long drawn out pronunciation of the names of the cities Brisbane and Melbourne rather than the typically Australian rapid "bun" ending is a common way for someone to be exposed as new to the country. Within Australia, what someone calls "devon", or how they name the size of beer glasses can often pinpoint what state they are from, as both of these have varied names across the country.
In Canada, the name of Canada's second largest city, Montreal, is pronounced by English-speaking locals. This contrasts with the typical American pronunciation of the city as.
In the United States, the name of the state Nevada comes from the Spanish nevada, meaning "snow-covered". Nevadans pronounce the second syllable with the "a" as in "trap" while some people from outside of the state can pronounce it with the "a" as in "palm". Although many Americans interpret the latter back vowel as being closer to the Spanish pronunciation, it is not the pronunciation used by Nevadans. Likewise, the same test can be used to identify someone unfamiliar with southwest Missouri, as the city of Nevada, Missouri is pronounced with the "a" as in "cape".
During the Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukrainians have used the word to distinguish between Ukrainians and Russians.