Fhyujk

These are songs, and we learn songs differently from spoken language. Have you ever found yourself singing along to a favorite song in a language you don't even speak, but you've listened to the recording enough to have memorized it? You were almost certainly helped by meter and perhaps rhyme, by the way.

All of this can be true for your kids. No, they don't know the songs from attending synagogue, but they might well have heard them anyway (especially Mi Chamocha). Maybe Grandma likes to sing or Dad has records (remember those?) he used to play a lot or they were around friends practicing for bar mitzvah. They can have been exposed without actually knowing the songs -- and that can be enough to "click" when they hear the ancient Hebrews singing them.

Consider a slight tweak to your universal translator: you hear your primary language until you start to gain some familiarity with the other, and then at that point you hear the other language while still knowing what it says in your head. Your universal translator can thus be something of a teaching tool, which could play a role in the kids retaining the other languages when they get home.

Your writing challenge, then, is to show that these songs are in fact different from other Canaanite songs they might hear in their adventures. Have your characters react to what they're hearing -- mention Grandma or Dad's records or Ben's bar mitzvah or that scene in Prince of Egypt at the theatre or whatever. Show the characters making a connection to the text in its original language, and you can justify them singing that song in that language even if 95% of what they hear is English.

One of my favourite series of books, The Dark is Rising Sequence, has an example I feel might be helpful.

In the last book of the series, three of the main characters are transported from modern day Wales to Wales of a hundred or more years before. At that point in time, obviously, everyone would be speaking Welsh, but to the main characters (and the reader) everything is in English. The characters even go so far as to lampshade it, saying how it sounds like English to them but obviously they themselves must be speaking Welsh just like everyone else from that time period.

However, it's not all English to them for the entire time they're in the past. When it seems that the characters have gained all the knowledge they need from the current conversation with the locals, all of a sudden the switch is turned off and everyone returns to Welsh, leaving the main characters in the dark about what's being said. Then, when what the other people are saying is important to the story again, it's back to English.

Perhaps you could do something like this. Maybe the magic that's taken them to the past lets them understand what's important for them to understand, but trivial information sometimes remains untranslated. So while conversations and songs important to the story (and the narrative in general) is all in English, some songs are not necessary for the characters to understand and therefore are all unintelligible.

My communication rule is: They say what they mean as they intended it – as if all communication came right out of their brain. No phonetic accents or broken English between narrator and reader. That should be clean communication always. I feel like we all have an accent to somebody but not to ourselves, so every character deserves that dignity to communicate with the meaning they intend (not be biased because of an accent or limited vocabulary). It's a suspension of disbelief, but it allows all characters to co-exist on an equal footing.

Where accent or language barrier needs to be expressed, I try to just describe it, rather than imitate it. If it's a story issue it can be emphasized in the feelings and perceptions, so rather than have someone drawl it's about the listener hearing a drawl. Any "othering" is moved to the character's ears, not the reader's mind. If the point is someone being alienated because they can't understand, that is better done with the emotions.

Set some rules, and see if you can avoid explaining. Narrative voice is the hardest part of writing. The strongest thing you can do is have confidence and not draw attention to it.

If you want a worldbuild-y excuse, the kids can have language engrams mapped to their brains (no worse than getting an eye exam). Before the trip they go to the library-language-implant-clinic, and read a few stories and watch a few videos while a computer maps their language centers. It creates new engrams for the foreign words, mapped to their own vocabulary, maybe 8000 - 10,000 words, enough for a day at the marketplace.

A harmless and nearly painless handwavium treatment later, their brains know what the words sound and look like. They read some stories and watch a video in the old language, and yes, they can understand well enough to follow a conversation. In time, these engrams normally fade from lack of use, but it is common to get language engrams for tourism and business conferences.

Your kids will understand the old tongue, but not be able to speak, at first, or as convenient to the plot. Some might be better than others, so they pair up. It could be handwaved or used to generate some conflict or to show how they must adapt once they are stuck there.

I think every kid who ever had to chant or sing in a foreign language at temple would buy into this premise that vocabulary could just be zapped directly into their brain.

Then maybe you have the singing moment and it brings the communication complications to a climax (see Monica's answer) since it is not attached to any engrams it is words they already knew.

And again it is some suspension of disbelief because you are selling the emotions not the lyrics.

To the kids, everyone's speaking English (though they know this isn't the case).

I'm going to propose a slightly different solution. What if instead of perceiving everything as English, they can hear the actual words and syllables and recognize that they are hearing a different language, but they can still intuitively understand what is being said. This can result in a really fantastic scene where the kids discover that not only can they understand a strange language, but they can speak it as well!

"Hello, and welcome to our town!" said the local man. How strange, thought the children. Those words were not in English, yet they could still understand him. "Hey, you're not speaking English, how can I under- WAIT! I can speak this language too!"

Using this method you might want to start by mixing untranslated Canaanite with English before establishing that from this point forward, everything spoken is Canaanite, even if it is written as English on the page.

This solves your problem with regard to the Hebrew song, because when it is sung they can still hear and perceive that is being sung in Hebrew and not Canaanite, yet they can understand the words as well.

Anything like this should be handled as simply and directly as possible --that way it draws the least possible unwanted attention to the mechanics.

The young man began singing in a clear and beautiful voice:

Hine mah tov

uMah Na-im

shevet achim gam yachad

Behold how good

and how pleasing

if brothers could sit together in unity

The reader makes the minor mental shift without any problems. This is actually fairly common for songs and poems, even when everything else is presented only in translation.

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.

What are the handwaving rules for the learning of the ancient languages?

Let's say that...

1. the process mimics a child's learning process, but at great speed




2. Chomsky theorised that all languages have a set of common structures (universal grammar), so let's take that theory overboard and say that the children possess in their brains all the rules for all the possible human languages




3. the learning of the ancient language depends on the contact with that language




4. limits: if they cannot name something in English, they will not be able to name it in the new language

Keeping those rules in mind, here's how the process will work:

The children arrive and they are speaking English amidst them. Then they meet a local person who speaks to them in a foreign language... and they recognise the words!

If you learnt a foreign language at school to a good level, spent five years not using it and then were suddenly forced to use it, you'll know what the children feel with that first contact. The ability to explain the grammatical rules will have been mostly forgotten, but your brain still remembers how to apply them almost instinctively so you'll be able to say that 'red car' sounds right while 'car red' doesn't.

At first, there will be some hesitation and the sentences will be short (not to mention they'll be shocked with the sudden linguistic knowledge), but the more contact they have, the more natural it becomes. Again, there is a problem of lack of vocabulary for objects they don't know, but that doesn't mean lack of fluency.

This process, however, means the children can become linguistic powerhouses that would set them apart from those around them. To give them limits, there's the first rule. A child will learn a language very quickly until they're 3 or 4 years old, and then that uncanny speed starts decreasing, so here we will have something similar.

If they come in contact with a language in...

1. the first 3-4 months: they become as fluent as natives




2. between 4 and 12 months: they become competent but not fully fluent (may make some grammar mistakes or lack basic vocabulary)




3. after 1 year: the grace period is over so now they have to learn it the hard way

Of course the time constrains will probably have to be adjusted to match your plot.

[Edit: forgot the add the second part of the answer]

Question 1

How do I work this? Not just the weaving in of a foreign language but the idea that the rest of the book is written in English, even though they're not speaking English when they're in Egypt and thereabouts.

The book is in English because that's the author's language. Any language that the protagonists understand will be presented in English with the appropriate indication. Naturally, some words are not possible to translate, so those words will be given as such (with an explanation nearby).

"Come inside," he said in Hebrew.

Question 2

I'd like those songs to be in Hebrew.

With the approach I lined up, the children would simply have to learn the lyrics. However, if the Jewish liturgy isn't usually translated into other languages (I'm afraid I have no idea), you will have to choose between presenting them in Hebrew (and everyone but synagogue-attending readers will scan over it, unable to understand it), maybe with a translation in an annex, or you'll simply follow the rule of transposing into English every language the children can understand.

While my strategy means the children won't need anyone to explain the words in themselves, they will likely still need someone to explain the religious and spiritual meanings.