Shibboleth

Origin

The term originates from the Hebrew word shibbólet (שִׁבֹּלֶת), which literally means the part of a plant containing grains, such as an ear of corn or a stalk of grain or, in different contexts, "stream, torrent". The modern use derives from an account in the Hebrew Bible, in which pronunciation of this word was used to distinguish Ephraimites, whose dialect included a differently-sounding first consonant, to the word "Shibboleth. The difference concerns the Hebrew letter shin, which is now pronounced as /ʃ/ phoneme (as in shoe).

Recorded in the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead inflicted a military defeat upon the invading tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BCE), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the River Jordan back into their home territory and the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. In order to identify and kill these Ephraimites, the Gileadites told each suspected survivor to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimite dialect resulted in a pronunciation which, to Gileadites, sounded like "Sibboleth." In the King James Bible the anecdote appears thus (with the word already in its current English spelling):

And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

Modern use

In numerous cases of conflict between groups speaking different languages or dialects, one side used shibboleths in a way similar to the above-mentioned Biblical use, i.e., to discover hiding members of the opposing group. Modern researchers use the term "shibboleth" for all such uses, whether or not the people involved were using it themselves.

Today, in American English, a shibboleth also has a wider meaning, referring to any "in-group" word or phrase that can be used to distinguish members of a group from outsiders – even when not used by a hostile other group. The word is less well recognized in British English and possibly some other English-speaking groups. 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.

The term shibboleth can also be extended, as in the discipline of semiotics, to describe non-linguistic elements of culture such as diet, fashion and cultural values.

Cultural touchstones and shared experience can also be shibboleths of a sort. For example, people about the same age who are from the same nation tend to have the same memories of popular songs, television shows, and events from their formative years. One-hit wonders prove particularly effective. Much the same is true of alumni of a particular school, veterans of military service, and other groups. Discussing such memories is a common way of bonding. In-jokes can be a similar type of shared-experience shibboleth.

Yet another more pejorative usage involves underlining the fact 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".

Nobel Prize-laureate economist Paul Samuelson applied the term "shibboleth" in works including Foundations of Economic Analysis to 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, and sometimes used "fetish" as a synonym, though he complained that the latter "has too pejorative a ring."

Notable shibboleths

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.

The legend goes that before the Guldensporenslag (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 Brugse Metten. They identified Frenchmen based on their inability to pronounce the Flemish phrase schilt ende vriend (shield and friend), or possibly 's Gilden vriend (friend of the Guilds). However, many Medieval Flemish dialects did not contain the cluster sch- either (even today's Kortrijk dialect has sk-), and Medieval French rolled the r just as Flemish did.

Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries ( example ) means "Butter, rye bread and green cheese, whoever cannot say that is not a genuine Frisian" was used by the Frisian Pier Gerlofs Donia during a Frisian rebellion (1515–1523). Ships whose crew could not pronounce this properly were usually plundered and soldiers who could not were beheaded by Donia himself.

The Dutch used the name of the seaside town of Scheveningen as a shibboleth to tell Germans from the Dutch ("Sch" in Dutch is analyzed as the letter "s" and the digraph "ch", producing the consonant cluster [sx], while in German it is analyzed as the trigraph "sch," pronounced [ʃ]).

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 president of the Dominican Republic, 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 total as low as 1000.

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 hard BAs at the start of the word (like "Baldiya" - bucket) and executing the people who found it difficult.

During World War II, some United States soldiers in the Pacific theater used the word lollapalooza as a shibboleth to challenge unidentified persons, on the premise that Japanese people often pronounce the letter L as R or confuse Rs with Ls; the word is also an American colloquialism that even a foreign person fairly well-versed in American English would probably mispronounce or be unfamiliar with. In George Stimpson's A Book about a Thousand Things, 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". During the Allied breakout from the Normandy beachheads in 1944, hand-to-hand fighting occurred throughout the hedgerows and thick undergrowth of the Norman countryside. British and American troops were told to use the word "Thunderer" as a countersign through the thick foliage. Given the number of syllables and the leading "th" sound, it was believed that the word would invariably be mispronounced by native German speakers.

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, and as such frequently implied more than simply naming the location. The pronunciation of the letter H is a related shibboleth, with Catholics and Protestants often pronouncing the letter differently.

Shibboleths in fiction

In an episode of The West Wing titled "Shibboleth", President Bartlet discusses the meaning of the word at length. His advisors believe it to be a 'catch phrase' or 'cliche', after which Bartlett reminds them of its earlier Biblical significance. He later becomes certain that a group of Chinese religious asylum seekers are indeed Christian when their representative uses the word to refer to his faith during a meeting.