Today is Balashon’s 20th anniversary. I didn’t want to write a typical post about a single word or root, so I’m doing something different: an interview-style Q&A. I’ll ask myself the kinds of questions readers might be curious about - how the blog started, who it was for, what kept it going, what the numbers look like - and answer them as honestly as I can. It’s part nostalgia, part curiosity, and part excuse to share a few surprising stats.
Hard to believe this is real—Balashon is twenty?
Yes. I started Balashon on February 10, 2006. I’m marking the anniversary with something a little different: a quick interview, a little history, and a few stats.
What made you start Balashon in the first place?
I’d been interested in etymology since I was a little kid. And a couple of years before Balashon, I started blogging on a personal blog, just because blogging was what people did then.
The moment those two interests really collided was when I bought a Hebrew slang dictionary shortly before starting Balashon. I remember flipping through it and thinking: this is great. Israeli slang has all these stories and origins, and most people don't know where the phrases come from. Blogging was popular, the barrier to entry was low, and I thought: why don’t I just start?
When you started, who did you think you were writing for?
Honestly, I didn’t know. I assumed there were people out there who would be interested, but I didn’t have a specific audience in mind. It felt like a topic that wasn’t really being covered in the way I wanted to see it covered, so I wrote it partly for myself and partly to fill that gap for whoever might show up.
What did you think the blog would be, and what did it become?
I don’t know if I had a grand plan. In the beginning it was mostly about my own enjoyment: sharing discoveries, making connections, putting sources together, and writing it up for people who shared that interest. Over time it turned into something more stable than I expected - something I still identify with, even as my posting rhythm has changed.
If someone asks you, “What is Balashon?” what do you say?
I usually say it’s a blog about the origin of Hebrew words and phrases: how they relate to each other, how they connect to words in other languages, and how borrowing happens in both directions: Hebrew borrowing from other languages, and other languages borrowing from Hebrew.
And because I write in English, I often end up focusing on connections to English in particular. More broadly, it’s a way of talking about how Hebrew developed from biblical times until today.
What kinds of questions pull you in so much that you can’t let them go?
The ones where I feel like something hasn’t quite been put together yet, but it can be. I’ll find one person saying one thing and someone else saying something else, and it feels like the real story is the connection between them - the piece that nobody bothered to assemble into a complete explanation. When I can make that full connection, those are the posts I most enjoy writing, and most want to share.
When did it hit you that people were actually reading?
When people started coming up to me and asking me questions about Hebrew.
That’s happened for years now: someone will say, “I have a Hebrew etymology question for you,” or “I have a language question.” That was surprising at first. It’s one thing to write something into the ether; it’s another when it becomes part of how people think of you.
Okay, give me the numbers.
A few basic ones:
As of now, Balashon has 713 posts.
Traffic stats are a little split because the tracking changed over the years. In the earlier period I was using Sitemeter, and by that stage the blog already had a few hundred thousand pageviews. Later I relied on Blogger’s built-in stats; those numbers start around 2011, and from then to now Balashon has had 7.41 million pageviews.
That “7.41 million” is still hard for me to picture.
Do you still watch your stats the way people used to in the early blogging era?
Not really. In the early days I checked almost every day—partly curiosity, partly that blogging-era habit. I don’t do that now. But seeing the long arc is still amazing, especially because a lot of blogs that started back then simply stopped. The fact that Balashon is still around, and still attracting readers, feels meaningful.
What posts do people keep finding?
Blogger’s “most popular posts” list (from 2011 onward) is a funny window into what people are looking for. The top post is “ish and isha,” and the rest of the top ten is a mix of topics that people keep stumbling on:
“ish and isha”
“avuka and ptil”
“rubia and lubia”
“gmar”
“arnona”
“pri”
“blo”
“Khartoum and hartumim”
“eshkolit”
“lion”
I like that it isn’t my "greatest hits." It’s more like a record of what people needed explained when they landed on the site.
Does it make sense to you that “ish and isha” is number one?
It does, and it doesn’t. It’s the kind of question people assume has an obvious answer: ish and isha must be related. And the twist is that they aren’t related in the way people think. That counterintuitive element is part of what makes it sticky.
I don’t know exactly what brings people there. Maybe they heard somewhere that they’re not related, and they come looking for the explanation. But I hope they leave with a clearer sense of what the relationship is, and what it isn’t.
Where are readers coming from?
This one still surprises me. Here are the top countries since 2011:
United States — 3.26M
China — 449K
France — 231K
Israel — 193K
Germany — 186K
United Kingdom — 186K
Hong Kong — 150K
Brazil — 143K
Canada — 118K
Other — 2.5M
I don’t have a confident theory for every line in that list. My best guess is that some people are looking for words that appear in multiple languages, or words that mean something in their language and are surprised to find it on a blog about Hebrew. I hope they end up finding something that keeps them reading.
How has the writing process changed over twenty years?
Two big shifts.
First, sources: I have a large library of dictionaries and books, and I still use it, but the amount that’s available online now is enormous. There were times I used to have to go to the library regularly to chase something down. That’s much rarer now.
Second, rhythm: in the beginning I posted constantly. Sometimes almost every day. Over time life got fuller, and the blog moved in and out of intense periods. I remember taking a break around my son’s bar mitzvah. I took breaks while working on my Kohelet book. I’ve also been writing in other venues, which changes the balance.
I’d like to get back to writing on Balashon more regularly, and part of the reason I’m doing this anniversary post is that I’m hoping it nudges me back into that rhythm.
What do you get out of doing this that you wouldn’t get if you just kept private notes?
Sharing, collaboration, and something like participation in the public record.
Early on, a lot of my posts were: I found this in a book, here’s what it says. Over time I started developing my own ideas more - still grounded in sources, but also trying to assemble an argument or a history that wasn’t already laid out cleanly. And there’s something powerful about the idea that someone can search for something - first via Google, now increasingly via AI - and the answer they find may trace back to something I contributed, even if they never knew it was me.
That’s fascinating to me.
So what’s next?
I do hope to return to more regular posting. Every time I find a source (book, journal, website) that might provide interesting information for a post, I add it to my "sources" doc. That doc has over 2300 entries, and even though I've written about some of them, I have many many more to go.
I also have a dream of writing a book connected to Balashon: something with a particular angle that I don’t think has really been done before. I’m not ready to say more yet, but I’m hoping that within the next year or two I’ll be able to share what that looks like.
If someone discovers Balashon today, what do you hope they come away with?
That Hebrew is a fascinating language with a long, continuous history: an evolving, living language.
I hope readers don’t leave thinking Hebrew is purely ancient, frozen in time. And I also hope they don’t leave thinking modern Hebrew is purely new and disconnected. What’s interesting is the continuity: how the language changes, how it adapts, and how it still stays connected across biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern layers.
Where should people go if they want more than Balashon?
My homepage has links to other things I’ve written and published, and to the other places I post: https://davidcurwin.com
And to everyone who has read, shared, emailed questions, or simply wandered in from a search result and stuck around: thank you.
