It was about a year ago that "The Glamour of the Grammar" first ran in The Jerusalem Post, so this seems like an appropriate time to revisit some past columns.
By DR. JOEL M. HOFFMANHebrew Hear-Say logo(photo credit: )
It was about a year ago that "The Glamour of the Grammar" first ran in The Jerusalem Post, so this seems like an appropriate time to revisit some past columns with reader comments, corrections for the record and some elaborations. We'll go in reverse order.
Over the summer I posed a puzzle that generated more on-line and e-mail feedback than any other column in this space. I challenged readers to find a Hebrew word that has four identical letters in a row. The best answers in the column were mimemam (from their mem) and uvavo (and his hook).
Some people thought "six-six" (shesh-shesh) should count, but I disagree. On the other hand, an exhortation to be silent could conceivably have four, five, or even more shins in a row.
But Asher from Efrat, among many others, pointed out a whole class of answers that I missed, including the words mim'mamen (from a provider) and mim'mamesh (from a "realizer," for lack of a better English word).
When Hebrew roots have a double letter, it's almost always the second and third letters that are identical, not the first two. Examples include het.gimel.gimel, "celebrated"; heh.lamed.lamed, "praised"; etc. In fact, these are probably two-letter - or biliteral - roots, a topic to which we will return someday.
For unclear reasons, certain seemingly biliteral roots that start with the letter mem have two forms, one in which the second and third letters match, and a variation with the mem doubled instead. For example, m.d.d. is "measure," but so too is m.m.d. M.sh.sh is "real(ize)," but so too is m.m.sh. These double-mem-initial roots, combined with the piel present tense (one more mem) and the prefix "from" (a fourth mem) give a few more words with four mems in a row.
Spring saw a handful of typographic errors in this space, everything from "kamatz" for "patah" (oops) to "it's" for "its." Sorry about that. Considering those errors, it's not surprising that some readers were concerned about "Shufrasal," and, in particular, wondered whether my pronunciation guide contained a typographic error. While the people who work at the company call it shufrasal, and while it surely comes from the Aramaic shufra, its Web site is (confusingly) "shufersal," apparently reflecting its English name. And to confound matters, the internal pages on its Web site call the company "Supersol." I guess that's what happens when you give your Israeli company an Aramaic name.
The dagesh continues to be a topic of interest and debate. In response to my claim that a double letter is written in Hebrew with a dagesh, Lita wrote to point out that Issachar gets written in Hebrew with a double sin which, as a pair, nonetheless get pronounced as one (so, yisachar, not yisaschar). This is true. But yisachar really is an exception.
My inaugural column last October discussed the phrase shalom aleichem, literally, "peace [be] upon you," as a greeting. Yohanan wrote to quote Abba Eban, who, according to Yohanan, showed up at a village to find a sign welcoming him. It read, "Abba Eban, alav hashalom," literally, "Abba Eban, upon whom [is] peace." It seems like alav hashalom should be roughly the same thing as shalom aleichem, but it isn't. Alav hashalom only refers to the dead, and Yohanan's story shows us the dangers of translating literally. The story also highlights the idiosyncrasy of words of protocol, such as "welcome," "good morning" and so forth.
Before you write to tell me that this week's title, "protocol," is only marginally connected with the content it describes, note that protocol comes from the Greek words for "first glue," and originally it meant the leaf glued to the beginning of a papyrus roll to describe its content. In Hebrew as in English, the word means "record." Just for the...
Well, you get the point.
The writer teaches at HUC-JIR in New York City.www.Lashon.net
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