The Glamour of the Grammar

What Goes Around

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 7 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0200

My recent column on the names of some of the holidays prompted a lot of questions about the Hebrew word for "holiday" itself: hag. (There are other words, too, like mo'ed. We'll cover them another time.) The word hag comes from the root het.gimel.gimel, and while it means "holiday," it has traditionally referred specifically to the three "pilgrimage" holidays: Succot ("the festival of booths"), Passover and Shavuot ("the festival of weeks"). For this reason, some translators prefer "festival" for hag.

Protocol

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0200

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)....

Two Whom It May Concern

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Generally "to" and "from" are opposites, but in at least one circumstance they mean the same thing in Hebrew. Can you think of what it is?...

Remember This

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 3 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0200

We recently looked at the name Rosh Hashana. This week we examine the words that form a few more holidays.

In addition to "head of the year," Rosh Hashana has traditionally enjoyed a second name, yom hazikaron, though that name now tends to refer to Yom Kippur. Yom means "day," and zikaron is a word commonly translated as "remembrance." But it, and the words related to it, are more complicated....

First things First

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0200

We recently tackled the cardinal ("counting") numbers: "one" (ehad or ahat), "two" (shnayim or shtayim, also shnei or shtei), "three" (shalosh or shlosha), etc. As Rosh Hashana approaches, it makes sense to turn to the ordinals: "first," "second," "third," etc....

Girl People And Boy People

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

It's hard to talk about people in Hebrew. What gets in the way is gender. Even though all Hebrew nouns are either masculine or feminine, most of the time that distinction is purely a matter of grammar. (We went through this in December: "The birds and the bees.") But some grammatical gender corresponds to real-world gender, and then things start to get interesting, because there are in fact two different ways a word in Hebrew can refer to human gender. The gender can be incidental or inherent....

Double Or Nothing

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0200

There's only one word in Hebrew (or maybe two, but really one) in which the same letter appears four times in a row. Can you think of it? The answer is at the end of the column....

A Stiff Necked People

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Hebrew has a convenient one-word answer to "why is the sky blue?" Stam. That is "just because" or "for no good reason" or "it just is." (For the purposes of probing Hebrew, we'll ignore the meteorological nuance that the sky's hue actually has an explanation.) This week we'll take a look at this common Hebrew word, and at its opposite, as well....

As Easy As One, Two, Three

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0200

"Why are the numbers backwards?" asks a reader, by which she means, why do "masculine" numbers like shlosha end in -a, when usually the -a ending is reserved for feminine words? Let's find out....

Reason For Pause

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

In Hebrew, the world is divided into two places: ha-aretz, "the land," and hutz la'aretz, "outside the land." The former means "inside Israel," and the latter means "everywhere else." As chance would have it, you can be "in" either place. When you're in Israel, you are ba-aretz, and when you are not in Israel, you are in outside-of-Israel, b-hutz la'aretz, which more popularly goes by the abbreviation b'hul. But that's not today's point.

Dot One, Part Two

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

"Beged kefet b'rosh mila," that is, "beged kefet [letters get a dot] at the start of a word." A recent column ended with an admonition about this well-known bit of grammatical advice. Today we'll take a closer look....

It's Nothing New

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0200

"En kol hadash tahat hashamash," we read in Ecclesiastes. "There's nothing new under the sun." Apparently it's true, though a certain irony marks the first time that the thought was penned. Ancient words and phrases continue to resurface in modern Israel....

Yeah, Yeah

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 +0200

In Hebrew, as in English, many words come in both positive and negative varieties. For example, "someone" and "anyone" (both mishehu in Hebrew) are positive while "no one" (af ehad) is negative. "Anything" and "something" (mashehu) are positive and "nothing" (klum) is negative. More generally, "yes" (ken) is positive and "no" (lo) is negative. These aren't value judgments, of course, but merely grammatical terms.

One Little Dot

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 9 May 2008 00:00:00 +0200

"What's the deal with the dot?" is a question I get a lot. The query refers to the Dagesh, which for months I've been promising to explain. So here's part one.

Say Ah

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 2 May 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Of all the Hebrew vowels, the Kamatz is perhaps the most confusing. It looks like a little T under a letter, but, unlike most vowel symbols, it represents two different sounds: /a/ and /o/ (roughly the "o" in "dot" and "dote," respectively). Knowing when the vowel makes which sound is part of the subtle joy of learning Hebrew grammar.

You Know What They Say

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0200

In Hebrew, "if already," that is, im kvar, means "what's worth doing is worth doing right." How is it possible that those two simple words convey so much meaning? Let's find out.

Building Blocks

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 4 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Hebrew verbs come in (at least) seven varieties. In Hebrew they are called binyanim, that is, "buildings," or, better, "constructions," as in the term, "grammatical constructions." This week we're going to look at two of them.

What the ...?

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0200

A reader writes: "I'm confused by the definite article in Hebrew. Can you help?" Yes....

I'll buy a Vowel

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 7 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Hebrew doesn't like words that start with too many consonants. In fact, two is the limit....

What to Do?

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0200

A reader from Akko wants to know how to make infinitives in Hebrew. On the one hand, it's easy. Add the prefix l- (``to'') to the beginning of the word. But nothing is ever that easy....

Have It Your Way

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 8 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0200

Recently we discussed the Hebrew word et. In response, many readers wrote me impassioned notes about how that word interacts with the word yesh, which literally means "there is/are" and more generally is used to express possession in Hebrew. So let's tackle that word, and its partner, ein ("there isn't/aren't")....

It's Like This

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0200

The Hebrew word for "like" --- that is, "akin to," not "hold in endearment" --- is the prefix k'-, written as a single letter Kaf. Like a handful of other Hebrew words, it never stands by itself, and therefore enjoys the technical name "clitic." The two-word English phrase "Like Miriam," for example, is the one-word k'miryam in Hebrew....

Can I Borrow a Word?

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0200

A friend recently asked me in Hebrew, "How do you say karboorator in English?" "Carburetor?" I suggested....

These are a Few of My Favorite Words

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0200

New nouns enter Hebrew in multiple ways. Today we'll look at three of them. The first, onomatopoeia (literally, "word making") is when a word reflects the sound associated with what it represents. Nearly every language has this process. In antiquity, it produced one of my favorite Hebrew words: bakbuk. It means "bottle," and it sounds like what happens when liquid is poured from it: bakBUKbakBUK.... Other examples include ra'am ("thunder") and the almost-cruel m'gam'g'man ("stutterer" --- an equally unfair English example of onomatopoeia).

And Yet Another Thing

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Recently we saw the power of the word "and" in Hebrew. But who would have thought it could be so hard to say? Though it's always written as a prefixed Vav, the word enjoys no fewer than seven pronunciations....

And Another Thing

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0200

"Why does a Vav turn the future into the past in Hebrew?" asks a reader. It's a great question, with a fascinating answer....

What Is Et?

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0200

"Can you explain the purpose and origin of et?" asks a reader. I can (and I will), but a short word is often a sign of complexity in language, and the answer will meander through the nature of nouns and four varieties of verb....

The Birds and The Bees

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 2 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Unlike in English, Hebrew nouns, verbs, and adjectives come in two varieties, commonly called masculine and feminine. The endings -a (singular) and -ot (plural) frequently mark the feminine, and while the masculine nouns have no particular ending in the singular, typically their plural marker is -im. So "man" is ish and "woman" is isha. Adjectives (which in Hebrew follow the nouns they describe) match: ish tov is a "good man" and isha tova is a "good woman."...

Shalom

Joel@Lashon.net (Dr. Joel. M. Hoffman) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0200

Shalom. That ancient Hebrew word, variously meaning "hello," "good-bye," and "peace," seems a fitting way to inaugurate this column on the glamour of the grammar.