2639: Ladino Use for Solitario (Extra Hebrew Diacritics) Mar 9, 2022
Solitario and Rashi script uses diacritics for sounds not represented in a script normally intended for Hebrew. This is also the case in modern Hebrew writing, but not as much in Yiddish, which used digraphs etc., possible inspired by German which has many of the same. Presently, Hebrew only has one digraph, which is נג <ng> like it is found in English, German, and Yiddish for the [ŋ] sound. In Solitario used for Ladino, this was not the convention, and diacritics were added to letters. For instance, the [dʒ] sound in the word 'Jump' or 'Giraffe' is written ג׳ or גﬞ from the basic ג [g], but in Yiddish this is written -דזש <dzsh>. The only similarity between Ladino and Yiddish conventions when it comes to non-Hebrew sounds is that Yiddish also used פֿ to represent [f] as opposed to [p].
Overall, not including the ones used in Biblical Hebrew (of which there would be an additional 5), Solitario used the added forms:
זﬞ for [ʒ] (like 'viSion' or French 'Je')
טﬞ for [θ] as in 'THree'
גﬞ for [dʒ] as in Jump
2638: Solitario Script Mar 8, 2022
For all Hebrew handwriting, it does not look like printed Hebrew exactly but uses its own modern semi cursive handwriting. Like Rashi script, Solitario was a Sephardic semi cursive font used for Spanish, Ladino, and Arabic around the Mediterranean. Unlike the Ashkenazi script which grew out of it in many ways, there are more ligatures (i.e. letters joined together), and there were more diacritics used for sounds not represented in a script normally intended for Hebrew. It is also the ancestor of the modern Israeli Hebrew script, though one could not read Solitario immediately if he only knew modern Hebrew cursive.
2637: Rashi Script Mar 7, 2022
Rashi, perhaps the most famous Jewish biblical commentator, is known for being printed in a font called Rashi script, though he did not write in it himself. For one thing, it was used about four centuries after he wrote, and it is a Sephardic semi-cursive script; Rashi was not Sephardic. A tradition developed where all primary scriptural texts were written in traditional Hebrew block-letters, and all secondary texts like commentaries were in script font. This was eventually standardized into Rashi script, which is still used for many commentaries and translations.
2573: chutzpa Dec 29, 2021
The English word 'chutzpah' is from Hebrew via Yiddish meant, 'insolence' or 'audacity', but took on meaning more of 'grit' or 'moxie' as time went on. This is not entirely always negative, but does connote a strong sense of arrogance. Meanwhile, the Arabic cognate حصافة (ḥaṣāfah) means really the exact opposite with 'strong judgement'.
2557: Lunatics Dec 13, 2021
There is a misunderstanding that the word 'lunatic' relates to a medieval or otherwise Christian understanding of witches practicing paganism or sorcery around the moon and its cycles. The word is actually much older and the concept can be seen across the ancient world, even in pagan cultures, as reflected in the etymology. This word is from Latin 'lunaticus' (moon-struck), replacing the Old English 'monseoc' (literally 'moon-sick'). These sorts of concepts of staring at the moon to cause mental diminishment also exist in Jewish scriptural literature—though not with such specific terminology for the people—millenia before the accusations of medieval European opinions.
2537: "Change" in Hebrew Root Letters Nov 23, 2021
Broadly speaking, Hebrew uses a system of 3-consonant roots are modified in various ways that change the meaning etc.. It is therefore important to retain these 3 letters as the core of the word, though there are some exceptions. Roots can end with a vowel sound for instance, and that will have certain implications, but sometimes the spelling conventions will change for a less grammatical reason. The for עשאה (ʔasa'ah) meaning 'make it' exists from the root letters ע-ש-ה meaning 'to do' but the א is added only because normally it would be another ה, either of which at the end are silent, usually. In actual fact, the final ה has aspiration in some cases (as is the case here) like the H in the 'house'. To retain the silence of what would be the first ה of עשהה, it is changed to עשאה.
2536: Bad Censorship (by Catholics) Nov 22, 2021
Catholic censors of the Talmud (the compilation of Jewish oral-law) were tasked with removing sections that the Church didn't like, but often with a clear lack of understanding of the language. In one instance, these censors were told to replace any use of גוי (goi) which literally just means 'nation' with עכו"ם (akum), an acronym עבודת כוכבים ומזלות (avdos cochavim u'mazlos) meaning 'worshiper of stars and constellations', including replacing a quote from Exodus גוי קדוש (goy kadosh) meaning 'holy nation' referring to the Jewish people. This resulted in a quote from the Bible being rewritten as "holy star worshipers" by the Catholics.
2529: sinai Nov 15, 2021
Sinai is certainly a famous place due to its significance in the Bible, but the etymology of it is unclear. The area was known in Ancient Egypt as a place for mining turquoise as was called 'Biau' (mining). It is therefore thought that the Hebrew סיני (sinei) is from the name of the moon-deity of the Mesopotamian pantheon (and its ancient Egyptian equivalent Thoth), who was associated with the area by locals, given that the desert on the peninsula around the mountain in Hebrew is known as מדבר סין (midbar sin) and nearby is the desert מדבר סיני (midbar sinei).
2525: Hendiadys Nov 11, 2021
Hendiadys is a literary term used to describe a sort of periphrasis wherein two words in which one could modify the other are instead connected with a conjunction like "this pie is good and hot", rather than "this is good, hot pie" which ostensibly means the same thing. Hendiadys does not indicate actually different clauses either, such as with the example before it would not mean to say the pie would be just as good cold, necessarily. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, "[o]h what a rogue and peasant slave am I?" the adjectives are certainly not to be considered separately. This exist very prevalently in Latin poetry such as "vinclis et carcere" (with chains and with prison) which effectively means "in prison chains" from the Aeneid, or in Biblical Hebrew with גר ותושב עמך (ger v'soshav imcha) literally 'a stranger and a resident with you' but meaning 'alien resident (i.e. convert) with you'.
2524: gum Nov 10, 2021
Although the term for the product of the resin is 'rubber' in English, the resin itself is known as 'gum'. This is from Ancient Egyptian qmyt (resin; gum), also related to qmy (oil). This was the source of many related European words thanks to its adoption into Ancient Greek and Latin which begot many terms, but also Semitic terms like Hebrew גומי (gumi) and Aramaic גמי (gami), and via Greek קומא (quma), with the later being specific to acacia. On the other hand, 'rubber' is just from the material's association to erasers, and another term, 'caoutchouc' is from Nahuatl, but only refers to unvulcanized rubber.
2523: Mysterious Origins of Diego Nov 9, 2021
The Spanish name Santiago is from an earlier Sant Yago, but in English this is the name of Saint James. The discrepancy in the name goes even further, since in Hebrew the name is יעקב (Yaaqov). That said, it is not certain by any means that what was once thought to be the successor to 'Yago', namely 'Diego' is in fact descended from יעקב (Yaaqov) even though this would definitely not be the most radical shift over the years. Instead, the current theory is that this is from 'Didacus', itself from the Greek Διάδοχος (Diadochos) meaning 'heir; successor', though the shift in vowels from that to 'Diego' is not explained. What is certain is that 'Díaz' and its variations are just the patronymic form of 'Diego'.
2521: abacus Nov 7, 2021
The word 'abacus' came to English from Latin hence the plural 'abaci', but this word might really have a semitic origin. While now the term is used exclusively to refer to the mathematical instrument, it used to be more generic, denoting many types of boards including board-game boards and sand tables, as with the Ancient Greek ἄβαξ (ábax). This has been likened to the Hebrew אבק (āvāq) meaning 'dust' which would explain the senses of the Catalan 'àbac' meaning both 'mathematical table' and 'board covered in sand'.
2520: Koppa Ϙ/ϙ Nov 6, 2021
The Phoenician abjad, which is the origin of the Greek alphabet, contained certain letters for sounds that in Greek didn't exist. The Phoenician qoph (pronounced [q]) didn't exist in Greek, and since Greek could already use Κ (kappa) the Greek letter koppa (Ϙ, ϙ) was used before back-vowels. This practice was retained in Etruscan and Italic languages for a while, but unlike Q, which also came from this same Phoenician letter, Ϙ in Greek didn't survive, except sometimes for numerical purposes to represent 90. It is a similar story with the Cyrillic koppa (Ҁ ҁ) which is also now archaic.
2492: Merism Oct 8, 2021
As a literary device, referring to a while by mentioning the two ends of the spectrum—such as "searching high and low" as opposed to "searching everywhere"—is known as 'merism', from the Greek μερισμός (merismos) meaning 'partitioning'. In that case, it is understood one is not only searching high and also low, but in between too. This can paint a more vivid image, and add emphasis, and so is used as a poetic description often, though of course not always. The opening line of the Bible contains
את השמים ואת הארץ (es hashamayim ve-es ha'arets) "the sky [or 'heavens'] and the earth", but from Shema (Deuteronomy 6) ובשכבך ובקומך (u'vshachbcho u'vkumecho) "(and) in your lying down and in your getting up" in both a merism but also literal, describing the relative time of day.
2490: How נ Became Short Oct 6, 2021
Hebrew, effectively has 3 ways of scripts, hand writing, printed, and liturgical script. These are mostly the same, and the reasons for the evolution of each helps to elucidate the differences in each. For instance the letter נ—pronounced /nun/ and an ancestor to N—(except as it appears word-final) is the same length as other letters standardly in print and new liturgical writing, but at the end of the word it goes low (ן). In hand-written script though, it is long both times and is distinguished by being straight at the end of a word, and curved otherwise. However, before a few centuries ago both forms were long in formal holy writing; the reason being that in the beginning/middle of a word, its base juts out and causes the concern of interfering with the following letter.
2478: Hebrew Jussive: Not Just the Future Sep 24, 2021
There is a myth that Hebrew has no jussive subjunctive (such as English "let's" or "let there be"), as in most cases this looks to be the imperfect , signifying uncompleted action. For instance, the line in the opening of the Bible:
יהי אור ויהי־אור (yahi ohr vayahi ohr) can be translated as "let there be light, and there was light" or "there will be light, and there was light". In some instances this has led to obvious mistranslations, because the truth is in most contexts, there is no difference in the form of the word between the two. There are some instances where the two would differ however—proving that there is a difference in form—such as: ישם in
ישא יי פניו אליך וְיָשֵׂם לך שלום
pronounced (yasem) for the subjective meaning "may he place" as opposed to יָשִׂים (yasim) "he will place".
2474: Hebrew's (Potential) Accusative Case Sep 20, 2021
Biblical Hebrew uses the suffix -ה (a-) to indicate motion-towards: a common feature of the accusative case, which otherwise is used to mark direct objects. Hebrew already has a direct object marker for definite nouns—את (es)—but no way to mark indefinite nouns. Historically however, it would seem that this suffix -ה (a-) would have, whether or not the noun was definite. This accusative form was mostly lost with this one lingering use and a few potential vestigial forms in vocabulary, but some have even suggested that on top of that an early variety of Hebrew had a nominative */-u/ ending for subjects, and genitive */-i/ ending for possessives, but there is less evidence here.
2459: Semitic Definite Article Sep 5, 2021
Two Semitic languages, Hebrew and Arabic, have on the surface two differently sourced definite articles, ה־ (ha-) in Hebrew and ٱلْـ (al-) in Arabic, but some linguistics think otherwise. They surmise that originally there was a form هل۔/הל־ (hal-) used in a proto-Semitic language and as they two diverged, this form did as well, splitting in two separate ways. Not everyone agrees with this, and even those who would agree to the idea principle, they propose different forms. Some of these include in Arabic لا (lā) either through metathesis or as a different particle that eventually took on the meaning of a determiner.
2457: Solomon Sep 3, 2021
The Hebrew given name שלמה (Shlomo) is Solomon in English, and features this extra terminal -N in most other languages except Jewish ones like Yiddish. Even in the fellow Semitic language of Arabic it is →سُلَيْمَان (Suleimān) this is present. This is because of the Greek influence over the other major sources of the name's wider adoption like Latin and Syriac Aramaic, with Greek adding a '-on' suffix which was just retained elsewhere. Between Latin in the Christian world and Arabic in the Muslim world, many languages of totally variant language families have this terminal -N, with a notable exception of Spanish which got its version (Zulema) from Arabic.
2453: Secunda Aug 29, 2021
One of the best ways that Biblical Hebrew phonology is understood is from the Secunda, of the Hexapla. This is part of a 6-level interlinear translation into Greek of which the Secunda is a Greek-alphabet transliteration of the Hebrew text, written in about AD 3rd century. Obviously this has its own issues for basing one's understanding of the sounds of Biblical Hebrew, but it does lend some insight. Certain sounds represented in the Greek lettering are significantly different to the modern or modern liturgical varieties of Hebrew, each having their own differences anyway. This is especially useful to glean from local place names, but again, is limited insofar as any writing system will be when used by foreigners for a language with no major similarity.