READING HEBREW
The Language and the Psychology of Reading It
by Joseph Shimron
It seems highly theoretical, and besides the very awkward subtitle, it is very readable so far. It is unusual, isn't it, to have a subtitle with a pronoun whose antecedent is in the title.
This morning I was wondering if I could take up the book again where I left off a few days ago in the middle of a discussion of the psychology of geminate stems. Then I came across has this lovely and precise note about how the names of the verb forms are related. No one has explained this to me in any other book on Hebrew I have read.
The names of the binyanim are named in the same pattern as the things they name.
פעל with vowels a a, prefix + schwa a, i e, u a, prefix + a e, prefix + schwa + i, prefix + schwa a.
These names are just like any other verb being conformed to its pattern of what we would call a conjugation in Latin. The names all come from the same three-consonant root forming its form with a vowel patterns that fit between the consonants of the root. English is full of irregularities but we have a similar pattern in sing, sang, sung. From wiktionary, I see the name binyanim is derived from בנה, to build.
The book has helpful tables and images. So much easier than trying to memorize paradigms.
The author hasn't made the point (yet?), but 3 and 7 are fundamental to our human thinking processes. And mathematically related, of course 7 = 2**3 -1. I had always explained to my design classes that this represented the number of bits in our short-term memory register.
The memory of a human is three bits. If we are really lucky, it may be 4 bits. (Psalm 90!).
You can download this book here.
It seems highly theoretical, and besides the very awkward subtitle, it is very readable so far. It is unusual, isn't it, to have a subtitle with a pronoun whose antecedent is in the title.
This morning I was wondering if I could take up the book again where I left off a few days ago in the middle of a discussion of the psychology of geminate stems. Then I came across has this lovely and precise note about how the names of the verb forms are related. No one has explained this to me in any other book on Hebrew I have read.
The names of the binyanim are named in the same pattern as the things they name.
They are individually named by the forms they assume for the root P-’-L, expressed as a verb in 3rd person masculine singular, past tense, which carries the core meaning of acting: Pa’aL, niF’aL, Pi’eL, Pu’aL, hitPa’eL, hiF’iL, and huF’aL.The verb form represents the action of work. My dominant gloss for פעל, P`L is work. It is first used in the Bible in Exodus 15:17. It it used of drawing an arrow in a bow in Psalms 7:14. How straightforward.
פעל with vowels a a, prefix + schwa a, i e, u a, prefix + a e, prefix + schwa + i, prefix + schwa a.
These names are just like any other verb being conformed to its pattern of what we would call a conjugation in Latin. The names all come from the same three-consonant root forming its form with a vowel patterns that fit between the consonants of the root. English is full of irregularities but we have a similar pattern in sing, sang, sung. From wiktionary, I see the name binyanim is derived from בנה, to build.
The book has helpful tables and images. So much easier than trying to memorize paradigms.
The author hasn't made the point (yet?), but 3 and 7 are fundamental to our human thinking processes. And mathematically related, of course 7 = 2**3 -1. I had always explained to my design classes that this represented the number of bits in our short-term memory register.
The memory of a human is three bits. If we are really lucky, it may be 4 bits. (Psalm 90!).
You can download this book here.
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