More on language differences between old and new

Here is an article on dressing in Modern Hebrew.

My comments were ignored - they probably thought I was a troll. But hey - there are differences between MH and BH and it's curious to explore them. Some time ago I pointed out the confusion between anger and grief.

Now I would like to look at these words for dressing and see what SimHebrew would do to make them easier to examine for a person not trained in square text. Or even for someone trained in square text who wants to avoid the hassle of searching in two or more keyboard layouts and alphabets.

So I will look at each sentence - transform it to SimHebrew and find out if it has any Biblical usage. The first verb to be considered is lkbvw. The first sentence is yl aopnoy kobwim qsdh. [On a motorcycle wear a helmet - browse the link if you missed this]

One of the things I note is that every verb under consideration seems to begin with l (lamed). This is odd. l (ל) is a common prefix in BH, usually signifying to, of, or for. If one were imitating English infinitives, one might use it as in to wear, but there is no such grammatical convention in BH. (Scroll down in the link to the table summarizing the verbs.)

The BH convention (Lambdin 115, 128) is the infinitive construct (a holam is in the second syllable) or the infinitive absolute (a vav is included explicitly in the second syllable). So for ctb [write], the infinitive absolute would be ctob in SimHebrew. You can't distinguish the two infinitive forms without the full pointing. (And the distinction is largely irrelevant. The gloss may or may not include the traditional 'to' of an English infinitive - see e.g. lctob here. Then if you search for ctob you will also see some absolute forms but they are indistinguishable from what is rendered as an imperative. Translation is not a rigid absolutism.)

The teacher in this case is presenting a new thing in MH - after the pattern of English usage. The l is not part of the root. And the root is expressed in its absolute form. So the root for the first example lkbvw is kbw, a word in BH used for bandaging, binding, and saddling. A far cry from wearing a hat.

If you look in my subdomain of Clothe in the glossary page of the concordance, you will find the Biblical words for articles of clothing and the root lbw, the verb to clothe in BH. Not kbw. Other things you might put on your head include bonnet gby(97), hat crbl(2), headscarf xmh(4), head-dress, turban, twirl xnp(21), and head-band wbis(1). The links will take you to every instance of these roots in the Hebrew canon. But for putting on clothing, lbw is used everywhere. Not specific to hats!

yl aopnoy kobwim qsdh

Curious that the imperative is expressed in the plural(?) ... I wonder if that is a nod to gender parity.

The other words in this sentence are /yl/ a common preposition, /apny/ - not a BH root but perhaps related to Proverbs 25:11.

תַּפּוּחֵ֣י זָ֭הָב בְּמַשְׂכִּיּ֥וֹת כָּ֑סֶף דָּ֝בָ֗ר דָּבֻ֥ר עַל־אָפְנָֽיו		11 Quinces of gold in icons of silver, a word roundly spoken.
ia tpuki zhb bmwciiot csf dbr dbur yl-aopniv	11 7	tpvk\i zhb bm/wc\ivt csp dbr dbr yl apn\iv

and finally, qsd - which, whatever it is, is not a root that is used in BH. There are only 3 roots that begin with qs, qsm, qww, qst. You can find the links for these on the glossary page in the concordance.

The next sentence is: hua kbw cph vixa lbit cnst. hva is a common third person pronoun. cph(1) is used only once in BH, in Proverbs 21:14. I rendered it as pacify.

מַתָּ֣ן בַּ֭סֵּתֶר יִכְפֶּה־אָ֑ף וְשֹׁ֥חַד בַּ֝חֵ֗ק חֵמָ֥ה עַזָּֽה		14 Graft in secret may pacify anger, and a bribe to the chest strong heat.
id mtn bstr icph-af vwokd bkiq kmh yzh	8 9	mtn b/str i/cph ap v/wkd b/kq km\h yz\h

ixa(1144) is common in BH, as is bit(2334), but cnst (knesset - government) is possibly related to cns(20) [garner, storehouse], here used as Synagogue and this is the expression used in the Hebrew NT that I have available to me. But cnst is not a word in BH. The string occurs 3 times in forms of cns. The ti suffix would read I have garnered. You can see this easily by looking for cnst at the cns link above. 

These examples show how SimHebrew allows much easier analysis without searching in two conflicting alphabets.

I have only looked at two sentences - no wonder I could not do this sort of thing on the fly in my Hebrew classes. The changes in the language are manifold.

This post is long enough. Maybe I will do some more later. Enjoy the search.