The grammar of love - part 1

Let me begin the Grammar book I suggested with some grammar and pronunciation by example. Best to chose a verse or phrase that is well known and illustrates something.

What about the summary of the law... Deuteronomy 6:5.

5 And you will love Yahweh your God,
with all your heart and with all your being and with all your capacity.

h vahbt at ihvh alohiç
bcl-lbbç ubcl-npwç ubcl-maodç

Syllables: 27. Words: 10. Roots: 8. Root Recurrence: 30%. Average per verse: 3.

Let's see if my algorithm counted correctly. Yes 10 lexical 'words' in Hebrew, but in this case not 10 stresses since some of the words are connected by hyphens. That gives a total of 7 in the Hebrew.

The SimHebrew does not transcribe the stresses. The accents are music and reading them is much more important than reading the vowels correctly. The music reflects the tone of voice.

Here it is.

Deuteronomy 6:5

If I were to locate the accents in the translation with italics, it would be like this.

5 And love-will-you, [] Yahweh your-God, // 
with-all heart-yours and-with-all being-yours and-with-all capacity-yours.

Normal English does not reflect the Hebrew thought sequence or barlines of course. And normal English does not usually translate the direct object marker [at].

You can see a rough phonetic transliteration in the music. There are two stresses / pauses in the second bar. One in each of bars 3 and 4. In bar 5 there is a rest on the subdominant - this occurs in over 90% of the verses of the Bible. And there is one stress on each of the last three bars. The 27 syllables reflect those of the music as transcribed.

All the above 'information' is in the square Hebrew text. The decomposition below it will reveal the verbal forms.

וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ

בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ

vahbt at ihvh alohiç

bcl-lbbç ubcl-npwç ubcl-maodç

We have 11 syllables in the first line which takes us from the tonic to the subdominant. 4 + 1 + 2 + 4

16 syllables in the second line 2 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 4.

The text illustrates prefixed connectors - conjunctions and prepositions, and affixed pronouns. So let's take it apart.

I would like to stay away from the amo-amas-amat method of learning verbs. If I were a child, no one would explain verbal forms when speaking to me. So what is that first word? the final 't' signifies 'you' singular. This is a verb with the stem ahb in one of its many forms. The prefix v is a conjunctive connector like and, or but. If I were a child, I would eventually hear the sound of the final t as signifying me.

Prefixes and suffixes are everywhere in Hebrew. So you can't look up a word in an alphabetical list without knowing what they are and stripping them. There's a short note on this here. This example is easy v/ahb\t. The link shows all uses of this verb in the Bible. But this is getting ahead of ourselves I think. The v in this case merits translation as and. Although the music does not make a connection with the prior verse, I hear the and as making a verbal connection. The letter is called vav, and the word itself means a hook.

The next three words 'at ihvh alohiç' are a very common phrase, especially in the Book of Deuteronomy. Their music will always be different. We no longer distinguish in English the singular you from the plural. The singular and plural forms are both easy to search for in the SimHebrew Bible. The plural is 'at ihvh alohicm'. Your God instead of thy God. 

The second line of the verse illustrates repetition. It is clear in the English also. When hearing the verse, you might miss the sound of the repeated letter b since it sometimes sounds like v. Note how this letter closes the syllable when it follows a vav rather than opening it. 

The three nouns in this stich all end with the singular second person pronoun c, meaning your. SimHebrew marks this final letter with a cedilla imitating the soffit (ending form) of the Hebrew square letter caf in the Latin character set.

You might notice that I use caf instead of kaf, the traditional spelling, since SimHebrew takes advantage of the mirror image of this letter. c and כ are clearly mirror images. There's an introduction to the letters and the mapping from SimHebrew to Square text here. If you are beginning, you can avoid verbal paradigms for a long time, but you do have to learn the alphabet. Even as children we did this, and long before we understood what an alphabet really represents or how varied the sounds are even in the tongue we are learning.

Much more could be said about this verse and its grammar, but let this suffice for now. Much more could be said about my translations too -- I have been considering restoring soul to the text. Maybe...