עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

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עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jason Hare »

שָׁלוֹם לַחֲבֵרַי הַטּוֹבִים הַמִּתְעַנְיְנִים בִּשְׂפַת הַמִּקְרָא׃ אֲנַ֫חְנוּ חַיִּים בְּעִדָּן דֵּי קָשֶׁה וְחָפֹץ חָפַ֫צְתִּי לִשְׁאֹל לִשְׁלוֹמְכֶם בְּשִׁבְתִּי בַּבַּ֫יִת כְּבָר חֹ֫דֶשׁ׃ בַּמֶּה אַתֶּם עֹסְקִים בַּזְּמַן הַזֶּה׃
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יוֹדֵ֣עַ צַ֭דִּיק נֶ֣פֶשׁ בְּהֶמְתּ֑וֹ וְֽרַחֲמֵ֥י רְ֝שָׁעִ֗ים אַכְזָרִֽי׃
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jason Hare »

@Dewayne:
אֵיךְ תַּעֲנֶה עַל־שְׁאֵלוֹתַי וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ לִי אֲמָרֶ֫יךָ וּבַמֶּה עָסַ֫קְתָּ בַּיָּמִים הָאַחֲרוֹנִים׃
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יוֹדֵ֣עַ צַ֭דִּיק נֶ֣פֶשׁ בְּהֶמְתּ֑וֹ וְֽרַחֲמֵ֥י רְ֝שָׁעִ֗ים אַכְזָרִֽי׃
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jason Hare »

אַיֶּךָּ אָחִי הַיָּקָר׃
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by kwrandolph »

Jason Hare wrote:
שָׁלוֹם לַחֲבֵרַי הַטּוֹבִים הַמִּתְעַנְיְנִים בִּשְׂפַת הַמִּקְרָא׃ אֲנַ֫חְנוּ חַיִּים בְּעִדָּן דֵּי קָשֶׁה וְחָפֹץ חָפַ֫צְתִּי לִשְׁאֹל לִשְׁלוֹמְכֶם בְּשִׁבְתִּי בַּבַּ֫יִת כְּבָר חֹ֫דֶשׁ׃ בַּמֶּה אַתֶּם עֹסְקִים בַּזְּמַן הַזֶּה׃
When looking at the ideas you state above, I think that Biblical Hebrew would have said something more like the following:

שלום חברי טובים תלמידי יהודית: גם בשבתי בביתי כבר חדש אחד וחפצתי לדעת מה שלומכם ומה אתם עשיתם בעת הצר הזה:

The reasons for some of the differences that I would write are the following:
I see us as the people who are learning the language of Hebrew, hence I call all of us as students of Hebrew. Where “Hebrew” is used, neither לשון nor שפת is used.
The default sentence structure for present action spoken Hebrew is personal pronoun, verb in Qatal, then a possible object.
The phrase עדן די קשה is Aramaic, not Hebrew.
The word זמן has more the idea of an appointed time, while עת is more generalized time.

So what am I doing? Cooking for my mother, reading Tanakh, updating my dictionary, reading η καινη διαθηκη, looking up things online, got involved with a debate, helping an author edit articles for publication, ready to learn modeling in Blender, in short, keeping myself very busy. I wanted to watch some movies, but haven’t fit them into the schedule yet. Sorry, but I don’t know enough Hebrew to write the above paragraph.

How about you, are you keeping busy?

Apparently I already had this Covid-19 in mid-February, but because there were no tests for it in this county until a month later, all I can go from are the symptoms.

karl W. Randolph.
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jason Hare »

kwrandolph wrote:שלום חברי טובים תלמידי יהודית: גם בשבתי בביתי כבר חדש אחד וחפצתי לדעת מה שלומכם ומה אתם עשיתם בעת הצר הזה
Since חֲבֵרַי is definite (= החברים שלי), I don't see why you would write טובים instead of הטובים.

The word יהודית might work adverbially when it appears with the verb לדבר (as in, דבר אתנו יהודית [imperative]), but תלמידי יהודית sounds like "the disciples of Judith." The language of the Bible is also called שפת כנען in the text of the Bible, and this leads to one major problem with communication in the biblical language. There are concepts that we have today (such as "the Bible") that didn't exist in the time of the Tanach. Does this mean that we should avoid talking about the Bible? Absolutely not! We have words for these things from the time of the Second Temple, such as מקרא 'Scripture' and כתבי הקדש 'the Holy Writings.' We should not have to limit ourselves to the specific lexicon of the Bible, else we would have to cut out a great many concepts from our modern way of thinking. The goal is to use the structure of the biblical language with supplements as necessary from the modern lexicon. At least, that would be my goal, and I think any other goal would be straining the limits.

It is not unusual for biblical Hebrew to have loan words from other (especially Semitic) languages. Take the word בר used for בן in several places in the Tanach. עדן is an ancient word, even if it is from Aramaic, and there is no reason to think that it could not have been imported at some point -- especially since it already appears in the book of Daniel and since other Aramaic words had already made their way into the language. Borrowing between Semitic languages was very common.
kwrandolph wrote:I see us as the people who are learning the language of Hebrew, hence I call all of us as students of Hebrew.
תלמיד appears one time in the Bible, at 1 Chron 25:8. If the author had failed to use this word, its first appearance would have been in the Second-Temple Period. You would then have disqualified it from use as non-biblical. I'm sure there were many words that were not used in the writings of the Bible but that were perfectly valid forms. Do you see this as a problem? I think Hebrew should be approached more diachronically. As has been said, it is better to teach someone to speak modern English and then learn the idiosyncrasies of Shakespeare and how to understand his writings than it is to have them study Shakespeare without the ability to speak English. A command of the modern tongue can do nothing but assist one in understanding Shakespeare, especially if they constantly have his sonnets open while learning the modern dialect. If we constantly have students reading the Bible while learning a communicative form of the language, I don't see how this would hinder their acquisition of the biblical tongue. To the contrary, I can see it only benefiting them in giving them a wider knowledge of the language.
kwrandolph wrote:Where “Hebrew” is used, neither לשון nor שפת is used.
As I said, Hebrew was called שפת כנען. If we allow for מקרא to refer to Scripture (and we should), calling it שפת המקרא or לשון הקדש is not out of the question, and we need to have a way to refer to it other than as "Judith."
kwrandolph wrote:The default sentence structure for present action spoken Hebrew is personal pronoun, verb in Qatal, then a possible object.
Default doesn't restrict us. It's clear that there are other options. I chose infinitive absolute with qatal for my first sentence, implying "I really want..."
kwrandolph wrote:The phrase עדן די קשה is Aramaic, not Hebrew.
קשה is Hebrew. די is Hebrew (Isaiah 40, Leviticus 12). The only word borrowed here is עדן, which is in the book of Daniel. I don't mean it as "time of Corona," which is why I imported it to refer to the "AGE of Corona." Sometimes loanwords are brought in to cover concepts that Hebrew itself didn't express. Whereas עדן was the Aramaic equivalent of עת, when it was imported into Hebrew, it was intended to cover a semantic range that the Hebrew terms hadn't covered: "age" or "epoch." How would you say "epoch" in biblical Hebrew? In modern Hebrew, we have עידן "age" and תקופה "period (of time)."
kwrandolph wrote:So what am I doing? Cooking for my mother, reading Tanakh, updating my dictionary, reading η καινη διαθηκη, looking up things online, got involved with a debate, helping an author edit articles for publication, ready to learn modeling in Blender, in short, keeping myself very busy. I wanted to watch some movies, but haven’t fit them into the schedule yet. Sorry, but I don’t know enough Hebrew to write the above paragraph.

How about you, are you keeping busy?
My purpose was that we would write back-and-forth in Hebrew, though. This subforum is for Hebrew Composition.
kwrandolph wrote:Apparently I already had this Covid-19 in mid-February, but because there were no tests for it in this county until a month later, all I can go from are the symptoms.
I've heard more and more people saying this. I was sick at the end of January with something that kept me down hard for four days. I can't really say it was COVID-19, since I haven't been tested for antibodies. I think we'll all need to be tested before returning to work.
Last edited by Jason Hare on Mon May 04, 2020 5:22 am, edited 2 times in total.
Jason Hare
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jason Hare »

לְעֵת עַתָּה אֵינֶ֫נִּי עֹשֶׂה הַרְבֵּה בַּבַּ֫יִת אַךְ הִצְלַ֫חְתִּי לַעֲשׂוֹת שִׁעוּרִים רַבִּים׃ הִנֵּה עַבְדְכֶם אֹכֵל בְּכָל־יוֹם דַּי אֹ֫כֶל לָשׂ֫בַע וּלְחִזּוּק הַגּוּף וְיֹשֵׁב לִפְנֵי שֻׁלְחַן עֲבֹדָתוֹ עִם סְפָרָיו אֲשֶׁר מֵהֶם הוּא קֹרֵא וְלֹמֵד יוֹמָם וָלַ֫יְלָה׃ וּמַה לֹּמֵד עַבְדְכֶם כִּי־אִם שָׂפוֹת עַתִּיקוֹת וּדְרָכִים שׁוֹנוֹת לַעֲזֹר לְתַלְמִידָיו לְהַשְׂכִּיל וּלְהַצְלִיחַ לְהָבִין אֶת־תֹּ֫כֶן לִמּוּדֵיהֶם׃
Notes:

לעת עתה | This is a post-biblical expression meaning literally "for the time of now," which is a way of saying "at the present time" or "in the meantime." A modern equivalent would be בֵּינְתַ֫יִם or לְבֵינְתַ֫יִם.

שיעורים ולימודים | The word שיעורים is a late word that means "lessons." It can also mean "rates, measures; approximations" and comes from the verb לְשַׁעֵר "to estimate." The word לימודים is built off the biblical root for learning in the piel. We would call it a gerund (שֵׁם פְּעֻלָּה) today as it expresses the action of the verb לְלַמֵּד "to teach" from either the perspective of the teacher or the perspective of the student (more frequently). Another term for "learning" is לְמִידָה, constructed as a gerund from the qal form of the same root.

גוף | Whereas the word בָּשָׂר is used in the Tanach to refer to the body, we have both גְּוִיָּה and גוּפָה used to refer to a dead body or corpse. The word בשר often expresses the idea of weakness, whereas גוף has in it the connotation of strength. The גוף is made up of members that work together. It's a post-biblical word, but בשר just wouldn't be fitting here.

תוכן | This word means "content(s)" and refers to what is inside something. In this case, it is the content of the students' studies.
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by ducky »

Hi Jason,

You explain very well, both about the Hebrew words and even more about the method of how to teach. I agree with you very much on this subject. Surely you are a great teacher.

I'm not going to get into your discussion with Karl about the style of the sentences.

But I just looked at your last sentence and want to refer to a few things that were just "screaming".

1. you wrote אני לא עשה but we should write איני עשה.
The negative word לא comes before verbs.
and the negative word אין comes before nouns (also participles).

Note: There is a condition that the negative word לא can come before a participle, but that is not the case here.

2. The word אך should be voweled with Patah' (I guess this is just a typo).

3. כל יום --- It is better to write בכל יום since you want to say "Every day".

Please don't feel that I'm "bashing" you, I actually agree with your style, and against talking about pitty stuff. But these things should be said since they are "stick to the eye".
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by Jason Hare »

ducky wrote:But I just looked at your last sentence and want to refer to a few things that were just "screaming".
Changes accepted and made, with the caveat that I prefer אֵינֶ֫נִּי to אֵינִי (which is post-biblical).
ducky wrote:Note: There is a condition that the negative word לא can come before a participle, but that is not the case here.
Could you go into what those conditions are?
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by ducky »

Yes. If the subject comes after the predicate.

The famous example that they give from the Bible is from Deut. 19:6
כִּי לֹא שֹׂנֵא הוּא לוֹ מִתְּמוֹל שִׁלְשׁוֹם
The word הוא is the subject and is comes after the (negative) participle.
so the negative word לא comes here.

And this style continues in the Mishnaic and later up to these days.
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Re: עִדַּן הַקּוֹר֫וֹנָה

Post by kwrandolph »

Jason Hare wrote:Since חֲבֵרַי is definite (= החברים שלי), I don't see why you would write טובים instead of הטובים.
Where do you get the idea that a masculine plural noun with a first person singular possessive suffix is necessarily definitive? However, even if definitive, the ה prefix on the following adjective is optional.
Jason Hare wrote:The word יהודית might work adverbially when it appears with the verb לדבר (as in, דבר אתנו יהודית [imperative]), but תלמידי יהודית sounds like "the disciples of Judith."
The language is mentioned as a noun in 2 Kings 18:26, 28, Isaiah 36:11, 13, Nehemiah 13:24, 2 Chronicles 32:18.

Judith has the same spelling in Genesis 26:34, but the context is clear that that’s a personal name and not the name of the language.

Aramaic ארמית is used the same way 2 Kings 18:26, Isaiah 36:11, Daniel 2:4, and in Aramaic Ezra 4:7.
Jason Hare wrote:The language of the Bible is also called שפת כנען in the text of the Bible,
Nope. At the time that the prophesy of Isaiah 19:18 was fulfilled, the שפת כנען was Aramaic, not Hebrew. The fulfillment was during the Persian era. The Jews who settled Judea and Samaria after the Babylonian exile spoke Aramaic as their mother tongue, Hebrew was a second language used in religion, high literature, official government records and commerce. Much like Latin in medieval Europe. Many of the common people didn’t know Hebrew.
Jason Hare wrote:We have words for these things from the time of the Second Temple, such as מקרא 'Scripture' and כתבי הקדש 'the Holy Writings.' We should not have to limit ourselves to the specific lexicon of the Bible, else we would have to cut out a great many concepts from our modern way of thinking. The goal is to use the structure of the biblical language with supplements as necessary from the modern lexicon. At least, that would be my goal, and I think any other goal would be straining the limits.
If our goal is to study Biblical Hebrew, do we want to discuss modern concepts?
Jason Hare wrote:It is not unusual for biblical Hebrew to have loan words from other (especially Semitic) languages. Take the word בר used for בן in several places in the Tanach. עדן is an ancient word, even if it is from Aramaic, and there is no reason to think that it could not have been imported at some point -- especially since it already appears in the book of Daniel and since other Aramaic words had already made their way into the language.
You have just given a good argument against the common belief that all Hebrew nouns are derived from verbs. I make the same argument. However, many nouns are derived from verbs, the same as in English, just not all of them.

Half of the book of Daniel is in Aramaic, not Hebrew. The word עדן referring to time is found only in the Aramaic section, never in Hebrew.
Jason Hare wrote:I'm sure there were many words that were not used in the writings of the Bible but that were perfectly valid forms. Do you see this as a problem?
Yes. Do you know the derivation patterns for nouns from roots, and how those derivation patterns influence meaning? What about the addition of a ת suffix when not a feminine noun in construct? What meaning does it add? Or is it merely a misspelled feminine plural as the Masoretes thought? What about when a masculine noun is changed to a feminine when we don’t refer to the sex of a living creature? What meanings does that give? English has several patterns when known can be used to make neologisms, do you know those patterns in Biblical Hebrew? If you don’t know them, you can end up with some pretty weird stuff from a Biblical Hebrew point of view when you make neologisms.

Yet I recognize that the vocabulary that we have in Tanakh doesn’t represent an exhaustive list of words used in Biblical times.
Jason Hare wrote:I think Hebrew should be approached more diachronically. As has been said, it is better to teach someone to speak modern English and then learn the idiosyncrasies of Shakespeare and how to understand his writings than it is to have them study Shakespeare without the ability to speak English. A command of the modern tongue can do nothing but assist one in understanding Shakespeare, especially if they constantly have his sonnets open while learning the modern dialect. If we constantly have students reading the Bible while learning a communicative form of the language, I don't see how this would hinder their acquisition of the biblical tongue. To the contrary, I can see it only benefiting them in giving them a wider knowledge of the language.
Here’s the problem with this approach—languages change over time.

Since you mentioned Shakespeare, that’s a good example. I’m a native speaker of American English. One reason I developed a strong distaste for poetry is because poetry was taught using Shakespeare’s sonnets. I didn’t understand the older English. In teaching English as a second language, I don’t touch Shakespeare with a ten-foot pole. I want my students to know English in such a way that they can understand and be understood by speakers of today’s English.

DSS Hebrew (other than the Biblical copies) differs significantly from Biblical Hebrew. It had a different grammar and many words had different definitions. Medieval (Tiberian) Hebrew was a development from DSS Hebrew. So if you plan to teach Biblical Hebrew, why confuse your students with teaching that which is not Biblical Hebrew?
Jason Hare wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:The default sentence structure for present action spoken Hebrew is personal pronoun, verb in Qatal, then a possible object.
Default doesn't restrict us. It's clear that there are other options. I chose infinitive absolute with qatal for my first sentence, implying "I really want..."
Yes, I noticed that. But look at the other places where you used participles where Biblical Hebrew would have used Qatal Qal. In Biblical Hebrew, participles are not used as a marker for present tense, for they are used for past as well as future events.
Jason Hare wrote:
kwrandolph wrote:The phrase עדן די קשה is Aramaic, not Hebrew.
קשה is Hebrew. די is Hebrew (Isaiah 40, Leviticus 12). The only word borrowed here is עדן, which is in the book of Daniel. I don't mean it as "time of Corona," which is why I imported it to refer to the "AGE of Corona." Sometimes loanwords are brought in to cover concepts that Hebrew itself didn't express. Whereas עדן was the Aramaic equivalent of עת, when it was imported into Hebrew, it was intended to cover a semantic range that the Hebrew terms hadn't covered: "age" or "epoch." How would you say "epoch" in biblical Hebrew? In modern Hebrew, we have עידן "age" and תקופה "period (of time)."
You have several items in this paragraph:

The word די is found in both Aramaic and Hebrew, but with different meanings. In Hebrew it means “sufficiency, completeness, enough has the idea of making whole, having enough Lv 5:7, 12:8, Dt 15:8, Is 40:16” whereas in Aramaic it is a particle of registration, which is how you used it.

The word עדן is Aramaic, not Hebrew, as mentioned above.

For measurements of time, עת was used for a minute to a few decades. For a long, indeterminate time, the word עולם was used. Because Biblical Hebrew didn’t have a word specifically for eternity or eternal, the phrase עולם ועד was sometimes used.

I included קשה here only because it is part of the phrase that you wrote. I don’t know if it appears in Aramaic with the same meaning as in Biblical Hebrew.
Jason Hare wrote:My purpose was that we would write back-and-forth in Hebrew, though. This subforum is for Hebrew Composition
טוב רק מי למד לכתב יהודית: לא למדתי לדבר או לכתב יהודית רק למדתי לקראה: הלמדו אחרים כן: ידעתי כי חפץ דואיין לכתב חידות ומענות וגם הוא לא ידע די לכתב יהודית טובה:

הידעת את אשר כתבתי
Karl W. Randolph.
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