schwa

In the past few months, I've become more aware of the distinction between the vowels shva na (voiced) and shva nach (unvoiced). (For a good introduction to the concept, read the beginning of this post and this Philologos article.) While there are some words where the proper pronunciation affects the meaning (for example, the word וְיִירְאוּ in Tehilim 67:8), I think in general it is a good idea to improve my reading, particularly in prayer. I have also recently become aware that there are disagreements among the scholars as to the whether a particular shva is na or nach - some of which come in rather important sections of prayer. For example, in the Kriyat Shma, Devarim 6:7, there are those who say that the first bet in וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ has a shva na, others say a shva nach. How do we properly recite this word in the regular prayers? This is an issue I'm still researching; maybe I'll have a post about it in the future.

But while I've only recently become curious about the Hebrew shva, I've been aware of the English cousin "schwa" for many years, ever since I noticed the interesting rotated "e" back in elementary school:

However, until I started this blog, I had never thought about how strange it was that this English word would have been borrowed from Hebrew. How did this happen?

From the Oxford English Dictionary, we see that the word "schwa" entered English in 1895, borrowed from German. But English had other forms of the word for the Hebrew vowel, such as:

• Like to a silent Hebrew Scheua (1589)
• the Sheva of the Hebrews (1818)
• When no vowel is expressed, then as in the Hebrew, a Sheva..will be implied and read accordingly (1837)

There are similar older quotes in French and German.

But the question remains - why would European linguists borrow a Hebrew word? The word shva only shows up in Medieval Hebrew, so it didn't have any of the Biblical sentiment that the Christian scholars might have attached to it. My guess? It was a matter of necessity. Until more recent linguistics, European languages could suffice with the Latin letters for all of their vowels. But when they "found" a vowel that couldn't be represented by any of the existing letters - it was convenient to use a foreign word. And here the Hebrew shva was a perfect fit. I'm still curious to see exactly what Hebrew texts were read by Christian scholars when they discovered the word, but that may be lost to history...

What about the etymology of the Hebrew word shva? The most well-known etymology (as suggested by the OED) is that it comes from the Hebrew שוא shav - "nothing, vanity" (also "lie, falsehood".) However, Klein provides a different source:

borrowed from Syr. שויא (= the seven points), lit.: ‘even’ or ‘equal’ (points) ... related to Hebrew שוה (was even, smooth, or like)

But Ben-Yehuda, while providing the same theory as Klein, does also mention the "nothingness" theory in the name of earlier Hebrew scholars. And I admit, it's what my first guess was...


(Thanks to my new friends at the Wordorigins.org Discussion Forums, for helping me find some of the sources.)

Tweet

chalom and hachlama

Is there any connection between chalom חלום - "dream" and hachlama החלמה - "recovery, recuperation"?

There are a number of different theories.

First of all, Klein makes no connection between the two roots. He also does not connect either of them with chelmon חלמון - "yolk of an egg", chalma חלמא - "a kind of cement", chalmut חלמות - "a juicy plant" mentioned in Iyov 6:6 or chelmit חלמית - "malva, mallow". He does write that according to Ibn Ezra, the vowel cholam חולם (pronounced "o") is connected to the root חלם meaning "be healthy" and means "the strong vowel". He also points out that some scholars connect the stone achlama אחלמה to the same root, and give it the meaning "the stone that has the power of making strong".

Jastrow does connect the two roots and says the common meaning is "to be soft, moist, viscous" and is connected to chalav חלב - milk. Hachlama developed from there in the sense "to have good humors, to be well". Chalom derives from a sense of "to gather humors, to sleep well". He also connects chalma, chelmit, chalmut and chelmon by discussing their connection to liquids.

Steinberg connects both roots by saying they mean "to bind, to be strong" and are related to the root אלם (of a similar meaning.) While the connection to hachlama is clear, I have to admit I don't follow his definition of chalom. He writes:

עניין השם הוא לפי שרשו סבוך הרעיונות במראה בתוך שינה כשהם חופשים ממשלת השכל

I guess that would be best translated as "the meaning (of chalom) is the entanglement of ideas during sleep, when they are free of the rule of the intellect."

He also connects chalmut, chelmit and chelmon (and I would assume he'd put in chalma as well) by saying they have their "stickiness" in common.

Kaddari mentions a theory that shows the development of the two roots as follows: was strong -> became mature -> had "mature" dreams -> dreamt.

Whether or not the roots are connected, the common spelling חלם is used in a number of drashot. In Brachot 57b, it says that dreaming is good for the ill, quoting Yeshayahu 38:16 וְתַחֲלִימֵנִי וְהַחֲיֵנִי - literally "you have restored me to health and revived me", but the drasha has a play on words and replaces "restored me to health" with "made me dream". A similar drasha can be found on Brachot 55a.

One very familiar verse that may be understood differently using a different meaning of חלם is Tehillim 126:1

שִׁיר, הַמַּעֲלוֹת :בְּשׁוּב השם, אֶת-שִׁיבַת צִיּוֹן-- הָיִינוּ, כְּחֹלְמִים.


This is generally translated "When God restores the captivity of Tzion, we shall be like dreamers". However, the Targum on this verse translates היך מרעיא דאתסין "we will be like the sick who have been healed". This view is mentioned by Kaddari and Amos Chacham in Daat Mikra. Shmuel and Zeev Safrai in their Haggadat Chazal write that in the Dead Sea Scrolls the the word appears as כחלומים - "as those that were healed".

Tweet

sagol

Unlike the colors we've discussed previously, sagol (not segol) סגול - purple/violet was created in Modern Hebrew. Klein writes that the name of the color comes from another new word - segel, meaning the flower violet. The word segel, in turn, derives from the Aramaic sigla סיגלא - which appears in Sanhedrin 99b, Shabbat 50b and Berachot 43b, and Steinsaltz identifies it with the sweet violet.

Klein writes that sigla is probably related to the Aramaic segola סגולא, meaning cluster of grapes. He doesn't explain the connection - Jastrow suggests that sigla means "a bunch of violets". This term appears in Yerushalmi Peah 7, and Steinsaltz writes that it is an Aramaic variation of eshkol אשכול - also meaning a cluster of grapes. It appears in Targum Yonatan on Bamidbar 14:23 as a translation to eshkol. From segola we get the name of the vowel segol סגול - which also looks like a cluster of grapes.

What about the meaning of segula סגולה as treasure? Could the phrase am segula עם סגולה - mean "a purple nation"? While this site tries to establish a connection, I think it's not very likely. In fact, we have already seen that segula is related to the Akkadian sugullu - herd of cattle.

Rosenthal does not suggest any slang associations with the color sagol.

Update: I have since written a much more detailed post about segula. If you found this of interest, I suggest you continue and read that post as well.

Tweet

kamatz

According to Klein, the root קמץ means "to enclose with the hand, grasp, take a handful, close, shut". By a switch of the labial consonants, we find two other related verbs with similar meanings: קפץ and קבץ, to which Klein adds כוץ as well. He also connects it with the Aramaic קמעא, meaning a little, a handful. It also might be connected to קמיע kamia - an amulet, related to the Arabic "qama'a (= he tamed, curbed, bridled.)" Steinberg goes further and connects קמץ and the other verbs above to a series of words beginning with the same two letters and having related meanings: קמט - "to grasp" or "to wrinkle", and kemach קמח - flour ground fine and small.

From קמץ we get a number of interesting words. A kamtzan קמצן is a miser, who holds his hand tight. Jastrow provides us with three small animals named kamtza קמצא - a locust (the related קפץ means "to hop"), an ant ("scraper, collector") and a snail (which Jastrow feels might be an error for לימצא, and Steinsaltz on Shabbat 77b says that comes from the Old French limace, meaning slug or snail.)

There are some drashot that connect the name Kamtza, from the famous story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, with kamtza meaning locusts. However, Steinsaltz (Gittin 55b) says the name Kamtza derives from the Greek kompsos, meaning elegant and refined, but also with a more negative meaning - crafty.

According to some, Medieval Latin camisia is a borrowing through Late Classical Greek kamision from the Central Semitic root קמץ represented by Ugaritic qms ('garment') and Arabic qamis ('shirt'). From camisia we get such English words as camisole and chemise.

[Others, however claim the development worked in the opposite direction: that Arabic qamis is derived from the Latin camisia (shirt), which in its turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European kem ('cloak').]

Another derivative of קמץ is the vowel kamatz (or qamatz). According to Horowitz (pg. 56):

The verb קמץ means to draw together. The Ashkenazim pronounce the קמץ with lips drawn together. That's how the vowel got its name. If the men who wrote our present niqud pronounced the קמץ as do the Sephardim, "ah", they would certainly have never called it קמץ.

While he doesn't mention it, I assume that explains the vowel פתח patach (open) as well.

As a final note, to return to the subject of shirts, Stahl writes that there were those who suggested calling a T-shirt in Hebrew a hultzat kamatz חולצת קמץ (based on the T shape of the kamatz), but it never caught on...

Tweet

grush

Many people who don't know Hebrew find it hard to imagine reading a language without vowels. Yet young children master it easily and adult students of Hebrew also find it not terribly challenging after some study. However, there are still some occasions where I end up misreading a word due to the lack of vowels.

For example, yesterday there was a headline in the newspaper that read:

כל גרוש שלישי מתחמק ממזונות

I first thought it meant that "every third coin (grush) escaped alimony". Only after a second reading did I realize that it meant "every third divorcee (garush) avoids paying alimony".

For some reason this root - גרש - leads to occasional misunderstandings, and that's what I would like to explore today.

The Hebrew root גרש means "to expel, to drive away". An related meaning is "to divorce". Divorce is gerushin גירושין and a divorcee is a garush גרוש. The connection between expulsion and divorce led to some humor during the protests over the Gaza disengagement. A popular bumper sticker read: יהודי לא מגרש יהודי - "A Jew does not expel another Jew". But someone read the sticker to me and said, "I thought it was the Catholics that don't divorce..."

Another connected term is migrash מגרש - a plot of land. Klein explains the origin as "orig. meaning 'pasture land', i.e. 'the place whither cattle are driven'." Evyatar Cohen has a different explanation. He points out the verse in Moshe's blessing of Yosef (Devarim 33:14):

וממגד תבואת שמש וממגד גרש ירחים "With the bounteous yield of the sun, and the bounteous crop (geresh) of the moons"

Geresh here is a hapax legomenon - it only appears once in the Bible. Therefore the meaning of the word is hard to define, and the translation of "crop" is based on the parallel tevuah תבואה - yield. Driver defines geresh as "that which the earth thrusts forth or tosses up". Cohen sees a parallel between tevuah and geresh - what is brought in (תבואה from בוא) and what goes out (גרש). He therefore concludes that the root גרש can mean both coming in and going out. This provides him with a different explanation as to the origin of migrash. A migrash is the area near a city or a house, also known in Hebrew as a mavo מבוא - entrance, deriving from the root בוא, coming in. (We used the fact that migrash and migaresh are homographs to make an Emily Litella type skit in a Purim play last year.)

Another meaning of geresh is apostrophe; gershayim גרשיים is two, and means quotation marks. While in modern Hebrew they are used as punctuation marks, their origins are in the taamei ha-mikra, the Biblical cantillation marks. While the origins of some of the teamim are clearly due to their shape or their sound, Klein says the etymology of geresh is unknown. While I could not find any other explanation, the etymology of the English word apostrophe might be helpful:

from M.Fr. apostrophe, from L.L. apostrophus, from Gk. apostrophos (prosoidia) "(the accent of) turning away," thus, a mark showing where a letter has been omitted, from apostrephein "avert, turn away," from apo- "from" + strephein "to turn"

Certainly the Hebrew meaning of גרש - to turn away is rather similar. It is also important to note the difference between gershayim and merchaot מרכאות. Both refer to the punctuation mark ", but according to this Hebrew expert:

Don't confuse Hebrew gersayim and merchaot - they have different meaning, different uses, and when using high quality typesetting - look differently. Gershayim is used for acronyms. Merchaot is used for quoting sentences. Similarly, geresh and single quotes aren't the same thing. Geresh is used for abbreviations, single quotes are just a typographical variant of merchaot (used when you have merchaot inside merchaot, for example).

So geresh is used only to break up a word or indicate an abbreviation. Therefore apostrophe is an appropriate translation, and perhaps the etymology is the same. I'd be happy to hear from anyone who can confirm (or deny) this theory.

What about the term grush that I quoted in the beginning of this post? A grush is a very small coin, but in modern Hebrew slang doesn't refer to any specific denomination. Ein lo grush אין לו גרוש - means he has no money at all, and shaveh kol grush שווה כל גרוש means worth every penny. The term originates in Yiddish, but there are cognates in many European languages - Russian groš, Polish grosz, the Czech grosh, and more. This site gives the following etymology:

The word is adopted from Latin (Denarius) Grossus: lit. "A thick coin" where grossus being "thick"

You can find additional discussion about the nature of the term grush here.

Tweet

strudel

Well, you certainly wouldn't want to have any strudel (or shtrudel in Yiddish) in your house before Pesach, would you? Well, if you use a computer in Israel, you just might.

In Hebrew, the "at sign" - @ - is called a shtrudel שטרודל. While in English it is known for its function, in many languages it gets its nickname from its shape. Here are some other examples:

• Czech/Slovak: zavinac "rollmops (a rolled fillet of herring)"
• Danish: snabel-a "a with an elephant's trunk" or, less common, grisehale "pig's tail"
• Dutch: apestaart/apestaartje "monkey tail" (the -je form is diminutive)
• Finnish: kissanhäntä "cat's tail"
• German: Klammeraffe "spider monkey (literally "clinging monkey"), Ohr "ear", Affenschwanz (Zurich) "monkey's tail"

While it might seem just cute that the Hebrew term comes from a word for apple pie, there's actually more to the word - and perhaps it's one of the most accurate. What is the origin of the word strudel?

The German word strudel literally means whirlpool - which is a very accurate description of the @ symbol. It derives from the Indo-European root *ser - "to flow". What other words have the same root? Serum (originally from a root meaning "watery fluid" or "whey" in Greek) and samsara (the eternal cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth in Hinduism and Buddhism).

As an aside, the Academy of the Hebrew language has given the official name כרוכית kruchit to both strudel the pastry and the @ sign in Hebrew.

Tweet