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  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: "Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Proverbs 26:21 alternate spellings?
  • Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2003 13:28:45 -0500

Peter:

In French, there is a pattern of meaning so that a Frenchman knows when to
use soir or soirée, matin or matinée and so forth, is there any such pattern
in Biblical Hebrew?

For some of it, it is the difference between the male and female of an
object, such that PRD and PRDH refer to a male and female donkey, the same
pattern with N(R and N(RH.

For example, what’s the difference between )BR and )BRH, both meaning “wing
feather”? What about )MR and )MRH referring to sayings? XQ and XQH both mean
“statute for setting limits”? NTYB and NTYBH meaning “way, direction one
should go, byway”? There are many other such words. Has anyone made a study
to indicate when one should use a word with a final hey and without? Are we
dealing with the masculine referring to the specific and the feminine to the
general? Is there any pattern? Or is this merely acceptable alternate
spellings? Are some merely a feminine noun written without the hey in the
singular? There are examples much more complex than the ones given above.

Is this a publishable study? ;-)

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>

On 29/09/2003 20:45, Karl Randolph wrote:

>Similarly, when reading through Tanakh, I noticed a certain amount of
fluidity in spelling. Possibly the most common varient is that some nouns are
written with a final heh, and a varient without the heh, but both from the same
root with the same meaning. These appear to be varient spellings of the same
word. Yet lexicographers list them with separate entries. I found myself asking
“Why?” as I found example after example.
>
>While I don’t consider myself reductionistic, I wonder how many entries are
duplicated just from variations in spelling?
>
>Karl W. Randolph.
>
> >
In such cases the different words have not just different spellings, but also different morphology (the forms with final he generally have construct in -AT and plural in -OT) and different gender agreement (the forms with final he take feminine adjectives and verb endings). And there is a real pronunciation difference, at least according to the Masoretes, who never write a word final vowel on a noun where there is no mater. This implies that we are looking at more than variant spellings of the same word. And as they are different words they should not be assumed to be completely synonymous. They might have broadly the same meaning but with subtle differences. Compare French matin/matinée, soir/soirée, an/année: each pair, which differ in suffix and in gender, would by default be translated the same in English (morning, evening, year), but there is a well known and rather subtle meaning distinction. Just as these are separate dictionary entries in French, so do their Hebrew equivalents need to be, at least unless it can be proven that they are fully interchangeable.

Cases where word medial vav and yod maters are either written or not written are a different issue, because there is no known syntactic or pronunciation difference. There are cases where different words are distinguished by use or omission of such a mater, but the words are homophones and essentially homonyms.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
--
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