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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] The Sade/Ayin-Quf literary device

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Sade/Ayin-Quf literary device
  • Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:45:25 +0000

On 05/01/2007 09:35, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

... Furthermore, all letters appear to be isolated
nouns that have no independent verbs of the root or that were derived from
verbal roots. ...

Do you need to "learn" something here? Both )LP and LMD are well attested verbal roots meaning "learn". BDB derives )ELEP "cattle" from the former root, and the letter name alef is certainly from "cattle". Similarly the letter name lamed seems to come from a word meaning "ox-goad", Hebrew MAL:MED, which can easily be derived from the verbal root LMD. Samekh "pillar" is also rather obviously derivable from the verb SMK "support". I'm not sure about the others, but these three apparent counter-examples show that your "all" is not accurate. So this would put paid to any argument that the letter names are all loan words.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail: peter AT qaya.org
Blog: http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/





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