Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

Grammmatical gender, in Hebrew as in all languages which have it (which
excludes English, except for a few traces), is defined not by the form of a
word, nor by the physical gender of the item referred to, but by the
syntactic agreement characteristics. In Hebrew, the gender of any noun can
be determined from the gender form of the adjectives and verbs which agree
with it. Most nouns have just one gender, though there are some
inconsistencies perhaps linked with dialect differences, plus some nouns
have separate masculine and feminine versions which are usually treated as
separate lexical items. Adjectives differ from nouns in that they have
separate masculine and feminine forms. But the borders do get a bit blurred
in Hebrew e.g. with RA`/RA`AH = "bad, evil": this can be an adjective
agreeing with a noun, or either the masculine or feminine form can be used
as a noun with essentially the same meaning.

It is of course confusing to the beginner when the gender of a noun doesn't
agree with its form. That's just one of those things about real language.
But as for your examples, the final taw of BAYIT and 'OT is part of the root
and should not be confused with the mark of the feminine. LAYLAH is an
unusual form, and it is probably significant that the -AH ending is
unstressed in this noun, like the directional he, but unlike the regular
feminine ending which becomes -ET when it loses the stress; on the other
hand, its Arabic cognate LEYLA appears to be feminine, hence its common use
as a girl's name.

Peter Kirk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Costa [mailto:tmcos AT hotmail.com]
> Sent: 04 September 2001 19:15
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Masculine and Feminie Nouns
>
>
> Dear Friends,
>
>
> Just a few questions. Why are Hebrew words like LaYLaH (night),
> 'OTH  (sign)
> and BBaYiTH (house) considered masculine when the word for night
> has a final
> he preceded by a qames, the sign of the feminine ending, and the words
> "sign" and "house" both end in a final taw, also typical of a
> feminine noun
> or substantive? I can understand that 'aV the word for "father"
> is masculine
> even though in its plural form it is feminine 'aVOTH, but the 3 nouns I
> mentioned can be confusing to a novice in biblical Hebrew. Best regards,
>
>                                                Tony Costa
>