Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 11:15 AM, K Randolph wrote:

>>> From what little I have seen of modern Hebrew, it treats the binyanim
>>> differently than did Biblical Hebrew.

Yet again, "Let me voice an expert opinion even though I don't really know
much about the subject (=Modern Hebrew, in this case)."

> Now it could be the dictionaries I looked at while bookstore browsing, but
> from what little I have seen, it appears that modern Hebrew treats verbs as
> separate entries depending on in which the binyan they appear, rather than
> as a verb modified, i.e. with additional meaning added to it, by the binyan.
> Now part of that could be that modern words often have different meanings
> than they did in Biblical Hebrew, so I merely misunderstood the
> dictionaries, but I often did not recognize the patterns found in Biblical
> Hebrew.

Modern dictionaries sometimes do not place entries according to root.  This
may be for several reasons, including:

1) In weak roots, it is hard to identify the root sometimes.  The one looking 
up
the definition does not want to chase the root around the dictionary simply
because he can't figure it out right away.

2) There may be loaded definitions on a particular word in a particular verb
form.

3) There is already a dictionary that does it by roots (Even Shoshan) and so
any dictionary that wants to compete has to do the entries a little different.

In English-Hebrew / Hebrew-English dictionaries, the above considerations are
even more acute.

Yitzhak Sapir