Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

Here is something from a recent email that illustrates
how new words are being formed:

אם אינך רואה מייל זה אנא הקלק כאן

meyil is 'email'. Why not sefer, iggeret, mixtav? Because an email is
special and could use a special word, here borrowed from Eng.
(note the lack of article with noun and 'ze', something rare in BH, and
not as common as "ha-X ha-ze' in standard Modern Hebrew.
BenGurion would have loved the skipping of the 'et' marker for
conciseness.)

haqleq 'click' was chosen as hif`il. explicitly transitive.

[kan 'here (very tight synonym to po פה) is a development from the
BH word ko כה "thus" with a final nazalization, and an ancient
Mishnaic neologism. ]

The overall sentence structure would have been understood by
Isaiah and Jeremiah  and Qohelet once they knew/saw the
application and were sitting at a computer.

shana tova

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
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