Dear Log,
Things I constantly forget, and always have to look up:
( Hava nagíla * 3 | Vénis mekhá. ) * 2
( Hava neránena * 3 | Vénis mekhá. ) * 2
U, ru, uru akhím,
Uru akhím belév saméakh * 2
Uru akhím, uru akhím, belév saméakh.
Not quite. Vénismekhá should be one word, as in "and let us be happy":( Hava nagíla * 3 | Vénis mekhá. ) * 2
Hebrew has a lot of words where you string together a slew of prefixes and suffixes to a simple three-letter root to make something nearly unpronouncable, yet rather precise. (And it's much worse with biblical hebrew.)Smecha, as in the root for happy;
nismecha as in the passive verb "let us be happy";
v'«mumble» as in the prefix "and mumble".
Re:Hava Nagila
jhi on 2003-02-19T12:25:48
> Hebrew has a lot of words where you string together a slew of prefixes and suffixes to a simple three-letter root to make something nearly unpronouncable, yet rather precise.
Hey, that sounds a lot like Finnish:-) Though Finnish uses suffixes much more than prefixes.
And tacking on the suffixes can (and most often does) mutate the root.
Re:Hava Nagila
ziggy on 2003-02-19T14:47:52
Hey, maybe the Finns are the mythical 13th lost tribe of Israel.Hey, that sounds a lot like Finnish:-) Though Finnish uses suffixes much more than prefixes. And tacking on the suffixes can (and most often does) mutate the root. :-) Hebrew doesn't use much in the way of prefixes. The few that are used are generally conjunctions or prepositions: the, and, with, in, to, from. Possessives are suffixes, as are most artifacts of verb conjugation. There are a few prefix/infix orthographic changes, but some of them are there to help disambiguate spelling when not using vowels, and most of them are related to voice. Roots are generally not mutated, because the root is defined as a series of consonants, and the vowels are changed to reflect part of speech, verb tense, gender and number.
The one area where roots can appear to mutate is verb conjugation. There are seven verb "constructions" in Hebrew: regular, passive, active, passive active, causative, passive causative and reflexive. Not every verb exists in all 7 constructions; they differ in their use of prefix consonants and infix vowels. This leads to some poetic relationships between words. The root k-t-v means write in the first construction, dictate in the fifth, and correspond in the seventh. The verb "to pray" only exists as a reflexive verb.
Re:Hava Nagila
jhi on 2003-02-19T19:36:36
Since we saw Hebrew, let me try some Finnish sample... hmm... translation for "(not) even in my wildest dreams" would be "hurjimmissa kuvitelmissanikaan":
hurja - wild
hurjin - wildest
hurjimmissa - the 2nd -i is plural, and the -ssa is the "in"
kuva - picture, image
kuvitella - imagine
kuvitelma - dream
kuvitelmissa - again, -i is plural and -ssa is the "in"
kuvitelmissani - and -ni we already went through
kuvitelmissanikaan - the -kaan is the "(not) even", kind of
So... wild-superlative-plural-in image-thought-plural-in-my-not-even, or something like that:-)
Oh, don't I know it. If I eat too many carrots, I get a stomach ache that can last for days.
