And relatedly . . .
There is no such thing as metzitzah bepeh. There is, however, a controversial circumcision practice called metzitzah befeh. Remember, use these powers only for good.
posted by Lawrence | 12:45 PM
4 Comments:
I trust you're referring to powers of grammar?
Lipman writes on DiqduqGeeks:
Amid all the halachic, ethical, and public health hoohah regarding
m:tzitzah b:peh (where the colon represents a sheva), a diqduqdiqe
question comes to mind: why "b:peh"? why not either "b:feh" or "bapeh"?
(I've been wondering something similar about "kasher l:pesach" for some
time now.
Absolutely legitimate question.
The dogesh after prepositions that are connected to the word (le-, be-, sometimes also the conjunction u- or ve-) is often there in Hebrew
elements in Yiddish, in the traditional pronunciation when learning gemore etc. (I think, not only among Ashkenazzim) and you find it more often in
mediaeval manuscripts than can be explained by mere errors.
This phenomenon can be explained in several ways, for example
- Speakers were influenced by other languages such as Italian, French, German or Yiddish to feel the preposition isn't part of the word entity. Using the non-fricative variant of consonants at the beginning of a word is pretty standard in at least post-massoretic times.
- That was the rule in earlier Hebrew as well, and the examples to the contrary are biblicising.
Also Ana BeKoach!
Fleurdelis 11100: Of course, powers of grammar. Powers of squirt bottle wouldn't do.
Post a Comment
<< Home