Philologos
By Philologos
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Culture Getting the Heck Out of Hock
Estie Neff wants to know, “What are the origins and meanings of the word ‘hock?’” “Hock” can mean many things, including a kind of white wine and the tarsal joint of the hind leg of a digitigrade quadruped. I would assume, however, that Ms. Neff is interested in two particular meanings: the English slang word…
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Culture A Slice of Hebrew Pizza
Irwin Rosenthal writes from Woodstock, N.Y.: “Recently, I was at a bar mitzvah in California where the bar-mitzvah boy delivered his address in Italian. In it he said that he had chosen to emphasize his Roman heritage by including pizza ebraica dolce as one of the foods served at the Kiddush. Unfortunately, I had to…
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Culture Who Put the Bop in the Bop Shoo Bop Shoo Bop?
Solomon Miller writes from Huntsville, Ala.: ” photo-credit=”Image by WIKI COMMONS” src=”https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/675x/center/images/cropped/wyclifgent-072910-1425717101.jpg”] “I am puzzled by the origin and pronunciation of the English word ‘Sabbath.’ Since it obviously comes from Hebrew shabbat, why isn’t it ‘Shabbath’? And why the ‘th’ at the end of it? Is this an attempt to mimic an aspirated Hebrew ‘t’?…
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Culture The Lord’s Name In Vain
Although some of you have let me know that you enjoyed my recent column on the Orthodox spelling of “G-d,” others have chided me for it. ” photo-credit=”Image by WIKI COMMONS” src=”https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/675x/center/images/cropped/bosch-072210-1425717222.jpg”] Josh Sider, for instance, writes that my column was “in very poor taste” and that I owe my readers an apology. “You could…
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Culture From Hebrew to Ugaritic and Back Again
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced on June 30 that three linguists, working under its auspices, have developed a successful computer system for deciphering the ancient language of Ugaritic. At the coming annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, the three will present a paper on a new computer system that, “in a matter…
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Culture Rivers Run Through the Bible Lands
Bill Morris writes that he has been “struck by the coincidence” of three rivers that flow partly or wholly through Israel, or along its borders, having names that start with the same syllable: the Jordan, or Yarden in Hebrew; the Yarmuk, an eastward-flowing tributary of the Jordan that joins it south of the Sea of…
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Culture By Golly, It’s the Deity Again
Jonah G. Sinowitz writes: “Since I was a young child, I’ve written the word G-d with a hyphen. I still think in terms of G-d, even though everyone around me uses the word Hashem. On the other hand, I have no problem writing ‘god’ with a small ‘g.’ Today, for example, in referring to what…
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Culture Jeffrey Goldberg and the Tukhis Police
The political commentator and national correspondent of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg, whom I first met many years ago at the office of the Forward when he was writing for this paper, has run afoul of the foul-language police. Interviewed by New York Times journalist Helene Cooper in the Sunday Times’ June 6 Week in…
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