erratio | Oh botheration

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hebrew

Oh botheration

Inspired by a thread on a mailing list about learning how to downgrade one's swearing practices, feeling as though I can't swear while at work because there are customers around who might hear me, and by the usual early morning meandering thoughts that being at work provides me with, I have decided to outsource my swearing needs to the Hebrew language.

Reasons for swearing in Hebrew:

1. The fricative /x/* sounds pleasingly violent for the purpose of using swearing to vent my rage
2. Almost no one I know understands Hebrew
3. For bonus points, the only people who are likely to both understand and take offense at my misuse of the Holy Language are ultra-orthodox Jews, and since their narrow-minded and patriarchal take on Judaism pisses me off this can only be a Good Thing.

* It's similar to a throat clearing sound

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There are 'swear words' in the Bible as well, you know? My favourite is /šgl/ (שגל). It appears several times but, everytime it appears as a verb (the noun means "concubine") it's been edited out. The 9th century Tiberian Jewish scholars, known as the Masoretes, edited lots of things out by writing alternatives in the margin. Modern printing tradition still includes the edited-out words, alongside the added-in words, and the added-in words are the ones that are actually read (it's known as qere/ktiv). Anyway, wherever they edited out שגל they changed it for שכב ('to lie down [with]'). שגל by itself actually means... well, I won't say it here.

Let's just say that it has the same semantic range as the monosyllabic transitive verb for "have sex" in English. Sorry, no gutturals in this one...

Yay more swear words! :p Actually most of the ones taught to me by Israelis I've later found out to be loanwords from Arabic. Not surprising really..
Any idea what binyan the 'everyday' usage of /šgl/ (שגל) would fit into?

Haha, how practical you are!

Well, when you speak of the "everyday" use, I assume that you are wanting to use it on analogy with the way in which the corresponding verb is used in English. That would either require a hophal or a hithpa'el imperative. Curiously enough, there are no hophal imperatives in the Bible, but it was possibly pronounced /hošgal/. A hithpa'el imperative would yield /hištagel/. In the event that you care to employ the hophal, remember that it would thus be intransitive: you would be ordering the person to be the subject of the verb. In the event that it is a hithpa'el it would be transitive but with a reflexive subject. Thus, /hištagel lekha/ or /hištagli lakh/. (Of course you could also use the infinitive: /leḥ lehištagel/!)

Has Hebrew ever been this fun?
(PS: In case you're interested, in the Bible it only ever appears as Qal, Niphal or Pual)

But of course! My thinking is that if I'm going to start swearing in another language I may as well go the whole way :)
I don't actually swear except when I'm very stressed out but it seems like a good habit to get into, so that when it does happen I won't be offending everyone in hearing range.

I'm trying to work out how to conjugate the verb so that I can use it as a single word like in English, except it occurs to me that the English version is equally grammatically incorrect. So I think I'll go with the imperative form /štagel/ as my ultimate swearword of choice.(apologies if it's still grammatically incorrect, I'm basing it off my knowledge of the Hebrew version of "shut up", /štok/, and which appears to be formed by moving it to future tense and then removing the prefix that indicates subject) This also has the benefit of containing the nice violent /t/ sound.

A question: Some time ago (when I was last in Israel, a good 5 years ago) someone taught me how to say the F-word in Hebrew, but I didn't hear it clearly. My best guess as to the phrase was /leḥ lehiztayen/. Care to enlighten me what exactly it is I've been telling people to do to themselves, now that it seems I've been using the wrong verb all this time? I'd hate to think I've been telling them to scrub themselves or the like..

Change the /t/ for a /d/ and you heard it correctly. The etymological root is /zyn/ (the same as the seventh letter of the alphabet). This word, in Israeli slang, means "penis" - in Archaic Biblical Hebrew it meant "sword", but the word dropped out of use for the longest time. /lehizdayen/ is just the hithpa'el infinitive, where the /t/ changes to a /d/ because of the nature of the sibilant. Effectively, you are simply telling someone to be 'penised', but I'm sure you can use your imagination in regards to exactly what the import of the expression is.

As for the word /štok/, it's funny that you say that. I always remembered the imperatives in the same way: put the word into 'future tense' (although in Classical Hebrew we use the imperfective aspect instead; tense is not directly indicated) and then drop the prefix. Easy. The only problem is it doesn't always work. The bests examples of it not working are in situations like this where we are using a hithpa'el. In those instances, a /h/ appears at the beginning of the word, so you'd be wanting to use /hištagel/ instead of just /štagel/. Your word sounds better, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the way in which Israelis form a hithpa'el imperative. Sounds almost cockney, that dropping of the /h/ at the beginning, doesn't it?

Two comments: /hištagel/ is still in use, or at least would be recognised by speakers of modern Hebrew - it is possible to say "šigalti ota" - my best guess of an English equivalent in tone would perhaps be "I ravished her". It's difficult, though, to use a somewhat archaic word in a swearing context - possibly as words obsolesce, they lose their taboo value (I can't back that up?) which is essential to swearing.

Also, /zyn/ still retains its original meaning of "sword" (or more broadly, "weapon") in such uses as "šod m'zuyan" = "armed robbery" (as opposed to being an expression of the opinion of the victim of aforesaid crime).

Oh, and in terms of forming imperatives. I think it always works in Modern Hebrew to put the word into second person future. But, as Simon says, dropping the second person future prefix for a more punchy imperative only works some of the time.

(From Simon)

This usage of the imperfective (aka "Future Tense") in order to express a command is actually not considered to be an imperative at all: it's a jussive. In Biblical Hebrew, jussives are overwhelmingly more common in the third person but they do exist in the second person as well and are indentical in appearance (unless they are III-hehs) to a regular imperfective.

Also, the negative form of a jussive is formed by either adding לא or אל as a prefix; there is no negative imperative in Hebrew - but that's a side point. When you say that the "more punchy" form (ie: the imperative form) only works some of the time, I imagine that that's just because Israeli Hebrew has largely lost the imperative in favour of the jussive. It works all the time in Biblical Hebrew.

(from Daniel)

Okay.

So what I call second person future moonlights as a jussive (in English, "May you [x]"). And the imperative form (in English, "[x]!") is formed by dropping the prefix from the jussive.

What I meant about it not always working in Modern Hebrew is that, for instance, I don't think "hitpael"s can be imperative, only jussive (to take a famous line from the formerly popular comedy show "Eretz Nehederet" - "Al titnatzel, techatzel!" = "Don't apologise, add eggplant [to my sabich]!" could be said "Al titnatzel, chatzel!" (with loss of comedic, but not linguistic, effect) but I know of no imperative form of "titnatzel").

Are you saying that in Hebrew there is an imperative form of "hitpael"s and all other forms, which is separate to the jussive? How does it work?

(from Simon)

Hithpael imperatives are identical to the hithpael infinitives - for the word that you utilised it would be התנצל ('hitnatzel'), with the inclusion of the ה (as mentioned before in relation to השתגל). Hithpaels, hiphils and niphals are the only stems to see this inclusion of a ה although it should also be noted that hophals never appear in the imperative in the Bible but that if they did they would have most probably been formed on analogy with the hiphil.

Jussives are often shortened forms, but this is most often evident if the word is a III-heh, in which case the ה disappears. So for √bnh, for example, the imperative is בנה ('bneh') but the third-person jussive is יבן ('yiben'). You can thus generally tell the difference between jussives and imperfectives but not always. You could probably argue, I suppose, that they are the same thing: conceptually the jussive is a function of the imperfective anyway, right?

Without wanting to suddenly make this thread overly complicated, I would imagine that we are dealing with two broad classes: Imperatives (with a capital I) and Volitives. The imperatives (that is, with a lower-case i) belong in the class of Imperatives, while jussives (depending on their function) can either belong in Imperatives or in Volitives. The Volitives themselves (which also, I guess include the prohibitives which are simply jussives plus a negative adverb) are also within the even broader category of Imperfectives, along with all of the regular imperfective verbs.

Does that make sense?

(from Daniel)

I think I follow. It's just very strange as I am not familiar with many of the constructions you mention in Modern Hebrew - meaning either that they have dropped out of the language, or that I am just not familiar with them.

In particular, you mentioned that you form the negative of a jussive by adding אל or לא before it. As far as I know in Modern Hebrew, the negative can be expressed only by אל + jussive ("Al titnatzel") or by לא + infinitive ("Lo lehitnatzel").

Jen: Sorry for hijacking your blog for this pedantic enterprise. I don't think you deserved it.

(from Simon)

Oy, this is getting complicated, isn't it?
In Biblical Hebrew, the infinitive can also serve as a volitive (ie: "[Please] do x") or a prohibitive ("[Do not] do x"). The regular prohibitives, however, are formed off the jussive and they have a negative adverb inserted before them. By the time we get to the Rabbinic writings, this negative adverb is always אל, without exception (unless quoting the Bible), but in the Bible itself it can also be לא.

Case in point: read the 10 commandments (either in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5) - they all have לא. Also, if you read the story of Solomon's trying the two women (found in 1 Kings 3:16-28, esp. 26-27), you'll see that the author alternates between the two. They seem to possess the same meaning.

Anyway, it's quite possible that this terminology is not even employed at all by Israelis discussing Israeli Hebrew. To the best of my knowledge, you don't speak of perfectives, imperfectives and participles, right? Just pasts, futures and presents?

And, yes, very sorry for having hijacked your post, Jen. But I think you secretly love it. You're just too scared to admit it and look like a nerd (*grins*)

Have a good Yom Kippur!

(from Daniel)

I'm with you. The "infinitive serving as a volitive" trick also works in Modern Hebrew. My mum had funny stories about when she and my dad lived in Israel, and she tried (unsuccessfully) to teach at a primary school (she had studied teaching in Sydney before they came to Israel).

At the Ulpan, though, they were not taught the regular imperative form - perhaps because it was considered impolite, or less elegant Hebrew? - instead, she only knew the infinitive form - "na lashevet" or "b'vakasha lashevet" (and not, "shev!"). Needless to say, the kids ate her alive.

Now that I think about it, it is doubtful whether this linguistic barrier alone was the reason for her being completely disobeyed. Kids are quick to latch on to any chink in the armour of their teachers, and I guess this was just an available chink.

In terms of the terminology used in Modern Hebrew, I can't really help - I never went to Ulpan or otherwise formally learnt the grammar in any depth. There's a book I'd like to get out of the library on Modern Hebrew grammar, though - I'll let you know when I've read more.

Had a good Yom Kippur! Hope you did too (that's Simon & Jen & anyone else who may be reading ...)

Nah, keep going! This is interesting.

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Oh botheration

Ah, swearing in Hebrew...

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