Baseball and Hebrew

So for those of you who have access to and can read my Facebook page, you may have noticed that I like baseball.... a lot. (Twins fan for life!) I tend to make analogies that relate back to baseball. (P.S. if you don't know a lot about baseball I am sorry... google the terms? Some examples: I am up to bat, he is on deck, it threw a change-up, etc.)

The one most recently used on my Facebook wall was: "Every time I start to get the pattern it throws a curveball." This was in reply to working on my Hebrew homework and wanting to throw something against a wall (which is not a good recommendation if you have neighbors).

Let me set the situation for you.... We are in Chapter 5 of Seow's A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew, learning about Geminates and Segolates (I do not expect you to know what that means). But, what bothered me was when I previewed the vocabulary for that chapter and we came to the word for father: 'ab (the b is pronounced with a v sound).

When I looked at the definition it named the plural as 'abot (same v pronunciation). The ending -ot is typically a feminine ending... but it was on a masculine word!! WHAT!? Confused to the extreme. I had to bring it up in class and the reason for this is because "That is what the language does!"

I do not blame the professor for that answer... I blame the person who originally made this the rule! I hope it was a woman and that she was thinking "I am going to give it a feminine plural ending because when you get too many men in a group they act girl-y." (No offense to any of the men who are reading this).

But if that wasn't the case I am not happy... Why? Because there are straight explanations (fastballs, makes sense) and there are messed up explanations (curveballs, don't make sense) and that was definitely a curveball!!!

Language as a Tool for the Ancient World View

I was listening to my iVocab Hebrew last night to help myself practice the new vocabulary. I had not looked at the chapter (I have a whole system of listening to the vocab, then listening to the narrated Powerpoint presentation, then actually reading the book). Therefore, I had never seen the words except on the flashcard on my iPod.

I had the flashcards on shuffle so that I could not memorize them in order. But somehow two words were put next to each other that made me laugh quite a bit. The words were (in the closest English transliteration I can type) mayim and shamayim. Mayim means water. Shamayim means heaven.

I was brought back to my Introduction to Bible class from undergraduate where we discussed the first creation story in Genesis. God creates light and darkness. Then he separates the waters above from the waters below (with a dome). The ancient world view coming through was that there is water in the sky because it rains.

Therefore, I found it hilarious that the word for heaven has the root of water. The ancient world view have been embedded in the original language. This can also be seen when looking at the creation story. God creates man, (Hebrew: adam) from the soil of the earth (Hebrew for soil: adamah).

Now it all makes sense!

It's Greek to Me!

I am sorry I have not blogged recently. Homework has kept me quite busy (and a sick cat). Recently, I have been spending a lot of time looking at Seow's A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew.

I love my Hebrew class! The first 5 lessons we spent immersing ourselves in the Hebrew language (similar to a Spanish class where the teacher says something, you repeat and then learn the meaning). But those five classes are over... and now we are looking at the written language.

Ever heard the saying "It's Greek to me!" Seriously, I wish I could say it was that simple! The language may look different but it definitely is not Greek! (although the Hebrew "gimmel" does look a lot like a Greek "lambda").

I am not struggling... yet. But there has been lots of iPod flashcard studying recently and there is plenty more of that to come. I wish learning biblical languages were a little easier! Too bad they are mostly dead languages!