Re: Fruitcakes

On 6 May, Steg wrote:

> On Mon, 6 May 2002 12:14:04 -0400 Christopher B Wright
> <faceloran@...> writes:
> > You are giving those words too much power. Ignore it for long
> > enough, and
> > nobody will use it in that way. Sure, whatever word you're talking
> > about
> > (it was lost in the spam*) will probably stick around, but it would
> > have to generalize to stay in use.
>
> > *Spam: Hebrew for "spam"
>
> > Wright.
> -
>
> Maybe in Modern Hebrew :-P .
    And then again, maybe not!
I just asked my (native Hebrew
speaking) son, who talks computer
with his friends in Hebrew, how one
would say it. I described the situation;
I did _not_ ask for a translation of
"spam". Anyhow, his immediate reaction
was /doar zevel/, literally "garbage mail".
(doar = mail; zevel = garbage)
    I have seen |doar zevel| in print, and
a quick google of Israeli sites also turned up
|doar zevel|. |Spam|, when used, is writtten
in English (ie in Latin letters).
    I don't doubt that there might be Israelis
who use |spam| as a borrowing into Hebrew.
(It wouldn't be the first borrowing from
English by a long shot!) I just don't recall having
heard it.

> Crazy Israelis, abandoning all the cool allophonic restrictions of older
> stages of Hebrew!
>
> I'd prefer _espam_ or even _sefam_.
(Nah! Too close to the word /safam/! People might get confused
and end up saying  " I received a lot of moustache today!" ;-)
(/safam/ = moustache)  )

    The real sign of its acceptance into Hebrew would be for |spam|
to get "folk-analyzed" as deriving from the "root"  s-p-m.
You would then hear all the verb forms, for example: "I was spammed"
might be /haiti muspam/ or "I (somehow) spammed myself"
might be /histapamti/ (= hit [reflexive]-spam-ti [first person past], with
the common reversal of /t/ and /s/, occurring when the /t/ of the reflexive
is immediately followed by a root beginning with /s/.
    This sort of thing I haven't yet heard.


Dan Sulani
------------------------------------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.