Re: The Grammar of Hebrew

On Sep 10, 2004, at 4:10 PM, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 16:14:04 +0930, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating
> Dragon) <dragon@...> wrote:
>> I'm assuming that "shel" (of) is closely related to "sheli" (of me).
> Looks like Arabic, where you can also add possessive suffixes to
> prepositions to create a compound word, e.g. "li" = to me, from l-
> "to" + -i "my", or "fi" = in me, from fi "in" + -i "my".
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
> Watch the Reply-To!
Okay, for some reason i haven't gotten Adrian's message, but i've
gotten Philip's response to it.  Weird.

Anyway, _shel_ in Hebrew is the alien love child of two prepositions:
_she-_ = 'that'/'which'/'who' (i always forget the term for this..
relative clause introducer?)
_le-_ = 'to'/'of'

So literally, the phrase _hakisei' sheli_ 'my chair' is actually "the
chair which (is) mine".
Similarly, _keli shel hheres_ 'ceramic tool' is literally "a tool which
(is) of ceramic".

I've heard that _shel_ was invented by bad printers/scribes who
'accidentally' detached the double preposition _shele-_ from the
beginning of the noun it used to be attached to, but i don't know how
true that is.

Ooops, forgot... _sheli_ "my/mine" is technically _she+le+i_.


-Stephen (Steg)
  "seabáth seálóm"
  *("seabath"???!)