Re: To our Jewish friends

On Sat, 11 Sep 1999, Eric Christopherson wrote:

> L@shana tova tikateivu!
>
> For the Hebrew-impaired: "may you be written for a good year," meaning
> written in the Book of Life to live for another year, a traditional Rosh
> Hashana greeting.
>
Siath yscrith am yn bon an!

Literally translated "Be written about a good year".  Sia(th) is one of a
handful of imperatives that are subjunctive rather than indicative in
origin.  Brithenig tends to favour using am, about, with temporal nouns.

A month back I got fed up with the day planner I was using (run out of
calendar pages) and bought a copy of The Jewish Calendar 5759 which I
found discounted on a sale stand that will suffice until the end of the
year.  Very useful because it includes things like lectionary readings for
the sabbaths and holy days.  For better or worse I am one of those
Christians who are fascinated by Judaica and developments in Jewish
theological thinking.  For the last couple of years friends have been
receiving a rather attractive Hannukah card that I found in a boxed set in
the same book shop.  It makes a welcome change.

> On a related note, I noticed in the Kernu and Brithenig versions of the
> Child's Exercise that the word for birthday translates to "head of year,"
> exactly what <ro'sh hashshanah> means in Hebrew, though it stands for the
> New Year.
>
The Brithenig is a calque of the Welsh phrase pen-blwydd with the same
meaning.  Interestingly enough "cab-", head, is restricted in use in
Brithenig. "Test" is the normal word for head, but "cab" is used in some
phrases like cabient, clan-chief, and cab-annal.  I don't know why Welsh
should use this phrase for birthday, but it is curious that it does.

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

    Jesus is working out his salvation; he is about halfway there.