CORRECTION (was Re: Re: How to say This Week?)

    Earlier today, I answered Steg's question with
what I thought was the correct answer.


> > but then what's the difference
> > between (assuming it's |zakhar|) saying |hazeh| and |haba|?
>
> |hashavua' haba| (= the coming week) is the week following
> |hazeh|. In other words, you have:
>
> |hashavua'| = the current week
> |hashavua' hazeh| = the week following the current week
> |hashavua' haba| = the second week after the current week
    I just had another interesting talk with my native Hebrew-speaking
daughter, who told me that I'm all wrong!
(What else is new? Such are the joys of fatherhood! ;-)   )
    If I understand what she told me, the correct version goes like this:

    1. If you are talking about another day in the same week,
(say today is Monday and you are talking about Thursday)
then "this Thursday" (|yom xamishi hazeh|
and "next Thursday"  (|yom xamishi haba|) are the same thing.
    2. If the day falls in the coming week, then
"this Thursday" refers to the one in the coming week and
"next Thursday" refers to the one in the week after that.
    3. Except --- that the usage is changing, and the two expressions
are both coming to be used for the very next instance of the day,
whther it's in the current week or in the week after the current week!
    4. However, when it comes to weeks, "the week" and "this week" both
refer to the current week, whereas "the coming week"
refers to the week following the current week.

    Got all that? Neither does my daughter, who finished correcting
her poor addled  father by saying that, anyway, she usually
doesn't worry about all the rules, and instead just adds |hakarov|,
meaning "the near"  (used in a sense of "near in time"
as well as "near in space")  to specify the very next instance
of a day, week, etc.
    Talk about undoing the Gordian Knot by a simple slash
of the sword!


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

A word is an awesome thing.

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