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The Awful Hebrew Language
An outline of my next cultural piece, with apologies to Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad (Appendix D, 1880)
As a student of Hebrew, by fault of being in Israel and believing it necessary to learn the language of the general populous (even as more of them speak English than in many parts of Texas), I have endeavored to grasp the basics of this formerly dead tongue which started wagging again in public a century ago.
While so-called history books claim Eliezer Ben Yehuda revived the Hebrew as a spoken language in the late 19th century, I believe that like the inventor of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, it was actually his wife. (Note for historical accuracy: Catherine Littlefield Greene, Whitney’s employer, is credited by some historians with originating the Cotton Gin. She was not his wife.)
Hebrew can only be the product of a woman:
1) Everything is written backwards (except anything to do with mathematics.)
2) Hebrew proponents claim the grammar is logical, but every supposed rule has multiple exceptions.
3) Every word has a gender– including numbers– and the rule of thumb is that words with “t” and “ah” (letter Hey) sound at the end are feminine. Except, of course, for ones that aren’t. The masculine of “you” is “ata” (but aha! it doesn’t ended in an actual “ah” sound, even though it is pronounced that way.)
Oh, and counting is done in female numbers; while the word for numbers (”mispar”) is male.
4) You have to match the gender of every word to the person/s you’re talking to/about so they won’t be offended that you’re referring to them as the wrong sex
When buying a quantity of male vegetables, like carrots or potatoes, you must use male gender numbers; when referring to female ones like turnips or tomatoes, you use female numbers. You have to memorize all the exceptions and know how to spell the word before you can guess at its gender.
5) Thus, it’s impossible to have a secretive phone conversation without your girlfriend knowing if you’re actually talking to a man or woman.
6) You have to guess how to read nearly every word, because Hebrew didn’t bother to including all the vowels.
To make things extra complicated, there is a supposed system of dots and dashes intended to simulate vowels, called “nekudot” (points) but there are three times as many of these markings as necessary.
7) There’s no consistency between the written and spoken language.
Four letters can be pronounced two different ways:
?) Bet is either B or V
?) Pey is either P or F
? ) Shin is either S or Sh
?) Kaff is K or Ch
Four sets of letters are pronounced the same;
? ) Aleph and (?) Ayn: A or no sound
?) Vav and (?) Bet (then called ‘Vet’): V
? ) Het and (?) Kaff (then called ‘Haf’): hard CH
? ) Samech and (?) Shin (then called ‘Sin’): S
One letter “Vav” can be pronounced as a V, O, or U!
Four letters, Mem (?), Nun (?, Fay/Pay (?), Tsadik (?), turn into a different shape with the same sound if they show up at the end of a word and are called a ’sofit,’ for no reason other than to be difficult to figure out.
When written, however, the Fey Sofit (?) and Tsadik Sofit (?) look like a Lamed (?) except for the direction of a little curve at the end.
7) You can only know from the gender context how to properly read a word.
For example, the word for “name” is spelled the same but pronounced differently if you’re talking to a woman (”shemech”) or man (”shimcha.”) Likewise the word for “yours.”
There are at least 12 words that all translate to the English “you.”
Clearly, such a wacked-out system could only have come from the mind of a chick.
With its limited concept of vowels, my name would be written like: NMSYYLF NOMYYS, or in the Hebrew:
?????? ???????
And as I’m sure you know, the written script looks almost nothing like the printed.
Online Comics and Doonesbury
Since I no longer have the chance to check out the Sunday funnies in print, I downloaded a couple of excellent online comic readers for the Mac OS X: ComicTastic and iComic. Both are slightly different ways to do the same thing: read those great comic strips like Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes and Doonesbury, without having to even glance at ones you never-ever would think of reading, like Apartment 3-G, Rex Morgan, M.D., and Mary Worth. How is it that these are even still around— who reads soap opera comic strips anyway? Mary Worth started in 1938, for pete’s sake— and the writer is 80 years old! Is there a secret untapped contingent of comic reading retirees and grandmothers?
I used to be a fan of Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury. It had a sort of smart pop-culture political sensibility that worked well in the 80s. I particularly remember the “reimagining” of Ronald Reagan as a Max Headroom talking-TV.
But lately, I’ve noticed that the strip doesn’t have much oomph to it, particularly for the last couple of months with the go-nowhere Ahnold “Gropenfuhrer” storyline, repeats of years old anti-SUV strips and this weeks “reader mail.” (Yesterday’s asked, “What do you do when you get sick of messages and agendas and just want to kick back and coast?” )
Has Doonesbury lost its edge? Is Trudeau tired and out of steam?
Heck, Calvin & Hobbes’s Bill Watterson knew how to go out at the top a decade ago; UT alum Berkeley Breathed knew to get out of the game when he ran out of ideas for Bloom County-morphed-Outland* And Farside’s Gary Larsen just called in sick one day and never wrote another panel.
Should Trudeau follow suit and give up the Doonesbury ghost? Move on, and let the young politi-toonists get some creds?
* Just read that Breathed is back with a Sunday only strip called Opus: an interview in Salon has this amusing bit about the half-page space he demanded (and his love for Jim Davis of Garfield):
It’s upsetting editors, but has it caused any major setbacks? Are enough papers picking up the strip?
We’ll be in all the major markets. But the size issue will initially keep us out of the majority of the nation’s newspapers unless the readers make a fuss. Boy, I’d hate to see that happen. I’d hate to see readers force editors to eliminate the comic strips marketed by corporations, widows and distant relatives long after their deceased creators pass on. What would happen to all the hacks hired by Jim Davis to write and draw “Garfield” if we were to put it out of business? Remember what they did to Mel Gibson at the end of “Braveheart”? There’s an idea.
That said, would it be your wish to cause ripples?
As an end, controversy is a dead end. It’s why TV shows tried to throw in nudity some years ago. I notice now that the ripples de jour are lesbian kisses. It’s a sign of desperation, not good writing. Not to say that if I could figure out a way to throw in some hot lesbian action into “Opus,” I wouldn’t.