The trick with such translations is not to translate literally, as that often results in a rhythmically awkward or unwieldy expression, but to craft a suitably poetic equivalent.
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Tag Archives: Hebrew
What does “Havah” in “Havah Nagilah” mean?
Havah means “Let us”; nagilah is a rather old-fashioned and literary way of saying “we shall rejoice”—together, they mean “Let us rejoice.”
What is the real meaning of the Hebrew word ‘hesed’ in the Bible?
An excellent question, because the agonizing and linguistic contortions surrounding this word among non-Hebrew speakers have always puzzled me.
The traditional translation—lovingkindness—is totally inapt on several grounds: it’s a made-up word, cloyingly sentimental, semantically wrong, and rhythmically horrible, wreaking havoc on the meter of any verse in which it is present.
Are there homophones in Hebrew? If so, what are some examples?
Absolutely—especially if the standard modern Israeli pronunciation is involved, whereby many letters (such aleph and ayin; tet and tav; het and khaph; kaph and quph; shin and samekh) sound alike that in the traditional Sephardi or Yemenite pronunciation, do not.
To demonstrate this—and the utter failure of conventional, quasi-phonetic transliteration of Hebrew in Roman characters to maintain the distinctions in Square Hebrew script between such homophones—see my poem, Modern-day Ecclesiastes, which begins:
How do I know if a verb in Hebrew is Pa’al type, Piel type or other?
The short answer is that you fairly quickly develop an intuitive sense, from hearing (or reading) how other people use that verb. But if you’re looking for a broad rule of thumb to get you going, here it is:
How do you say “God’s fury will punish your soul” in Hebrew?
A straightforward, modern Hebrew rendition would be something like
זעמו של אלוהים יעניש את נשמתך
Nice try—but (alas) no nargillah
Liron Lavi Turkenich is a young and engaging Israeli graphic designer with a commendable idea: bridge the cultural gap between Israel’s Hebrew speakers and its Arab population by creating a ‘hybrid’ font set comprising characters that are half Hebrew, half Arabic:
Fig. 1: A blend of the Hebrew and Arabic words for “language”, in the “Aravrit” font. Unfortunately, it looks nothing like the Arabic word, and most resembles the Hebrew word שנאה (sin’ah) = ‘hate’
I read briefly about this font (cleverly dubbed Aravrit—a play on the Hebrew words aravit and ivrit, i.e., ‘Arabic’ and ‘Hebrew’) a few months ago, and even adopted the first combined word that you see in the video (which allegedly depicts the word ‘language’ in both Hebrew and in Arabic) in my latest talk, about ‘Arabic Hebrew‘ (see Fig. 1).
