עברית! (Hebrew, obviously)

[ArgonV]

Can someone translate this for me? Or did my uncle just send me some drunken gibberish?

[The Milkman]

At first glance, it's drunken gibberish. So assume it to be such until someone who is a bit more versed in the language tells you otherwise.

[ZLVT]

To start off with, so many doubled letters is unusual, as is the fact that he put מ and כ at the end of words when they should then become ם and ך respectively. I put all the words through a dictionary and only טח came up meaning anything (to be plastered). So as far as hebrew goes it doesn't seem to mean anything. Given that there is not a single vowel in the whole thing that goes for yiddish too.

I assumed he was typing english with a hebrew keyboard but that doesn't seem likely because the standard hebrew layout would produce dcmmy yj akrdnn uddjc rmjf It's also unlikely since polysyllabic english words tend not to end on double letters

[Zohar]

The first "word" on the left could supposedly be תחגגו backwards, which means "celebrate". Other than that, it's all gibberish.

[ArgonV]

Ok, drunken gibberish it is then. Thanks

[Ley]

I thought that the niqud were added much later. Still have trouble with the vowel sounds which are indicated by both niqud and vav/yod. How did they write in pre-niqud hebrew?

the vav is used to emphasize the vowel. nobody actually uses the different vowel sounds properly though. the vowel that makes the O sound is called a kholam: if it has a vav it is "kholam maleh" (full kholam), if it doesn't have a vav it is called a "kholam khaser" (khaser means missing/minus so it's a kholam that's missing the vav) and there is supposed to be a bit of a difference as to how it's pronounced. people whoe aren't linguists don't know the difference though.

also, in yiddish, aleph, ayin, yod and vav are the vowels. that's it. aleph is a "oh" sound unless there is a line under the it to make it a "ah" sound instead. ayin is a "eh" sound, yod is "ee", vav is "oo".

[The Milkman]

עוד אני מחייה את החות הזה. תמיד חסרים לי סיכויים לשׂוחח. אז, האם תשׂוחחו איתי?

[jobriath]

Hi all,

Apologies for breaking into the thread and the low-level necro. Hopefully this is on-topic enough to mitigate rage.

I have a quick question for a story I'm writing. How would a Biblical* Hebrew speaker say the number 144000? How about transliterated into Latin characters? I started by looking up the numerical values of the characters and got "qof mem dalet eleth", but it strikes me this might sound as odd as saying "one four four thousand" or something analogous.

Thanks!

* If you have follow-up questions about this then I'm probably not sophisticated enough to answer them. Anything plausible will do!

[Judah]

Hi all,

Apologies for breaking into the thread and the low-level necro. Hopefully this is on-topic enough to mitigate rage.

I have a quick question for a story I'm writing. How would a Biblical* Hebrew speaker say the number 144000? How about transliterated into Latin characters? I started by looking up the numerical values of the characters and got "qof mem dalet eleth", but it strikes me this might sound as odd as saying "one four four thousand" or something analogous.

Thanks!

* If you have follow-up questions about this then I'm probably not sophisticated enough to answer them. Anything plausible will do!

If you want to know how a Biblical Hebrew speaker would say a number, then the place to look is obviously the Biblical book of Numbers!

Just kidding. No, really--check out Numbers 2:9, e.g. for a model. Your number would be m'ath eleph v'arba'im eleph v'arba'ath alaphim, meaning, more or less, "a hundred thousand and forty thousand and four thousands". (I just transliterated that off the cuff without looking up standardized transliteration systems, BTW, but it corresponds accurately to the Hebrew letters/vowels, and it gives you as good an approximation of pronunciation as any.)

[jobriath]

If you want to know how a Biblical Hebrew speaker would say a number, then the place to look is obviously the Biblical book of Numbers!

Oh dear.

Your number would be m'ath eleph v'arba'im eleph v'arba'ath alaphim, meaning, more or less, "a hundred thousand and forty thousand and four thousands". (I just transliterated that off the cuff without looking up standardized transliteration systems, BTW, but it corresponds accurately to the Hebrew letters/vowels, and it gives you as good an approximation of pronunciation as any.)

That's beautiful---both your translation and the pattern of the numbers themselves. Thanks a lot!

[Fire Brns]

What's a good online source to start learning Hewbrew?

[Sproukr]

שלום! משהוא עדיין חי פה? חשבתי שזה מקום טוב לדבר בעברית, אבל כנראה אין פה אף אחד.

רציתי גם לשים פה וידאו מצחיק, אבל אסור...

Ehh... I hate when all my beautiful punctuation gets messed up. Oh well.

[sitworks74]

What's a good online source to start learning Hewbrew?

hebrewpodcasts.com is very good, I think. Very accessible, entertaining, and you can download audio & play it at your leisure.