11 Comments
Does this mean "a yellow and red peach" or "a yellow and a red peach"? How would you differentiate between these two sentences?
1623
You should probably point out how colours decline and how they overwhelmingly fit into the קָטֹל mishkal.
- 1623
Colours in Hebrew generally fit into the CaCoC mishkal; declined, it’s CCuCa, CCuCim, CCuCot. Examples:
- אָדֹם, אֲדֻמָה, אֲדֻמִים, אֲדֻמוֹת = red*
- כתום, כתומה, כתומים, כתומות = orange
- סגול, סגולה, סגולים, סגולות = purple
- ורוד, ורודה, ורודים, ורודות = pink
-
כחול, כחולה, כחולים, כחולות = blue
-
The reason this adjective starts with CaC instead of CC is that א (as well as ה, ע, and usually ח) can’t have a shva, so it gets an epenthetic vowel. Furthermore, if the word starts with a sonorant (ר, ל, נ, מ) and a shva, the shva is usually pronounced like a segol.
There’s also an -ish struct, קטַלטַל, e.g. כְּחַלְחַל ‘bluish’ (suffixes appended normally, not vowel or stress shifts).
I would really like a more detailed description of this sort of stuff with all the terms in the lesson notes. It seems like otherwise we have to memorise individually words that have systematic patterns which are both useful and interesting to know :(
- 1623
I agree! I was aghast to see the almost complete and utter absence of these structures in the tips and notes. That’s like Hebrew grammar 101. Nothing makes sense in this language without it.
Im guessing a single pleach that is multi colored, because "peach" isn't in the plural form. I could be wrong though. Anyone else have an explanation?
