67 Comments
You're right, it reads "זה השם שלךְ" (is this your name). You should report it (I can't report it from the discussion board).
Yes I had it as a listening exercise and recogbized it as HaShem "the name"... got it wrong obviously.
The audio sounds like השם (hashem) = the name. The word reads hashoom השום = the garlic
The problem is that the audio was recorded with a professional voice actor (the same one from my textbook, apparently). To correct it, they would have to record it again. I don't know if they have the budget for it, and I believe the suggestions the mods presented to the staff to solve other problems like this were rejected, so it's possible the audio may not be corrected, at least in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, it's just a small, incidental mistake, so it is not such a big problem -- well, at least on the web, but the mods cannot do anything about the gem system either.
They should just disable the audio for this sentence then. There are lots of sentences with no audio, better than having this incorrect, misleading recording.
Shem is correct. That means name. The written part is wrong. שום means garlic.
They could just withdraw this sentence. It's not like the whole Duolingo Hebrew tree depends on it.
What about "Is this garlic yours?". It is also marked as incorrect, but I don't get why
You're putting "this" as a preposition. In the given sentence "this" is the subject.
Perhaps there is an alternative pronunciation, say, dialectal, and there is no mistake?
No. i=It clearly sounds as shem, not shum, or shoom. There isn't different dialectal or alternative pronunciation. Shem = Name, God. Shum = Garlic, Nothing.
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OK, this has been reported for at least a year before I arrived at it. Could someone please fix the audio?
An actor, like everyone, can get something wrong. But there should be a quality check before the mistake gets to the customer and another quality process to withdraw an error after it's out. That's a lack of professionalism from many people failing here.
Suggestion: Since duo are not able to change the audio, why not change the translation instead? Would not the correct translation be: is this your name?
Two years later and the audio or the text was not corrected. To make things easier, just change the text.
Yes, the voice says hashem rather than hashum (Nov 17, 2018). I looked up שום in Dov Ben-Abba, Hebrew/English Dictionary (1977) and it states that שום is pronounced SHUM and has the sense "garlic; name; something." Since this is the food part of the tree, it clearly means garlic. But the sub-meanings of "name" and "something" have me curious and I guess I can wait until further in the tree to figure that out, but if a Hebrew speaker wants to chime in I would be interested.
I just checked in Even Shoshan dicitonary, and it also gives "name" as a meaning of "שום". It was a complete surprise to me, and I'm a native Hebrew speaker, considering myself reasonably learned... The example in the dictionary is from Chazal, and I wonder if even in Chazal writings it appears more than once in this sense. Might be their fluke.
Well, according to Klein, "שׁוּם is a secondary form of שֵׁם. The change is due to the dissimilation of the vowel e to the labial m. Cp. Akkadiam shumu. Jewish Palestinian Aramaic has both forms". And indeed Jastrow lists several instances of the Targumim for this form. Therefore it is an Aramism and not relevant at all for Modern Hebrew.
Thanks for your note, IngeborgHa14. Jastrow did a great job in his day but his dictionary can't be trusted for vowel pointing and a lot has happened since his time with Aramaic. A better source is the CAL (Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon) online project. The common Aramaic lexeme for garlic is תומא according to CAL while שום is Hebrew. I don't think Klein is correct that JPA has שום, rather sometimes there is a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic in texts. See also Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic (2nd ed.) 577b. תומא is also Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, 1198a. It's also Syriac. According to Cook's Glossary of Targum Onkelos (297) the form in that targum for "garlic" is תום. He does not list "garlic" for שום. So שום meaning "garlic" is not an Aramaism. Instead, we should look to the consonant shift between Aramaic and Hebrew of ש and ת, e.g., the verb "to sit" שב // תוב. I'm new to Arabic, but in Arabic garlic is thum, which shows how common that root is for that word. When שום shows up in some Jewish texts as "garlic," it is almost certainly a situation of diglossia. Yerushalmi is esp. mixed JPA and Hebrew with Greek loanwords, whereas Bavli is more Aramaic (though the baraitot are Mishnaic Hebrew).
Yes, שׁוּם garlic shows, how the protosemitic interdental ṯ [θ] developed into ת/ܬ in Aramaic, but became שׁ in Hebrew. But I was speaking about the word שׁוּם meaning name, which has š [ʃ] as its origin and stayed שׁ/ܫ in both languages. The valuable CAL list also some vowel variation: šm, šmˀ (šum, šom, šem; šmā). But I appreciate your lexical work on garlic. Arabic ثوم and اِسْم show the standard development of the two consonants too!
I HEAR "SHEM SHELAH", NOT, "SHUM SHELAH". IS THAT THE WAY IT SHOULD BE PRONOUNCED.?
which is a shame, given the importance of the word Shem . Hopefully it will be.
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This audio says "shem" when it should say "shoom." That changes the meaning of the sentence. Thanks for your attention.
One more vote for fixing the audio: the voiceover says "shem" (= name) rather than "shum" (= garlic).
the word garlic is written if you click on it. If you don't use זה , then you would have to add he or haim
Is this your garlic? ? זה השום שלך Is the garlic yours? ? הוא השום שלך is the garlic yours? ? האם השום שלך
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Is the garlic yours? = is this your garlic?, since "the" acts as pointer here, I can't ask a person about some undefined garlic. However not accepted.
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I'm really freaking tired of this: "is this your garlic" === "is the garlic yours", however first variant is still incorrect year behind.
You mean that "is the garlic yours?" is not accepted as a translation to "זה השום שלך"?
Consider this scnario: you go to a grocery, you look at the pile of garlic, you don't like how miserable it looks. Somewhat rudely you ask the grocer, with some contempt, "זה השום שלך?" "is this your garlic?" You wouldn't ask "is the garlic yours?". Duo wants a literal translation that makes sense; since there is "זה" in the Hebrew, you should have "this" or "it" in the English.
Why isn't "Is the garlic yours" accepted ? It would sound more logic I think...
Well, you did not translate the demonstrative זֶה in this case. Duolingo usually insists on a translation which follows closely the grammatical structure of the source language, not favouring translations, which have an equivalent sense.
Guess the speaker isn't native at hebrew, I don't know...Was he supposed to pronounce: "Ze ha'shum shelcka" Because he said: "Zé ha'sam shelcka"
