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- "הברווז אוהב מים קרים."
34 Comments
Wow, I've know this word for a year now and I didn't know it's plural. How weird.
There are a few such words in Hebrew. פנים and חיים come to mind. I sometimes make the mistake of treating them as plurals in English.
It can be plural in English as well but it's usually referring to bodies of water then.
Similarly, in English you can speak about, for example, several people's faces. In Hebrew one person's one and only face is in plural form, הפנים שלו יפים. The word פן in the singular form does exist, it's not very frequent and means "aspect". But one's face is a plural. שמים, מים don't have a singular form.
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Well, as AlmogL said, it's not "faces", it's "aspects". "His aspects (the aspects of his face that give it character) are beautiful".
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It was used in England in Victorian era and earlier more frequently but it's still used today for spas/mineral water bathing. "Taking of the waters." Big thing for upscale women of a nervous disposition.... Or most things... medicine wasn't very advanced. Corsets were tight... Etc etc.
That's seems very strange. Water I can understand because even in English it's more or less a mass noun but faces? How do you talk about multiple faces? פינימים?
In English it can be plural (even when speaking of a single amount of water, like the waters of the Jordan), in Hebrew, it can't be single. It's always plural.
If they're singular (as you know they are), then why do you mistake them for plurals in English ?
and what's the plural form of the two words ?
As others said, it's grammatically plural in Hebrew, so when you translate to English you need to adjust the way you think of "sky" and "life".
There's no other plural form, life is חיים and lives is also חיים.
the singular of פנים is פן, true you wouldn't use this word to describe a face (organ), but פן is the 'face'-of something. that is why you would say פניה or פניו to describe her/his face and not פנימיה or פנימיו.
also while חיים can mean life (and then it is uncountable) it comes from the word חיים (plural living) which have singular form - חי (I'm living, we are living - אני חי, אנו חיים)
Well, פָּנִים אֲחֵרוֹת is primarily a different face, only in specific contexts where it is clear you encounter many people, you would read is as plural: אני מביט לתוך הקהל הזה, ואני רואה פנים אחרות I look into this crowd, and I see different faces.
With regard to פניה/פניו - this is actually exactly the plural possessive form (the singular form would be פנו/פנה), so there's consistency: פנים is indeed always plural when referring to someone's face.
The corrct "spelling" of the word is בַּרְוָז. As we don't use Niqqud in everyday writting, we add another ו to mark it is bar-vaz, not b'roz.
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Because vav is used as a consonant and a vowel, as V and as o/u. It's also used double when it's spelling out loanwords as "W" like whisky: וויסקי
can't the "מים קרים" also translated into cool water? I know cool is more like קרירים then קר, but usually you (and animals too, I belive) wouldn't drink really-cold water...
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Did you write "male duck" or "drake"? I don't know what the situation is with this sentence because I wrote duck but in previous sentences I've written "drake" the English word for a male duck and it has been accepted.
No, וָו is also a consonant. To mark it, בַּרְוָז is written with two Vavs, when written without Niqqud. It is often used in Aramaic loan words, like in this contraction of בַּר־אַוָּז son of a gander.
Well, אַוָּז gander is the male animal, אַוָּזָה goose is the female animal. In a collective sense English uses the form goose, but Hebrew the form אַוָּז. The same with Syriac ܘܰܙܰܐ and ܘܰܙܬܰܐ. So if you follow Berakhot 57a:10 הָרוֹאֶה אַוָּוז בַּחֲלוֹם — יְצַפֶּה לְחׇכְמָה he who sees a gander in (his) dream, may hope for wisdom, a female goose in your dream may do the same for your wisdom as well.
Thanks again, and i wonder how you got your aramaic keyborad, and if you know a reliable source that teaches aramaic i will be more than grateful to you (I love semetic languages).
Thanks in advance.
Well, Syriac is a keyboard you can add easily in Windows, in the same way as Hebrew (unlike e.g. Coptic which I had to edit by myself). Which dialect of Aramaic do you want to learn? It is best to start with one dialect or epoch and fan out later. Good starting points are Biblical Aramaic in order to read Daniel or the targumin, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic in order to study the talmud or Syriac, if you are more interested in the Christian Church of the East.
Well, the Hebrew word מַ֫יִם water has no formal plural, so the sense here can be cold water in general as an element, but different bodies of water (or waters ordered in a restaurant) are possible meanings too.
