"לאו דווקא."
Translation:Not necessarily.
26 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
can someone explain (if this is even possible in Hebrew) explain the orthography here? (why the alefs, why the vavs?)
the לאו instead of לא has actually Aramaic roots - this is how "not" is written in the Talmud. Not sure about the דווקא but it wouldn't surprise me if it was Aramaic as well.
The place to go online is The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon project (CAL): http://cal.huc.edu/ Then search דוקא: dwqˀ (dawqā) n.m. exactness. Then an example is given from Bavli Eruv. CAL will often alert to cognates but mostly sticks to Aramaic dialects. It also provides links to other online lexica, such as Jastrow, which provides additional examples to track down. There are interesting studies of the connections between Aramaic dialects and Arabic dialects. The Nabateans, for instance, spoke a dialect of Arabic with close ties to Aramaic and had an alphabet that played a big role in the development of Arabic script. Nabatean inscriptions survive.
Does the stress in דווקא fall on the last syllable? Because on Forvo it falls on the first one (and I think in another sentence in this skill, spoken by the female speaker, it is pronounced dAvka, but I'm not sure).
I don't know what is the "language law" of the pronunciation, but I know how people really say it - not like the audio here, the stress is on the beginning of the word Davka
Yes, I think it is an influence of Yiddish ניט דווקא [nit dAfke], which shifts the stress. Note the Yiddish devoicing of the וו to [f] in this word, which is also prevalent in Hebrew דַּוְקָא.
I reported that "not exactly" should be accepted because that's what it means in Aramaic. However, if a moderator or native speaker can provide a rebuttal for how it means something different now in modern Hebrew, I'm all ears.
It's used in Hebrew only as "not necessarily", as suggested in the formal translation.
Well I am interested in "לאו" is it used in other constructions except of "לאו דווקא"?
Oh, then no. לאו is Aramaic for לא, and it is used only in set phrases.
radagastthebrown is right that it's an Aramaic idiom, but I can think of a couple more Aramaic idioms with this word that are used in Hebrew. Then again, they are used rarely and only very formally.
