1. BASIC FEATURES OF HEBREW AND BETTER UNDERSTANDING MONY ALMALECH

2. BASIC FEATURES OF HEBREW - 1
The root
The most distinctive feature of Hebrew is that many words have roots consisting of (generally three) consonant letters.
Words derived from one root have one or few common semantic feature/s which gives/give the logic of the derivation.
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3. BASIC FEATURES OF HEBREW - 2
“The three consonantal roots carry certain core meanings whereas vowels (and affixes where applicable) play the role of modifiers, indicating grammatical and some semantic specifications.
For English speakers, an analogous demonstration of this characteristic (Kutscher, 1982) is the comparison of the words SING, SONG, and SUNG on the one hand, with LIVE, LOVE, and LEAVE on the other.
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4. BASIC FEATURES OF HEBREW - 3
The first triplet is one of the exceptional cases in which English resembles the Semitic principle. If we take SNG as the root of these words, we may define a core meaning for these words, namely having something to do with singing, and then identify the vowels as qualifiers or specifiers of the exact meaning of each word. The words of the other triplet, LIVE, LOVE, and LEAVE, do not have a common meaning.” [Shimron, 2005, pp ]
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5. BASIC FEATURES OF HEBREW - 4
Hebrew is a sacral language developed from Aramaic (Aramaic / Chaldean is the mother tongue of Abraham)
By definition the sacral level (place) is a mediator between the humans and the God.
- The imagining based on Hebrew root semantics is much more logical than visual
- Logical relations and the associations evolve from word’s root semantics are a tool for commenting
- The context of the uses of a word is a tool for commenting its meanings
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6. BASIC FEATURES OF HEBREW - 5
Being a sacral language Biblical Hebrew descend from the choices made by Abraham, the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets. Every one of them collected the words that have sacral function. They took only the words they need to communicate the levels of God and humans but not the whole language.
Genealogically the chosen words are from different languages – from Chaldean/Aramaic (Gesenius’ Lexicon is called Hebrew-Chaldee), Semitic languages, Egyptian. In its long history Hebrew has its own features of development, which are independent from any other language.
Modern Hebrew is the same language as the Biblical Hebrew.
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7. Extended semantics of the root
BASIC FEATURES OF HEBREW - 6
Extended semantics of the root
The extended semantics of a root includes all derivates.
The richness of the Hebrew root semantics (the ambiguity) serves the Judaic doctrine that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, “which shine in the appropriate Color”, are the first thing created by God. That is why word formative facts in Hebrew and their spelling bear the feature of divine relations, traces and instructions for their interpretation by man.
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8. BASIC FEATURES OF HEBREW - 7
The root semantics
The sacral motivation of the richness of the root semantics stresses on the logic kind of imagining and it has something to do with mathematics.
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9. 3. Culture factors – e.g. “the robe of the light” in the Middle East
HEBREW TEXT & UNDERSTANDING - 1
1. Every Hebrew root marks a cosmological and creative territory given by God – God created the universe and the world of man from the letters, “which shone in the proper colors”.
2. The context of uses
3. Culture factors – e.g. “the robe of the light” in the Middle East
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10. HEBREW TEXT & UNDERSTANDING - 2
The Semitic-Hamitic paradigm of the roots cannot be preserved in an Indo-European language.
Exploring the Hebrew root semantics means to reveal the real, the lost in translation, Hebrew message. Therefore it means to understand better the text of the Old Testament.
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11. HEBREW TEXT & UNDERSTANDING - 3
The prophetic institution calls and practices for very special culture of spelling choices.
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