By Zev Bar-Lev
SAN DIEGO – A student, let’s call her Ida, says: “I find the Hebrew language completely opaque, as if hidden from me by a thick curtain. I’ve memorized the whole alphabet, all the shapes & their sounds, but I can’t make much out of words, much less sentences—even with a bunch of dictionaries, grammars and conversation books.”
ZBL: Maybe I can help. Draw a smile on a piece of paper, then draw a finger up and down across the smile.
Ida: That looks like a mouth saying “Sh!”
ZBL: But do you notice? It’s also a drawing of the Hebrew letter Sheen.
Ida: So I guess It’s no coincidence that this letter sounds like Sh!
ZBL: Right! Now, to the left of this Sheen, draw a vertical line, with a big dot on top. This drawing pictures a person being hit on the head.
Ida: I remember: In Hebrew it represents the sound Oh!
ZBL: Since Hebrew is written from the right to the left, these two drawings together represent the syllable Shó, which sounds like the English word Show. This syllable doesn’t mean anything in Hebrew, but if you add another Sheen to the left of the O, this spells the shortened form of the Hebrew name Shoshanah.
Ida: It looks a little bit like ‘WiW.’
ZBL: The full name Shoshanah means ‘lily’ (as in the biblical “lilies of the field,” & “like a lily among the thorns.”)
Ida: This all makes the sounds a little more transparent. But what about meaning?
ZBL: I was saving meaning as a surprise. Look at the two Sheens. Can you see them as two hands, holding up three fingers each? This is the Hebrew word Shesh, meaning ‘six.’ (Instead of the ‘Oh’ there are two dots under the right Sheen for the vowel “Eh,” because the two dots just mEt!)
Ida: OK, I guess that’s all pretty transparent.
ZBL: The transparency of Hebrew goes much further. Remember that Shoshanah means ‘lily’? This Hebrew word is based on the fact that lilies usually have six big petals!
Ida: OK, so Shoshana is based on Shesh, meaning ‘six.’ That’s a great example. But it’s still just one letter.
ZBL: No, this really pervades all of Hebrew. The amazing fact is that the first letter of any Hebrew word is really a picture, an icon, for the meaning of the whole word. For another example, the Hebrew words for ‘Cap, Cup, Chair, Congress’ all begin with the letter Kaf, which looks like a backwards C. These words all refer to some sort of Container. The name of the letter is one example: Kaf in Hebrew means ‘spoon,’ which Carries & Contains,
Ida: Wait a minute! The English words also begin with C. Is English transparent too?
ZBL: Yes, it is, but not at all as transparent as Hebrew.
Ida: How come?
ZBL: All alphabets in the world are derived from the “Old-Hebrew” alphabet. But the big surprise here is that letters have meanings—when they are the first consonant letter in a word. My research has shown that these “Magic Letters” (or “Key-Letters”) have the same meanings in all languages. You can see the whole list of all the Magic Letters at my SDSU homepage, which is accessible via laguagebazaar.com.
‘Sheen” is an example of the claim of my larger theory, “Nanosemantics”: that languages, & especially Hebrew, are much more transparent than generally thought.
It is transparent but interesting, to inspire us to search out its meaningful details—just as we hope Judaism & Torah are for all generations of Jews.
“Shoshanah; or ‘lily’ is a reminder of the fact that Sheen in Hebrew, when the first consonant of any word, means ‘orderliness.’
Say the Hebrew sentence SHotrim v’SHoftim SHomrim Sheqet v’SHalóm b’SHabat meaning ‘Police & judges keep peace & quiet on the Sabbath.’ In this sentence, you should be able to hear the police & judges shushing everybody! This all exemplifies my innovative theory about human language and especially Hebrew, which happens to exhibit Magic Letters more clearly than other languages. The letters do seem to apply to all languages.
Ida: How about in languages hat don’t have an alphabet, like Chinese?
ZBL: In Chinese & Japanese, the same Magic Letters appear as sounds).
Ida: So I can learn Magic Letters for all languages at the same time?
ZBL: Yes, of course. But it’s best to learn just one at a time, to apply them meaningfully.
Lofty L is another example. Lofty L may show how meanings get extended. This letter means ‘Lift,’ as in English “Ladle.’ You may have heard it in the Hebrew word ‘haLLeluyah’ ‘praise God.’ After all, praising is a kind of Lifting! (This word can be pronounced ‘aLLeluiya,’ and this is the “weak h” of Hebrew, usually silent as well as meaningless.)
Lofty L is found in Hebrew ‘aLeh’ (go up) and ‘aLiyah,’ which means ‘going up’ to read Torah, or to Israel. But it extends even further in ‘Lmad’ or ‘Learn’ (English has the same extension), and also in ‘uLpan,’ which means ‘studio’ (including the studio style of Learning Hebrew made famous in Israel: ‘uLpan’ actually refers to the casual seating arrangement, not a method.
Ida: I’ve heard about the three-letter roots of Hebrew words. Where do they come in?
Yes, Hebrew is traditionally taught with three-letter roots, like LMD ‘learn’ (also in taLMuD, which itself means ‘learning.’. But isn’t it also helpful to see that LMD, like English Learn, is a metaphorical extension of the Magic Letter L, meaning ‘Lift’—since Learning Lifts you up?
The “Magic Letters” make Hebrew transparent. But they are abstract. The “Puzzle” must be sorted out, understood more than memorized. Hebrew is like Torah, the mysterious lover in kabbalah, winking and beckoning from behind a curtain. But the curtain is not thick: you can actually see through it!
It’s almost impossible for an adult to become a real bilingual, especially with a language like Hebrew, which is very different. from English.
But you can easily become “Try-Lingual,” just Trying out any bits and pieces of different foreign languages, as you encounter them. Some of these pieces may even be meaningful! As a linguist, I was trained to look for “Universal Features” of language: features that even unrelated languages have in common. Magic Letters are my best example of such universals, especially important because they explain How Language Means. And don’t we want Judaism to be meaningful?
Ida: This has been a very meaningful experience for me.
ZBL: Can you explain the meanings of the Magic Letters Sheen, L, & C? Can you give a few words for each in English & Hebrew? Even the best student of Magic Letters, Norm, has to remind himself to learn the meanings. This is not rote memorization, but true learning, which is needed to apply the system. A I said, don’t try to memorize the two dozen Magic Letters at once: learn them one at a time, review the ones learned, and make sure that you can use them, apply them, to Hebrew & English—and maybe even beyond!
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Zev Bar-Lev is a retired professor of linguistics at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via zev.bar-lev@sdsu.edu