Hello all!

Two weeks ago I spoke about the structures and forms in Hebrew and we mentioned the form of illnesses. Today I want to expand on this in speech.

As it is known, the basis of Modern Hebrew is from Biblical Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew is the foundation of Modern Hebrew but does not comprise of enough words to complete our linguistic needs. Together with the emergence of cultural changes and technology we are lacking additional words that cannot be found in the bible. Words like newspaper, ice cream and more. These words could not be found in the bible because their objects were not yet in existence. When the Hebrew language began its reawakening, together with the nation of the Jewish people, there was no choice but to create new words. But how? 

The changes that were made by Ben Yehuda were made according to the rules that began in the bible. For example, the word "Ee-ton", newspaper, is comprised of the word "Et" meaning time and the ending "On" which signifies order (like "rishON"- first, "AcharON"- last e.t.c.). The newspaper arrives at a certain time. These two parts are combined together to make a new word formed from the bible. 

In the book of Deutoronomy, G-d says to the people of Israel

"And I will smite you with consumption, fever and infection" (Deutoronomy, 28:22). 

"יַכְּכָה ה' בַּשַּׁחֶפֶת וּבַקַּדַּחַת וּבַדַּלֶּקֶת" (דברים כח)

From this sentence we learn the structure of illnesses in Hebrew (all the Hebrew words have the same structure as mentioned previously). In the rest of the world, illnesses move and diminish, only in Israel there are more and more illnesses that have never before been mentioned in the Doctor's books. Since the origins of the Hebrew language, new illnesses have begun to be publicized such as that of "Daberet", talkativeness, "Patpetet", Chattyness and "Hanemet", for people who give too many speeches. 

But it is not just these illnesses that have appeared. In other arenas new illnesses have appeared, have you heard of the illness of "Nayeret", the paperwork illness that infects everyone that works in government offices? And if we are already talking about government offices, have you ever had to queue for documents and the person at the counter has "Sachevet", "foot-dragging"?

And it goes on…. Just use your imagination.

We will meet in the next post, until then, only in good health,

Kol Tov,

Osnat.