[HANASHIR:11393] Re: Hatikvah--an initial inquiry.

[Jennifer Stevens <srtalina...>]

Judah -

What an enlightening post!
Just a quick comment on your first point--sorry for chopping the rest, but 
I'm just saving some space--

it is my understanding that the reference to Jerusalem should read 
"Virushalayim" for grammatical reasons.  I'd have to dig out my copy with 
the Hebrew text to give you a reason for the "v" instead of a "b", but I 
would wager a guess that it is related to the vowels preceding the bet/vet.  
The reason we do not sing "b'yerushalayim" has to do with the rules of the 
"sheva" (two vertical dots under a letter).  Although you can have two 
sheva's (shevaim) next two each other in the middle/end of a word, I don't 
believe you can have two of them at the beginning of the word.  Therefore, 
you drop the second sheva (the one under the yod/"y"), replace it with the 
chirik (long "ee" vowel) and come up with "virushalayim".

I'm sure someone with a much better grasp of the Hebrew language could 
explain this better, but maybe it makes some sense and will help us teach 
the correct way to sing such an important song.

B'shirah,
Jennifer


>From: Judah Cohen <jcohen (at) fas(dot)harvard(dot)edu>
>1.  In all editions of Hatikvah I've seen that include "Virushalayim" as 
>its
>final word, it appears as "Viruahslayim"; this suggests that
>"B'Yerushalayim" is indeed an error that's crept into some editions more
>recently.


_________________________________________________________________
Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. 
http://www.hotmail.com

------------------------ hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org -----------------------+