[etni] Equivalent Hebrew and English Idioms

From: "cohen.izzy" <cohen.izzy@xxxxxxxxx>
To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 5 May 2010 10:53:51 +0300

Henry Mullish wrote:
> What I mean is shown by the following examples: ...
> He is the salt of the earth (a high compliment).
> .×?×?×? ×?×?×? ×?×?×¨×¥
Needless to say, this expression has nothing to do with sodium chloride (or
any similar salt) in English or Hebrew. In the English case
(transcribed from Greek), "salt" is the transliteration of the Hebrew word
@aTZiL (with the meaning "noble") at a time when the aleph still had a
residual T-sound after losing the GH-sound in its earlier CHS/GHT-sound and
the aleph was still at the end and not at the beginning of that word. The
ancient GHT-sound of the aleph explains why the Rashi-script aleph looks
like a het + chupchik.
The tsadi anciently had an S (not TZ) sound like Î£ (sigma), the Greek letter
that looks like a tzadi rotated 180 degrees or flipped horizontally.

Ergo, Saltzman means "nobleman" ... usually not a salt-merchant :-).

This movement of the aleph from the end to the beginning of that word
explains why @aTZiL is now a homonym that also means shoulder/axle. Note
that giving the aleph its CHS-sound and the tzadi its S-sound makes @aTZiL
cognate with English axle.

Izzy

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[etni] Equivalent Hebrew and English Idioms

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