Particularly popular during the Renaissance through the 19th century, commonplacing is a method of extracting and collecting notes and ideas in a notebook of one’s own, especially for future reference. Usually comprising proverbs, quotes, and other such entries, commonplace books (or journals) provide a place to compile a collection of facts interesting to the editor. This page represents my attempt for a “common place” of ideas on historical Semitic grammar.
Commonplace Book in Semitic Grammar (01/14/2025): GKC§5g-h discusses the origins and names of the alphabet. While the discussion is out of date in light of new evidence discovered since then (among them the finds from Ugarit, Tel Zayit abecedary, Umm el-Marra inscriptions, the possible double abecedary on the ostracon TT99 from Thebes, etc.), GKC prioritizes the evidence from the variations in the alphabetic (acrostic) poems found in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Lam 1-4; Ps 119). Certainly the order of the alphabet was, for some time, in flux, but I had never thought about whether the placement of certain pairs located next to each other was coincidental, or as GKC suggests “certainly not accidental”. For example, in the Hebrew (and early NWS) alphabet, the letters yōd ‘hand’ and kāp̄ ‘palm’ are side-by-side, as are ˁayin ‘eye’ and pê ‘mouth’, both parts of the head and located not too far from the letter rēš ‘head’ (the etymologies of ṣādē and qōp̄ remain elusive, but one might consider looking for cognates related to parts of the face/head/body).
Commonplace Book in Semitic Grammar (12/13/2024): It is well-known that there are different traditions about the names assigned to the letters of the early Hebrew and related alphabets. For example, in Hebrew, the name for the letter {z} is זַיִן ‘weapon’. In Greek, however, the name is not *zēna but ζῆτα, which seems to reflect an old tradition of calling the letter זַיִת ‘olive-tree’. Similarly, the Hebrew letter {n} is called נוּן ‘fish’ but it might originally have been called נָחָשׁ ‘snake’ as in Ethiopic nähas. Reference: GKC§5e-f. The traditional narrative is that the Greeks borrowed the alphabet from Phoenicians. But in fact the Greek letter names were borrowed from Aramaic instead, since e.g. alpha < Aram. אלפא (with suffixed definite article) rather than Hb./Ph. אלף. Also, Greek added a few letters which do not have Semitic proto-types, such as phi, chi, psi, and omega. Apparently, there were also different versions of the Greek alphabet, including one with the sign qoppa (Ϙ, ϙ = Phoenician qoph ‘eye of a needle? monkey?’) which was in turn borrowed into the Italic alphabets (and subsequently Latin, our letter Q) but lost in Greek (replaced by kappa = Phoen. kaph ‘hand’).
Commonplace Book in Semitic Grammar (12/11/2024): In medieval Hebrew mss. and early printed versions of the HB, five letters (called in Latin literae dilatabiles ‘expandable letters’) could be dilated to take up more space on the line: ﬦ ﬨ ﬥ ﬣ ﬡ (known by their mnemonic אֲהַלְתֶּם ʾahaltém). Apparently some mss. also dilated ד ,כ ,ר. This was to ensure that no empty space was left after a word on the line. This does not, however, apply to the end of a section called parasha (√פר׳׳שׁ ‘to cut off, separate’), which the mss. mark with the letter פ, leaving the rest of the line blank. Reference: GKC §5d. (This isn’t unlike the practice in Mesopotamian cuneiform to space out signs in order to fill out the entire line on a tablet.)
Here’s an example from Megillat Esther:
Commonplace Book in Semitic Grammar (12/10/2024): In the Aramaic square script as adopted by the scribes of the Hebrew Bible, five letters have a special form at the end of the word: kap̄, mêm, nûn, pê, and ṣādê. The medieval Jewish grammarians used a mnemonic for these five final letters: כַּמְנֶפֶץ, or better כַּמְנַפֵּץ ‘like the one who breaks in pieces’ (rt. נפ׳׳ץ ‘to smash to pieces’). Another mnemonic is known from the Talmud: מִן־צֹֽפְךָ ‘from your watcher’. These final forms developed in a period when the text was written scriptio continua. All 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet as well as the five final forms occur in a single verse: Zp 3:8. Reference: GKC §5c.