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 (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.