Hebrew homonyms
Then there's a passage from the K'dusha d'Yotzer prayer. Here's the translation from my "baby Birnbaum" siddur/prayer book (the one I have at the office--the cats are away for Pesach, so this mouse is enjoying the rare opportunity to blog during work hours): "Kulam omdim b'rum olam--all of them stand in the heights of the universe--umashmiyim b'yir'ah--and reverently proclaim--yachad b'kol, divrei Kelokim chaim . . .
Say what?
Oh, "kol" with a kuf, not a kaf! So it doesn't mean, as I thought, "all of them together, the words of the living G-d," it means "all of them 'in a voice' (that is, aloud), the words of the living G-d . . ."
I misunderstood that phrase for years! Thanks to the Koren Sacks Siddur's penchant for splitting phrases onto separate lines, with "yachad b'kol" on a separate line from "divrei Kelokim chaim," I finally noticed the spelling, and understood that I'd goofed.
Labels: Talkin' about language(s)
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