The same is not true for the New Year of the Trees, which was observed last night and today. "Tu Bishvat" is correct (even though it's only #4 on Google), and the more popular "Tu B'Shevat" and "Tu B'Shvat" are WRONG WRONG WRONG.
Here's how it works:
The name of the 11th month is Sh'vat or Shevat. There is a sheva under the first letter, and it's a sheva na (vocal sheva) because a sheva under the first letter is always na (if SHF reads this, she may disagree about shtayim, but that's just an exception that probes the rule). The name of the month is prefixed with the preposition b' or be -- that's the letter bet with another sheva. Hence, many think that the result is "B'Shevat" or some such. BUT there is a rule that a word may not begin with two shevas. Thus the preposition becomes bi -- the sheva is lengthened to a chirik (that's the vowel that's just one dot under the letter). The sheva under the shin becomes nach (quiescent), since it's no longer at the beginning of a word; now it's just at the end of a closed syllable (bish).
Let's stop this phonological scourge by boycotting all "Tu B'Shevat" seders! Think globally, act locally!
For those who are interested, here are the Google rankings. Note that Google treats apostrophes, spaces, and hyphens as identical. These rankings are incomplete; feel free to contribute more possible spellings. All searches below are in quotes.
- tu b'shevat 318,000
- tu b'shvat 196,000
- tu beshvat 87,000
- tu bishvat 83,300
- tubshvat 54,100 [this one, and #8, showed up mostly in URLs]
- tu bisvat 21,100
- tou bichvat 18,600
- tubishvat 11,500
- tu bish'vat 2500
- tu bshvat 1110
- tu bishevat 792
- tu bi'shevat 786
- jewish arbor day 784
- tu bischwat 663
- tubeshvat 604
- tu bshevat 588
- tu bi'shvat 503
- tu beshevat 478
- tu be'shvat 382
- tu b'sh'vat 332
- tu be'shevat 175
- tu bishbat 174
- tu b'shebat 44
- tubeshevat 41
- tu beshbat 28
- tube'shvat 28
- tubi'shvat 22
- tubi'shevat 19
- too bishvat 7
- tou b'chvat 7
- too beshvat 5
- too bshvat 4
- tu besh'vat 4
- too b'shvat 1 [Googlewhack!]
I take it that "tou bichvat" was on French websites and "tu bischwat" was on German/Swiss ones? I agree with your analysis and will try to be more careful about this in the future.
ReplyDeleteso you're saying the apostrphe is a sh'va nah? :-p
ReplyDeleteWhy not "Tu vishvat" (with Italki/Sepharaddi kames) ir "Tu vishvot" (with Ashkenazzi/Temani kometz.)
ReplyDelete>The sheva under the shin becomes nach (quiescent), since it's no longer at the beginning of a word; now it's just at the end of a closed syllable (bish).
ReplyDeleteOh my. Can you cite a source (Gesenius/Kautzsch/Cowley; Weingreen? etc)
"Gesenius §28a. According to §26m a half-syllable, i.e. a consonant with Ŝewâ mobile (always weakened from a short vowel), can only occur in close dependence on a full syllable. If another half-syllable with simple Ŝewâ follows, the first takes a full short vowel again3. This vowel is almost always Ḥireq. It most cases it is probably an attenuation of an original ă, and never a mere helping vowel. In some instances analogy may have led to the choice of the ĭ.
ReplyDelete3. Except ְו and, which generally becomes וּ before a simple Ŝewâ, cf §104e."
-SHF
Benjamin - yes, but it's a sh'va na, not nah, because na ends in an ayin. Na' would be even better.
ReplyDeleteI half agree with you. What happened to the na' under the shin? You've turned it into a nach, in which case it would be BISHBAT since there's nothing that would cause the dagesh kal to drop out of the second bet. So correct is: Bishevat or Bish'vat.
ReplyDeleteMosh
Whoa. So is it a sheva meracheif (cf. malchut - not malkut or malechut)?
ReplyDeleteDon't think so, because the word is Shevat. Can you think of a na' that's converted into a merachef because of a prefix?
ReplyDeleteMosh
The discussion is appropriate if you interpret the words as transliteration intended to help pronounce the Hebrew words. As an English name for the holiday it is better to use notation that separates the "B" from the "Shevat" to help readers understand the structure and meaning of the words. Probably especially helpful for Sunday morning Hebrew School students
ReplyDeleteMartin-
ReplyDeleteHow about BiShvat?
In my personal orthography, I lowercase the prefix and upper case the first letter of the root word.
ReplyDeletel'Mashal:
Tu biShvat
Hotzianu miMitzrayim
Ba'al haBayit
Kaddish d'Rabbanan
haMalach haGo'el Oti
OJ: What do you do in cases where the word in question would not be capitalized if it were an English word? (In other words, when it's not a name or title of anything?)
ReplyDeleteI try not to get too caught up in grammatical arguments online (L?rd knows I do that enough in real life), but couldn't resist this nudge:
ReplyDeleteTu B'Shvat seems like an acceptable possibility here, if you consider the B as its own separately pronounced syllable (bee-shvat). It may not be elegant (B'elegant?), but it's not wrong.
In any case, I try to resist telling people their transliteration is wrong. It's enough work trying to get them to improve their Hebrew!
Also, transliterating it "Purim" could be an acceptable possibility, as long as the "P" is pronounced "T", and "rim" is pronounced "bishvat".
ReplyDeleteFinally someone who puts this right!
ReplyDeleteBZ is correct - it is a שוא מרחף, not a שוא נח. If the latter were the case, we'd have a dagesh qal in the vet that follows it.
True, that שוא used to be a נע. Now it is called מרחף precisely because it took on some characteristics - though not all - of a נח.
A שוא מרחף behaves exactly like a נח in syllabification and pronunciation.
So there really is only one correct transliteration: tu bishvat (bish-vat).
@Miriam Meir: FINALLY!!!
ReplyDelete@OJ (Jan. 24, 2010): Don't you mean "haMal'ach"? (I would use "haMal'akh.")
Updated Google Search results data (December 31, 2011):
ReplyDeletetu b'shevat 361,000 results
tu b'shvat 289,000 results
tu bishvat 236,000 results (formerly #4)
tu beshvat 199,000 results (formerly #3)
Of note, Wikipedia agrees with you BZ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Bishvat
Unfortunately, Google is now less reliable for this sort of quantitative research, now that the search algorithm includes non-exact spellings in the results (although this may make it more useful for actual searching).
ReplyDelete