Sunday, August 17, 2008

My first three letters / Shalosh oti?ot sheli

Lesson 0 or 1, depending how you count
The aleph-bet: http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm

The smallest - yod י
"not one iota" -- like the Greek "not the tiniest bit"

The tallest - lamed ל
like the lam in Arabic ل , and the L in English

The one with three fingers - shin ׁש
also found in Cyrillic ш and Arabic ش
The dot is on the right, so that if you write, MOSHE, the O and the dot will co-exist: מ'שה

The mem+ ' is [mo] and the shin has the ' on the right ש', but we only write one dot. OK, so now you'll remember that shin gets the ' on the right?
This I recall from Mrs. Pesis in an almost-forgotten Talmud Torah class almost 40 years ago!
The three-finger association is from the "glyph lesson" formulated by SDSU's Dr. bar-Lev.

my/mine sheli shin-lamed-yod שליׁ
shel = of של
i = 1st person singular, either gender י.ׁ

Use IPA for the vowels (a, e, i, o, u) or read them like the Spanish vowels.

Find two cities in Jewish history that start with each letter:
Yavneh and Y-
Shushan and Sh-
Lydda and L-

Maps of Israel: zoomable , talking , detail in Hebrew

No comments: