[Avodah] Wording of Kaddish

[mkopinsky at gmail.com]

On 5/22/07, Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:
> Micha Berger wrote:
> > On Mon, May 21, 2007 2:51 pm, ramiller500 at aol.com wrote:
> > : 1.  In the Kaddish, when, where, and by whom was the earliest known
> > : use of these word forms? (pardon my layman's orthography)---
> > : a.  Yisgadeil
> > : b.  V'Yiskadeish
> > : c.  Tiskabeil
> > : d.  Any others heard in some shul(s), where a tzeire has (seemingly at
> > : least!) replaced a patach
> >
> > As far as I know, c and d are errors caused by (a). IOW, someone is
> > about to give some reason I never heard for them.
>
> The [ARI]'s siddur has "yisgadal veyiskadash", but "tiskabeil".  So they
> don't seem to be related.

I did a bit of a survey over yom tov:

Siddur Tefillas Yosef (based on psakim of the MB) had Yisgadeil
v'yiskadeish, with a footnote offering yisgadal as an alternative.  Most
other siddurim just had yisgadal.  I was suprised to find that both
tiskabeil and tiskabal are common, with no apparent pattern about which
siddurim had which.  No siddurim that I saw, however, listed both as
possibilities, as I found with yisgadal/yisgadeil. I wonder why this is
the case.

As a side question (not entirely related to the question about kaddish,
where the words should actually be Hebrew):

How do we know what is correct nikkud for Aramaic?  Are there old
manuscripts with nikkud written in?  And since Aramaic is not Leshon
Hakodesh, why do pronunciations need to be static?  Should we be davening
with modern day Aramaic pronunciations?  According to Artscroll Gemaras,
"yes" in Aramaic is technically "Ein", not "een" as is commonly used.
(R. Frank in "Practical Talmud Dictionary" has "een", and Jastrow has
both.)  According to Artscroll, what makes "een" any more wrong that
"bu'on" for button (to use RMB's example from a little while back)?

KT,
Michael