[Avodah] La'az or Lo'ez in Rashi?

[T613K at aol.com]

At the beginning of the ArtScroll Chumash with Rashi, there is  a 
Publisher's Preface which contains one paragraph about Rashi's  French:
 
--quote--
 
Another often neglected area is the "lo'ez" in which Rashi uses an Old  
French word or phrase to translate the Torah text.  A dearth of knowledge  of 
Old French has led many educators to dismiss these comments with, "Well,  
Rashi is just giving the French translation," as a result of which Rashi's  
intended nuance is often lost....For this edition, every foreign word used by  
Rashi has been thoroughly researched.  To assist the reader, the modern  
French and English equivalents are given....
 
--end quote--
 
First of all, I would like to say that I appreciate (and am amazed by!)  
the  astounding scholarship and research that had to have gone into this  
endeavor.   I wonder how on earth R' Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg (the  main 
translator) and his collaborators went about doing this?!
 
Second of all, it has long struck me that Jews are expected to know other  
languages and that the knowledge of other languages besides Hebrew enriches  
one's understanding of Loshon Hakodesh and of Torah.  This goes  all the 
way back to Yosef, who knew many languages, and to Moshe, likewise, and  to 
the pillars that were erected (on the banks of the Jordan River?) which  were 
engraved or painted with the text of the Torah in 70 languages, and to  
Targum Onkelos and Targum Yonasan and so on and on.  I note this as an  
interesting fact, without comment.
 
Third of all, what is this "lo'ez"?  I typed the word exactly as it  
appears in the preface to the A/S Chumash.  However, in the actual text of  Rashi, 
the Hebrew word is vowelized "la'az" -- not "lo'ez."  It is spelled  lamed, 
ayin, zayin, with a shmitchik between the last two letters -- indicating  
that the word is not a word, but an abbreviation.
 
OK, now look at the Silbermann Chumash with Rashi for a moment.   In his 
appendix, R' A. M. Silbermann has a note on the word "la'az":
 
--quote--
 
By this Rashi means French.  This differed from modern French as the  
English of the present day differs from that of the 11th Century.  The  root 
[lamed-ayin-zayin] [written in Hebrew there] is found in Psalm CXIV.1  as 
describing a foreign language. The word is not formed of the initial letters  of 
the phrases loshon am zu or loshon am zar; this is a popular etymology, but  
is incorrect.
 
--end quote--
 
Since he holds that the word is not an abbreviation, you would expect the  
Silbermann Chumash to print the word "la'az" without the shmitchik, but in 
fact,  the word is spelled /with/ the shmitchik between the ayin and the 
zayin, just as  if he'd never written that note.
 
The pasuk in Tehillim cited by R' Silbermann is the famous "Betzeis Yisrael 
 miMitzrayim, Bais Yakov me'am LO'EZ" where the ArtScroll translates 
"lo'ez" as  "of alien tongue."
 
It would appear that the author of the [unsigned] Publisher's Preface  of 
the ArtScroll Chumash, like R' Silbermann, regards the word  Lamed-Ayin-Zayin 
as a word and not an abbreviation, since he transliterates  it "lo'ez" and 
not "la'az."
 
But both Chumashim consistently vowelize the word as "la'az" and keep  the 
shmitchik.
 
What do you make of this?  

--Toby  Katz
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