[Mesorah] D'Hashem

[D&E-H Bannett]

If I had any brains, this is one subject I would not dare to 
comment on.

I dabble in the mesora of the Tanakh while trying to avoid 
the details of formal Hebrew dikduk because I don't like 
making up fixed rules.  My Aramaic, however, is weak and 
Aramaic grammar is completely beyond me. Talmudic Aramaic is 
bad enough but the Tanakh Aramaic of Daniel and Ezra is not 
something where my opinion has any value.

But, brains or not, here I go.

I think that the Aramaic word that is the equivalent of the 
Hebrew "shel" is the word "di" spelled dalet yud. It appears 
in Tanakh some two hundred times as a separate word and not 
as a prefix.

In addition to the Tanakh, we have the evidence of some 
Yekkes who are still makpid to say di amiran b'alma rather 
than the usual easier way, da'amiran as a single word.

So, maybe the "proper" way is to say "di Hashem" as two 
words and not d'Hashem as one.

If so, there is no significance to Moshe mappik v'Khalev lo 
mappik as there is neither a sh'va nor a continuation of the 
word after it if there were.

And someone who knows Aramaic grammar might be able to tell 
us whether there is any reason to  apply the k'lal to 
Aramaic or other Semitic languages that have some similarity 
to Hebrew.


David