[Mesorah] Kosht

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

A listmember who prefers to stay anonymous wrote this to me privately, and then asked that I send it to the list:

> Why were you surprised at finding such a word? Though it has
> a different meaning, you say it every week in Pitum Hak'tores:
> "hakosht shneim asar."  There are also consecutive sh'va'im
> at the end of the words neird, v'yeird, vayishb, vayeisht,
> yaft and others.  In fact, third-person feminine singular past
> tense ends with a double sh'va: achalt, shamart, yashant, etc.
> In truth, every word which ends in a consonant ends in a
> sh'va; it's just not written unless the word ends with two
> unvoweled consonants.

When I read this, I literally laughed out loud at my foolishness. Many of these words are very common indeed! I had no idea why this one occurrence suddenly seemed odd to me.

And of course, R' Michael Poppers' examples of "tzachaqt" and "uvneift".

I was going to joke about some part of my brain working overtime and underpaid. But that might be close to the truth: Most parts of the siddur (including Bameh Madlikin and Pitum Haktores) are unfortunately so shgura b'fi that it is a challenge to pay attention to what I'm saying. But since I know that I'm never gonna finish the whole piyut anyway, I can afford to say a small piece of it clearly and accurately. And in so doing, discover the less-common vowel combinations.

Akiva Miller

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