[Mesorah] Kosht

[Zev Sero]

kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
> 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.

The examples from the ketoret aren't really on-point, because they're
surely attempts to render foreign words in Hebrew, and thus shouldn't
be expected to follow rules.  Which is why that "kosht" has nothing
to do with truth, any more than does the Jewish name for Constantinople,
"Kushta".

"Vayishb" is indeed a strange word, the only one I can think of that
ends in a beit (rather than a veit); one would expect it to have been
"vayishbeh".   Similarly, one would have expected "veyeird" and "vayeird"
to have been "veyirdeh" and "vayirdeh"; they're strange exceptions to
the norm.


>> In fact, third-person feminine singular past
>> tense ends with a double sh'va: achalt, shamart, yashant, etc.

Yes, but that's a form common enough to form its own rule.  The word
we're discussing is still odd.



-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas