[Mesorah] Lakakhat and Shachakhat - a surprising discovery

[Simon Montagu]

I remember James Barr, the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, discussing
these forms when I was studying for my B.A many years ago. He used the
memorable expression "It's very unusual, but you keep coming across it". If
I remember correctly, he also compared it to the patah before gutturals in
words like luah or shavua.

On Tue, 14 May 2024, 17:36 Danny Levy via Mesorah, <
mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:

> While reading last Shabbat's rare haftara, I noted the words 'lakakhat'
> and 'shachakhat' (Yechezkel 22:12), which seemed to me to be unusual verb
> forms. In regular verbs in binyan kal, past tense, the 2nd person feminine
> singular form has a shva under the 3rd root letter and another shva (both
> nach) under the following tav, e.g. 'shamart' (you guarded). In spoken
> Hebrew the same is true even if the 3rd root letter is a guttural such as
> chet or ayin ('lakakht', 'shachakht').
>
> After not finding anyone who comments on these verb forms in Yechezkel, I
> recalled another example, 'shma'at' (Ruth 2:8), and was unable to find
> anywhere in Tanakh a parallel verb form with a shva under chet or ayin as
> the 3rd root letter. I then sent a question to the Academy of the Hebrew
> Language, who is the authority in Israel on modern Hebrew. They replied
> that indeed in Tanakh these verb forms consistently have a patach under
> chet or ayin, but the shva has become an acceptable alternative in modern
> Hebrew, both because this is how everybody speaks and to avoid confusion
> with words that sound identical (e.g. 'lakakhat' can mean 'you took' or 'to
> take', 'nakhat' can mean 'you rested' or 'gratification')
>
> For me, this was a surprising discovery.
>
> Danny Levy
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