The previous post has some good examples of Hebrew words where it is unclear whether they’re nouns, verbs or adjectives.
One example: Hakovesh et yisro
Which I translate as: One who conquers his inclinations
But kovesh seems to be a noun, as indicated by ha- which means “the”, so maybe a better translation is: The conqueror of his inclinations.
But “et” does not mean “of” – it’s a direct-object marker (a preposition for direct objects). What is the verb of this direct object? Kovesh!
It could be an adjective too. Example: Ha’ish hakovesh – The conquering man.
But what if it were: Ha’ish hakovesh et yisro ?
Which I would translate as: The man who conquers his inclinations.
But might be more literally translated as: The conquering-his-inclinations man.
I should stress that while it’s not clear to me how to parse this, the meaning is unambiguous.
(Also, yisro is actually “his inclination” but its clear to a Hebrew speaker that it refers to all of his inclinations.)
Posted by David Boxenhorn at May 20, 2004 11:55 PM