Hebrew stuff

I can translate the first sentence of my next torah portion. Yay! Ok, it's not a long sentence. And it's from B'reishit, which seems easier to me. And I had to fill in one noun by inference -- but nouns are much more a matter of vocabulary while verbs are a matter of grammar, so that's fine.

Biblical Hebrew has two tenses, perfect (think "past tense") and imperfect (think "present and future tenses", and yeah, you get to figure out which by other cues). There is also a grammatical construct (vav conversive) by which a perfect verb is flipped to imperfect and vice-versa. I wonder why that exists. It's used a lot in the torah to transform imperfect to perfect (I haven't seen much going in the other direction). Hebrew has a perfectly-good (err) perfect tense; why write imperfect tense and then flip it so much? Or is there a difference of nuance between perfect and flipped-to-be-perfect?

I was listening to a Carlebach song recently called "Ivdu et Hashem b'simcha". In "ivdu" I recognize the noun "eved", which means "servant" or "slave", so I assume this is something about serving God with (b') joy (simcha). Now first off it's probably modern rather than biblical Hebrew, and second it's probably not past (or perfect) tense because that's not the kind of stuff Carlebach is likely to write songs about. So it's probably present tense or maybe a comamnd form. I only know perfect tense so far, and only one of the seven binyanim (err, that's too complicated for a parenthetical note), but "ivdu" seems to have the markers for third-person plural, which is about the last conjugation I would have expected here. Second-person plural (imperative or predictive) or any first-person would make sense here, but third-person, not so much. I guess eventually I'll learn other tenses and other binyanim and all will become clear.

link round-up

From jetshade, Social commentary for the unenlightened: 1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, liposuction and air conditioning.
7) Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
9) Children can never succeed without both a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

From stmachiavelli by way of patsmor: very pretty lightning pictures (go look).

Most recently from goldsquare: Men are just happier people: What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack.

From chaiya: Creation with a supporting cast: And the Lord God said, "Let there be light", and lo, there was light. But then the Lord God said, "Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy, sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I design will look younger?"
"I'm loving that", said Buddha. "It's new."

Most recently from kmelion: A different Cinderella story (possibly NSFW if text is a problem).