how to say “news flash” in Hebrew
having trouble seeing the print?
When I said this term meant news flash this morning to Adam on RustyMike Radio, he said, “I haven’t heard that in a while.”
Indeed, the English version of Ynet (the Hebrew is ynet.co.il) renders מִבְזָקִים (meev-zah-KEEM) as updates instead of news flashes.
I guess I translated מִבְזָק (meev-ZAHK) as news flash because of the imagery that comes to mind when I say or hear the word.
The root of מבזק is ב.ז.ק (b.z.k), appearing only once in the Bible as lightning, in Ezekiel’s spectacular Vision of the Chariot, יחזקאל א,י”ד (Ezekiel 1:14). Thus a news flash, in Modern Hebrew, is a מִבְזָק חַדָשׁוֹת. There, the word used is בָּזָק (bah-ZAHK).
The far more common word for lightning – both in the Bible and in Modern Hebrew – is phonetically very close to the one I mention above, בָּרָק (bah-RAHK). It could be that at the time and place of Ezekiel, the sounds corresponding to the ר (r) and ז (z) letters (at least one of the sounds corresponding to ז) were nearly identical. In the Arabic (one of Hebrew’s sister-languages) alphabet anyway, the letters for ר and ז look almost identical: ز and ر.
What about the phone company?
You may know that Israel’s largest phone company is בֶּזֶק (BEH-zek), a word that appears in the Bible as the name of a city. Look at the word, and you’ll find that all three letters from the root of מבזק are there.
What’s the connection? I’m not sure. One theory I have is that the telephone once revolutionized communication so that a dialogue across town, or across oceans, would bounce back and forth like lightning. The phone, along with telecommunications in general, is really quite marvelous.
