correction – the real Middle East

ByAmi Steinberger
המזרח התיכון
 
Yesterday’s entry featured the Hebrew term for the Middle East – המזרח התיכון.
 
I explained that the phrase literally means “the east of the middle” in English. This is wrong. It was late at night… forgive me 🙂
 

When two words in a phrase have the הַ (hah – the) prefix, the first word is a noun and the second word is an adjective.


In other words, הַבָּיִת הַגָּדוֹל (ha-BAH-yeet ha-gah-DOHL) means the big house, where בית means house and גדול means big. Likewise, המזרח התיכון means the Middle East, as in, “Which East? The Middle East!”

 

Listen and repeat…
(The feature is back!)


For math buffs only!

This behavior of Hebrew phrases is like the distributive property in mathematics: 

English = the(adjective+noun) – for example, “the big house”
Hebrew = the(adjective)+the(noun) – for example, “הבית הגדול”



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