Ordinary Nothing

In a previous post I mentioned that due to high usage of English I mistakenly wished a friend good luck using an inappropriate Hebrew phrase (Using a literally translation instead of the correct semantic one).

It recently occurred to me that not only me, but many other people as well, are routinely guilty of a very similar mistake. The situation is the same one where one would like, using English, to wish "Good Luck". If the relevant activity is one that depends, even to a small extent, upon the abilities of the person, it is quite common to add something along the lines of "any may you won’t need it". This expresses the hope that the person’s abilities are up to the task, and that success would be achieved even without luck.

The good-luck semantic (though not literally) equivalent in Hebrew, "Behatzlacha", does not talk about luck, it rather just wishes a success. And yet it becomes a more and more frequent occurrence to hear people follow it by what literally means and may you won’t need it. The phrase and usage from English has entered the used Hebrew language to such an extent that it seems natural to people. Nobody ever notices that it makes very little sense to wish someone a success and that they won’t need that success. It’s understood that the second part refers to luck even though the first part has nothing to do with it.

I find it funny that there’s a common Hebrew phrase that only makes sense if you replace half of it with a semantic equivalent in English.

January 10th, 2005 at 20:26 EET | Categories: Language | Track comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.