November 4, 2005

Deep Thoughts for Parshas Noach

If we say food for "food," why don't we say flued for "flood?"

Please think carefully before answering.

Posted by Greg at November 4, 2005 2:43 PM in | TrackBack
Comments

OED says that "Flood" got the extra 'o' in the 16th century and has a similar linguistic history to "blood".

Posted by: yehupitz at November 4, 2005 3:38 PM

According to wikipedia, flood was spelled "flod" in Old English.

Posted by: aishel at November 5, 2005 7:38 PM

I wondered why you brought this up. Then I came up with the following theory: The Parsha discussed the formation of languages, and you began to think of the phenomena of linguistic evolution, how languages change and how dialects form.

If you have more thoughts on this topic, I would be interested to hear (or read) them.

Posted by: yehupitz at November 6, 2005 8:31 PM