“Wither she did go” ??

[malkie]

*puts on apologist hat*

The word for ship/boat in Hebrew is feminine.

Then there is this:

Hebrew, at its core, is a gendered language. Every word in the ancient language is categorized as zachar, male, or nekevah, female. Every noun from furniture to food is either a he or a she, and every adjective and verb has a male and female form.

This leads me to think the language itself is categorized into two groups: male & female. But it doesn't lead me to think that a word within that group means it's referred to by that particular gender when in play. In fact, it seems there is some gender confusion or that the gender of the word is not translated into real life circumstances.

Example of feminine noun:

Foreskin!



Example of masculine noun:

Womb!



Go figure. I therefore don't see how the apologists can automatically justify Book of Mormon usage of female gender to ships just because the noun is feminine in the Hebrew. If there are no classic examples of gender being applied to seafaring vessels in Jewish literature prior to 600BC then there is nothing to support Smith's Book of Mormon translation other than Late War and modern nautical expression.

The question for me is - when giving the translation of the original language to English (which has masculine, feminine and neuter genders), did God want the English pronoun to be feminine?

By the way, what do we know about how Reformed Egyptian handled issues of noun/pronoun gender, and the attribution of gender to inanimate objects? Does the GAEL throw any light on the subject?

[Shulem]

The question for me is - when giving the translation of the original language to English (which has masculine, feminine and neuter genders), did God want the English pronoun to be feminine?

By the way, what do we know about how Reformed Egyptian handled issues of noun/pronoun gender, and the attribution of gender to inanimate objects? Does the GAEL throw any light on the subject?

First, the English language didn't exist during Lehi's time. English has nothing to do with any of this; it's completely out of the picture and came later. All we should be concerned with is whether the Jews in 600 BC and earlier referred to ships in a feminine sense as seafarers do in modern times. God has nothing to do with any of it because people talked using their language whether they believed in God or not. So, the heck with God. Who cares what he thinks?

The Reformed Egyptian and Smith's gobbledygook in the GAEL won't throw any light on the Hebrew or help us understand how Jews talked in ancient times. The Book of Mormon claims to take the customs of the Jews and the the Hebrew language with them when they went to the New World. The claim that they wrote in so called "Reformed Egyptian" is nonsense made up by Smith just like he made up nonsensical names in Facsimile No. 3, i.e., Shulem & Olimlah. It's all BS.

But, hey, thanks for asking your questions. That's how I see it.

[malkie]

The question for me is - when giving the translation of the original language to English (which has masculine, feminine and neuter genders), did God want the English pronoun to be feminine?

By the way, what do we know about how Reformed Egyptian handled issues of noun/pronoun gender, and the attribution of gender to inanimate objects? Does the GAEL throw any light on the subject?

First, the English language didn't exist during Lehi's time. English has nothing to do with any of this; it's completely out of the picture and came later. All we should be concerned with is whether the Jews in 600 BC and earlier referred to ships in a feminine sense as seafarers do in modern times. God has nothing to do with any of it because people talked using their language whether they believed in God or not. So, the heck with God. Who cares what he thinks?

The Reformed Egyptian and Smith's gobbledygook in the GAEL won't throw any light on the Hebrew or help us understand how Jews talked in ancient times. The Book of Mormon claims to take the customs of the Jews and the the Hebrew language with them when they went to the New World. The claim that they wrote in so called "Reformed Egyptian" is nonsense made up by Smith just like he made up nonsensical names in Facsimile No. 3, i.e., Shulem & Olimlah. It's all BS.

But, hey, thanks for asking your questions. That's how I see it.

I have the utmost respect for you, Shulem, but I disagree.

How on earth (or in heaven) could English not matter when the claim was that Joseph was translating from RE to English, by the power of God.

To me, while I agree with you that it's all nonsense anyway, it matters in the same way that this entire thread matters: it's a virtual location at which the claims of the LDS church intersect with reality, and are susceptible to some kind of reality check.

[Shulem]

I have the utmost respect for you, Shulem, but I disagree.

How on earth (or in heaven) could English not matter when the claim was that Joseph was translating from RE to English, by the power of God.

To me, while I agree with you that it's all nonsense anyway, it matters in the same way that this entire thread matters: it's a virtual location at which the claims of the LDS church intersect with reality, and are susceptible to some kind of reality check.

Assume that there were real gold plates and the two references of a ship (Alma 63:8 & Mormon 5:18) were written in the feminine expression ("she" & "her") when etched into the gold leaf by their authors, it therefore makes no difference what Joseph Smith thinks or his English. It wouldn't have mattered whether Smith was ever born. Either the gold plates have the feminine connotation in those two references at the time they were penned or they do not. The whole point of this thread is to determine *IF* such a tradition of applying the feminine to ships in those times was practiced.

Alma called the ship a "she".
Mormon called the ship a "her" & "she".

It doesn't matter what Joseph Smith thought or what he translated. The point is that we have two persons in the Book of Mormon referring to ships as girls. Did the Jews actually do that?

Woohoo, Houston, I have a reference!

I refer to the first century using the Apocrypha. In this case the Wisdom of Solomon. It's interesting to note that the ship does not get a specific reference to the feminine expression but the bird does. This is just one interesting example and I highlight it here for reference:

9 All those things are passed away like a shadow, and as a post that hasted by;

10 And as a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found, neither the pathway of the keel in the waves;

11 Or as when a bird hath flown through the air, there is no token of her way to be found, but the light air being beaten with the stroke of her wings and parted with the violent noise and motion of them, is passed through, and therein afterwards no sign where she went is to be found;

You'd think that if ships were given express feminine definition then the verse would have read:

And as a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which when she is gone by . . .

[malkie]

I have the utmost respect for you, Shulem, but I disagree.

How on earth (or in heaven) could English not matter when the claim was that Joseph was translating from RE to English, by the power of God.

To me, while I agree with you that it's all nonsense anyway, it matters in the same way that this entire thread matters: it's a virtual location at which the claims of the LDS church intersect with reality, and are susceptible to some kind of reality check.

Assume that there were real gold plates and the two references of a ship (Alma 63:8 & Mormon 5:18) were written in the feminine expression ("she" & "her") when etched into the gold leaf by their authors, it therefore makes no difference what Joseph Smith thinks or his English. It wouldn't have mattered whether Smith was ever born. Either the gold plates have the feminine connotation in those two references at the time they were penned or they do not. The whole point of this thread is to determine *IF* such a tradition of applying the feminine to ships in those times was practiced.

Alma called the ship a "she".
Mormon called the ship a "her" & "she".

It doesn't matter what Joseph Smith thought or what he translated. The point is that we have two persons in the Book of Mormon referring to ships as girls. Did the Jews actually do that?

But we have only the "translation" into English to go on when determining how these hypothetical people referred to anything. And we will never (hah!) have another translation from the plates. How could we ever effectively question a putative "feminine connotation" in a non-existent source language with no hope of another translation?

Where is Bouchard when you really need him?

I don't think it matters what the Jewish people did 2400 years ago, when we are told that they didn't write in their language, nor in any language known to us since then. RE, if it existed, would have imposed its own unpredictable constraints on the Nephites' modes of expression.

Probably I should make this my last comment on the subject for now, because, just like in another current thread, I'm clearly missing something, and will get no further as long as the gap exists in my mind.

But I do thank you for your patience with me, and for your valiant attempts to push some meaning into my brain.

[Shulem]

But we have only the "translation" into English to go on when determining how these hypothetical people referred to anything. And we will never (hah!) have another translation from the plates. How could we ever effectively question a putative "feminine connotation" in a non-existent source language with no hope of another translation?

Well, when referencing a ship, it seems there are a few choices available:

• She
• He
• It

Understanding how the Jews actually referred to ships will help put things in better perspective when comparing that to Smith's novel.

[Moksha]

Joseph Smith, showed his gift for translation when Lehi said, "Avast. Thar be land ahoy me hearties!"

Herman Melville had not yet written Moby Dick at this time.

ByTW, does anyone know how Captain Kidd referred to his ship? Was the chest of gold doubloons and pieces of eight also referred to as she?

[Shulem]

ByTW, does anyone know how Captain Kidd referred to his ship? Was the chest of gold doubloons and pieces of eight also referred to as she?

I imagine Captain Kidd christened his ship with lots of gold and lovely ladies paid for by that gold.

But hey, look at this:

The Iliad, by Homer indicates that female ship gender was given in ancient times, at least for the Greeks in 800 BC.

But of this we will take thought hereafter; for the present, let us draw a ship into the sea, and find a crew for her expressly;

vs.

He thus drove them from the ship and quenched the fire that was then blazing- leaving the half-burnt ship to lie where it was.

The moral of the story is that a burnt lady is not so lovely.

[malkie]

But we have only the "translation" into English to go on when determining how these hypothetical people referred to anything. And we will never (hah!) have another translation from the plates. How could we ever effectively question a putative "feminine connotation" in a non-existent source language with no hope of another translation?

Well, when referencing a ship, it seems there are a few choices available:

• She

• He

• It

Understanding how the Jews actually referred to ships will help put things in better perspective when comparing that to Smith's novel.

Drat!

I hate how quickly I give up my intentions to let it go.

In case my point was not clear, many of us are biased by being really familiar with only one language - English. English has 3 ordinary genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

But there are other languages with more or fewer genders, only some of which are related to the masculinity, femininity, or inanimacy of the nouns assigned to them. Someone who is better versed in linguistics, and in practical pursuits like actual translation between languages can talk more convincingly than I, a complete amateur and almost completely ignorant of the subject matter.

French and Spanish, for example, currently each have two genders, corresponding, but only roughly, to the English masculine and feminine.

Of course, translation amongst French, Spanish, English, and German (Also with 3 genders like English) is well established, and comprehensive dictionaries are available to resolve any little doubts that may arise.

But imagine the first time someone had to translate from English to French, and is faced with the fact that every neuter word in English has been assigned to masculine or feminine in French - it probably seemed quite illogical to not be able to distinguish inanimate objects as neuter. When told that "boat" in English is "bateau" in French, the translator has, initially, no idea if it is considered m or f, and has to be told the gender assigned in French. (sorry, I'm using a chromebook and am not familiar with how to easily type accented characters.)

I know some nouns in Spanish that I have difficulty deciding on whether to use 'el' or 'la' with because I want to use a neuter definite article for the inanimate object, but no such article exists in Spanish. If it's a noun I don't use much, I may forget from one use to the next whether it is m or f, and have to depend on my wife to correct me. Somehow it seems that I guess correctly less than 50% of the time, which I suspect may be the result of some sort of brain pathology.

Two common words in German for "girl" are both neuter gender. This doesn't cause native German speakers any problem at all, and 2nd language German speakers have only to learn a simple rule and a list of endings considered as diminutives to lose any initial difficulty they may have had. But it can still be considered an idiosyncrasy of the language that a feminine person is called by a neuter noun.

This is why I believe that the characteristics of RE, if it existed, would be significant in helping to explain where "she" may have come from in talking about a boat in the Book of Mormon. In translations, the idiosyncrasies of both the source and the target language my cause some strange results. If the Book of Mormon had been "translated" from Hebrew, or from whatever dialect Lehi's family supposedly spoke, then we would be looking at a much simpler issue.

Without a Rosetta Stone that includes a good sample of RE plus some known language(s) I believe we are left with some insoluble issues - perhaps including the origin of the feminine pronoun used in English to refer to the Book of Mormon boat.

Of course, I may also be completely out to sea on this issue.

[Shulem]

Of course, I may also be completely out to sea on this issue.

I don't think you're out to sea at all and you make a lot sense. But, with that said, you should listen to your wife MORE often! I can tell you from past experience, wives are usually right.