Word Morphemes in Judean

If you research Biblical Hebrew grammar lessons, you will be told about “root words”. However, I believe understanding the words in Judean (Yehudeyth) as a “morpheme” is a better way of comprehending it. The “base” or “root word” is a root morpheme. What is a morpheme?

Morpheme

is the smallest meaningful unit in a language that carries grammatical or semantic meaning

Free morpheme – is a stand alone word, with no prefix or suffix or other words, affixed to them. The base word or oot word would be classified as a free morpheme.

However, there are OTHER KINDS of morphemes such as …bound morphems

. You need to learn how to identify both free & bound morophemes in the Judean language. You will not be able to read the language if you soely focus on root words or free morphemes. I will teach you about bound morphements in a later chapter and how to read them as these tutorials continue.

Bound Morpheme – is a morpheme with affixes attached to them;

• Affixes could be an inflx, prefix or suffix or any combination together in a morpheme (word).

• Prefix A modification added before the base word or morpheme

• Suffix A modification added at the end the base word or morpheme

Certain affixes joined to a morpheme can change the class (verb, noun, adj. adv. Etc), make it plural or change the gender, but not the meaning. When that happens, is a called an Inflectional Morphemes. This helps us to see their relationship and create words for words that already exist. Most Yahudeyth words are inflectional morphemes. Many languages have word morphemes. English is one of them. To understand the difference between a free & bound morpheme, let’s look at the free morpheme word “friend” with various prefixes & suffixes.

Friend – Stand alone

Friends – friend + s

Friendly – friend + ly

Unfriendly – un + friend + ly

Befriend - be + friend

Befriended - be + friend + ed

Friendliness - friend +ly + ness

The word “friend” is the “root word” or “free morpheme”. The other variations or morpheme come from the binding effect of various prefixes & suffixes to the word “friend”. This is a similar concept with Manakahthey, however, many are referring to the free morpheme word as “root words”, which isn’t incorrect. I find many so called “root words” are not the actual morpheme of the word. When this happens for varies words. I will let you know. In order to read Yahudeyth & Manakahthey, you need to be able to identify the free morpheme and the meaning of the symbols that are bound to them.

Bound Morpheme Breakdown of Morpheme Parts Translation

וישמרהו
ו (and) + י (he) + שמר (guard) + ה (direct object) + ו (him) and he guarded him

כשמעכם
כ (as) + שמע (hear) + כם (your plural) as you hear ממלכותיה מ (from) + מלך (king) + ותי (plural) + ה (her) from her kingdoms המדבר ה (the) + מדבר(wilderness) the wilderness

ויקטלהו
ו (and) + י (he) + קטל (kill) + ה (direct object) + ו (him) and he killed him

If you like how I translated each morphome above, you will be happy to learn that many pages on this site translate each morpheme. See the Interlinear Bible and ScripTopics

Each symbol may carry multiple meanings. The meaning of hard to understand sayings, often comes from reading the context, especially when multiple words are spelled the same. I prefer to track all morphemes by their original morpheme to see the relationships with them. Basically, I track them together if they are spelled the same. The Manakahthey flashcards I created were made with this idea in mind. Visit the book store

In order for you to be able to read Yahudeyth aka Judean without vowel marks, you need to know the many potential meanings and parts of speech for words that are spelled the same. Once you learn the main “free morpheme”, it makes it easier to understand the “bound morphemes” that can be created from them.

Examples

Example 1

and in their kingdoms

ובמלכותיהם

ו (and) + ב (in) + מלך (king) + ותי (plural) + הם (their)

Example 2

to guard me

לשמרי

ל (to) + שמר (guard) + י (me)