# 'Le-chaim' [לחיים]



## ThomasK

I was told this means "'Cheers", or lit. "(Here's) to life". But then: isn't that a plural (as 'cha-im' ends in -_im_)? So: what is the precise meaning of the expression and the word?


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## yuval9

Yes it means what you said
Life חיים is always plural in hebrew. 
Like face (panim) ,sky (shama'im).. and other words


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## ThomasK

That is quite interesting. I know about 'scissors', 'trousers', etc., but would you be able to comment on this kind of plural? 

For example: sky = clouds??? No clue as for 'face' and 'life' though...


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## yuval9

I am not sure
The Hebrew bible says that Shama'im comes from Sham-Ma'im שם-מים (water-there)
and Maim (water) is always plural too

Face (panim) פנים is maybe a plural of פן Pan which its meaning is close to "side".

i don't know about Chaim. Chay is a "living creature" (noun) or "alive" (adjective)


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## ks20495

Grammatically, there isn't really a reason. These words (חיים, מים, פנים) are simply always plural even though they do not signify the plural in the literal sense.

Take the English "blues" (i.e., a feeling of sadness) as a comparison. The singular "blue" doesn't exist -- you can't say, "I've got the blue." This is the case, even though the "blues" is really a singular concept.


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## ThomasK

OK, thanks. Good comparison, but in the case of these Hebrew words things seem a little different to me because those are fairly concrete words. But I guess there is no real explanation. (One could of course say that life is by itself plurality - which is supposed to be suggested by the word 'Bereshit' starting with B/2 in Genesis)


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## Josh_

Hi guys,

My theory is that the plural in Classical Hebrew (not so much modern Hebrew) used in two different ways -- (1) as the traditional plural form, that is, to indicate more than one; and (2) as an intensive form -- which is the case with words like חיים (chaim), פנים (panim), שמים (shama'im), which are technically plural, but treated as singular.

It is late now where I am, and I am getting ready to go to bed, but I will, in the next day or two, organize my thoughts (I already have a rough draft of this written up) and explain what leads me to believe this. I may actually open a new thread to do this (as I have been wanting to do for some time) since this discussion may warrant its own thread.


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## ThomasK

That interpretation of plural forms seems quite attractive to me. It would be great if you explore that, and if there were parallels to be found in other languages. Looking forward!


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## Josh_

Hi again,

I posted my argument here. 

Concerning the word "_chaim_" in terms of why it is in the plural, my conjecture, which I relate in that thread, is that life is a large thing figuratively speaking; it is all around us; all encompassing and ubiquitous, as it were, thus it needs a big word (meaningwise) to refer to it, and so the intensive plural is used.


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## ThomasK

The argument looks impressive, and quite promising to me, but I can't go into it now. Thanks, however!


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## elianecanspeak

How do you make a boundary for mayim? What would be the meaning of "one water?

The same for ha-shamayim. It goes up and up. How do you limit or divide it?

"Life" can also be seen as a force that cannot be quantified, being shared by all living creatures.

I have never had the same feeling about panim.. I have always thought of it as a literal plural.


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## mediterraneo24

elianecanspeak said:


> How do you make a boundary for mayim? What would be the meaning of "one water?


  Ther is no "one water" in hebrew, just like in english. There is one glass/kg/botltle of water.


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## Aoyama

To come back to the initial question 





> isn't that a plural (as 'cha-im' ends in -_im_)?


 The word (cf. Yuval #4) is chay/chayim (חי/חיים).


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## ThomasK

This is an interesting issue, but Hebrew/ Ivrite might be unique in having this plural form - but I do not know about lots of non-European languages. 

However, do you ever use that singular form, A? In what cases?


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## Aoyama

First of all, to go back to one assertion (#5)


> Take the English "blues" (i.e., a feeling of sadness) as a comparison. The singular "blue" doesn't exist -- you can't say, "I've got the blue." This is the case, even though the "blues" is really a singular concept.


"blue" exists as an adjective : to feel blue, to be blue ...
now, with chay (חי) you can sometimes see some pendants (jewelery) using the form* חיי* , I wonder if it's wrong. Then there is the song "Od Avinu Chay" (our Father still lives) where chay is used as a verb (if I am not mistaking).


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## scriptum

I think that to explain logically the plurality of "panim" , "shamayim" etc. is like explaining the logic behind the (historically) diminutive form of such french words as, say, "abeille".
Abeille is a diminutive because the non-diminutive word ("è" if I am not mistaken) was too short and therefore too difficult to use. I bet "panim" and "hayim" are plurals for the same reason.


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## Aoyama

I can't follow you about the comparison with _abeille_ (bee, in French).
Here some food for thought (see at the very end for etymology) :
http://atilf.atilf.fr/dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/affart.exe?19;s=2807616300;?b=0;
abeille comes from Latin (_apis, apicul(l)a_) through Provençal.
How can this be related to the use of plural for otherwise singular nouns (panim, hayim, mayim, shamayim *) in Hebrew I don't understand.
*For shamayim, I wonder if this is not a dual ...


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## ThomasK

I can't judge the abeille theory, but I'd love to hear comments on the _chay_ word !


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## Abu Rashid

ThomasK said:
			
		

> his is an interesting issue, but Hebrew/ Ivrite might be unique in having this plural form - but I do not know about lots of non-European languages.



I think it's fairly common amongst Semitic languages to use plurals when it's not necessarily always a plural entity being discussed.

However, it might be more common in Hebrew because of the fact Hebrew seems to have a lot of frozen forms of words. Perhaps originally singular (and also dual) usage existed, but it fell into disuse a long time ago, and when Hebrew itself fell into disuse these forms were no longer used, even during it's revival.


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## ks20495

> I can't judge the abeille theory, but I'd love to hear comments on the _chay_ word !



"חַי" does exist as its own form. It means both "[he] lived" (past tense) and "[he] lives" (present tense).

The meaning in the present tense can also be "that which lives". For example, "the flora and the fauna" in Hebrew is "החי והצומח" (i.e., "that which lives and that which sprouts".) 

In that sense, חיים could possibly be seen as an extension of the literal meaning "those which live".


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## ThomasK

Abu Rashid said:


> I think it's fairly common amongst Semitic languages to use plurals when it's not necessarily always a plural entity being discussed.


What kind of words do you mean? The fauna and flora is interesting, because those are container terms for all things living indeed.


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## Josh_

ThomasK said:


> Abu Rashid said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ThomasK said:
> 
> 
> 
> This is an interesting issue, but Hebrew/ Ivrite might be unique in having this plural form - but I do not know about lots of non-European languages.
> 
> However, do you ever use that singular form, A? In what cases?
> 
> 
> 
> I think it's fairly common amongst Semitic languages to use plurals when it's not necessarily always a plural entity being discussed.
> 
> However, it might be more common in Hebrew because of the fact Hebrew seems to have a lot of frozen forms of words. Perhaps originally singular (and also dual) usage existed, but it fell into disuse a long time ago, and when Hebrew itself fell into disuse these forms were no longer used, even during it's revival.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> What kind of words do you mean? The fauna and flora is interesting, because those are container terms for all things living indeed.
Click to expand...

 
Yes, as Abu Rashid mentioned, this is common in Semitic languages (or at least Arabic and Hebrew). I touched upon this in my thread about the "intensive plural" here. I will quote the relevant part here:

3. Along with this, I got to thinking about Hebrew’s sister language, Arabic, which has intensive forms created in similar ways. For example, Arabic has what is called “the plural of the plural.” As the name indicates a plural form is added to an already pluralized word in order to indicate a greater number of something. For example the word for house is بيت (_bayt_). The plural of that is بيوت (_buyuut_, houses). An additional plural form, ـات (_aat_), can be added to that to create بيوتات (buyuutaat), which is a more intensive plural than بيوت. Also, some forms can have singular or plural meanings. Some words of the form فعّالة (_fa33aala_), which is itself an intensive form, can have singular or plural meaning. The word رحّالة (_raHHaala_) can mean “a great traveler,” or it can be the plural of رحّال (_raHHaal, _traveler), meaning “great travelers.” And so I thought, if this exists in Arabic, why wouldn’t or couldn’t Hebrew have something similar, considering they share other similar structures?


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## Aoyama

What about the use of the form  *חיי *?


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## elianecanspeak

The word "panim" is related to words in other ancient semitic languages :

Akkadian (Mesopotamean) panatu = "front side"
Assyrian (Mesopotamean) pani
Ugaritic (Canaanite) pnm = into (also in Hebrew "p'nim")

These two words seem to deal with the *interior* and *exterior*.  "Panim" in biblical Hebrew often refers to a surface, such as the surface of the water (often translated as "the face of the waters") or the surface of the land.

Although I cannot give the citation, I remember a discussion of the idea that "panim" referred to the exterior manifestation of the presence of divinity (in other words, the "surface"). [And note the corresponding etymology of “surface” in English”]

This type of usage would correspond to our ability to tell what is going on "inside" a person -- in the mind -- but what we see on the person's face -- the exterior.


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## ks20495

> What about the use of the form חיי ?



"חַיֵּי" is used as the first term in a סמיכות (genitive construction) - i.e, it means "life of...". 

For example, 
.חַיֵּי הַנָּסִיךְ קַלִּים מְאֹד
(The life of the prince is very easy.)


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## ks20495

> These two words seem to deal with the interior and exterior. "Panim" in biblical Hebrew often refers to a surface, such as the surface of the water (often translated as "the face of the waters") or the surface of the land.



פנים also means "surface" in Modern Hebrew (for example: פני הים is still "the surface of the water" or "על פני תבל" still means "on the face of the world.") 



> Although I cannot give the citation, I remember a discussion of the idea that "panim" referred to the exterior manifestation of the presence of divinity (in other words, the "surface"). [And note the corresponding etymology of “surface” in English”]
> 
> This type of usage would correspond to our ability to tell what is going on "inside" a person -- in the mind -- but what we see on the person's face -- the exterior.



This sounds a little to mystical too be a likely origin of the word.


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## Aoyama

> *"חַיֵּי" *is used as the first term in a סמיכות (genitive construction) - i.e, it means "life of...".


yes yes, right ... But then, why put it like this on a pendant (necklace, broach) *חיי*.


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## elianecanspeak

elianecanspeak said:


> Although I cannot give the citation, I remember a discussion of the idea that "panim" referred to the exterior manifestation of the presence of divinity (in other words, the "surface").





ks20495 said:


> This sounds a little to mystical too be a likely origin of the word.



It was not mystical, but actually seemed fairly concrete; as I remember it referred to accounts in the Tanakh of someone seeing god face-to-face  (or not) or god appearing, as opposed to communication through ritual. It may have had to do with other semitic languages as well.


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## scriptum

Aoyama said:


> How can this be related to the use of plural for otherwise singular nouns (panim, hayim, mayim, shamayim *) in Hebrew I don't understand.


Hi.
I think that in both languages alternative forms (diminutive in Latin/French, plural in Hebrew) are used just to lengthen words that are too short to be usable.
If there were diminutive suffixes in the Bible, maybe instead of "mayim" we would find there words like maychik, maynik or mayka?


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## origumi

Seems to me that there's not enough beef to generalize. The same few words that are mentioned again and again - שמים, מים, חיים, פנים, אלוהים and maybe one or two other - are all very old, most of them appear in the beginning of Genesis. For Panim elianecanspeak demostrated that the word may be plural already in pre-Hebrew or even pre-Canaanite (depending on how Ugaritic is classifed). The origin of what looks like plural (אלוהים, חיים, פנים) or dual (שמיים, מים) is not necessarly the same for all, and not necessarly plural/dual for all. Could be for example remains of old case system, or adverbial suffix, or "מ" of essence as in the (nearly forgotten) word מו evident in כמו, במו, למו. See for example ירושלים which looks like dual but is said to originate from ירושלם or עיר-שלם. See also מצרים which looks like (and most likely is) dual and said to originate from specific geo-political situation, either the two banks of the Nile or the upper and lower kingdoms.


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## Aoyama

> I think that in both languages alternative forms (diminutive in Latin/French, plural in Hebrew) are used just to lengthen words that are too short to be usable.


I think I understand what you mean, the ending -eille could be compared to -im in Hebrew. Maybe. One could interpret it as a phonetic change from Latin (through, mainly, Provençal) , or ending -cul(l)a, as in bouteille, but the ending varies, depending on words. Further discussion would be off-topic here.

The comment above from origumi is very interesting. In fact, come to think of it , Jerusalem (ירושלים) is also a good example of a _seemingly plural/dual ending_ who may not be after all ...(unless you understand it as "the city of peaces").


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## Egmont

mediterraneo24 said:


> Ther is no "one water" in hebrew, just like in english. There is one glass/kg/botltle of water.


Not only that, but this does not apply to all mass nouns in Hebrew. Mayim may be plural, but hol (sand), halav (milk), marak (soup), etc., etc., are singular in form. If this were the reason, we'd expect all mass nouns to have plural form.

In English, there are a few nouns that look like plural but aren't; they just happen to end in "s." One example is _kudos_, meaning praise, from the Greek. Lots of people think it's plural, but it's not. Could something like that be a factor here? (Unlikely, I know ... just raising the question.)


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## ks20495

> Could something like that be a factor here? (Unlikely, I know ... just raising the question.)



It's a good thought...but not plausible. 

This is because, in other Semitic languages, the cognates of "מים" and "חיים" don't have a "mem." (maa' and Hiyyah in Arabic; mayya and Hayayya in Aramaic.)


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## Jazon

ThomasK said:


> That is quite interesting. I know about 'scissors', 'trousers', etc., but would you be able to comment on this kind of plural?
> 
> For example: sky = clouds??? No clue as for 'face' and 'life' though...


Some morphologically plural/singular words include "sheep", "deer", "you" in English and "paniym", "elohiym" in Hebrew.
I don't know why.
You know whether I mean *a *sheep or *some *sheep by the context. If I say "the sheep", I will say something about the sheep.
If I mean one sheep, I may say "The sheep *is* in the car.".
If I mean thirty sheep, I may say "The sheep *are* in the kitchen.".


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