# חיוך בשיא הרצינות לימוד עברית מדוברת



## seitt

Greetings

I'm having some trouble understanding this textbook title:
חיוך בשיא הרצינות לימוד עברית מדוברת

Please could you explain/translate?

Best wishes, and many thanks,

Simon


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## bazq

בשיא הרצינות (besi haretsinut) literally means "in the peak of seriousness", and understood as "with all seriousness" or "No(t) joking/kidding".
It's very common in colloquial Modern Hebrew.

חיוך בשיא הרצינות would be "a smile with all seriousness" - this is a play on words since you would not normally smile when serious. 
The authors must have used this title to present the colloquial expression "בשיא הרצינות", and used it with "חיוך" (smile) to show how Hebrew expressions sometimes exhibit oxymorons.
Another example would be the word for fire "אש" (pronounced " 'esh " ) which nowadays can act as an intensifier in Modern Hebrew meaning "very"/"extremely", and you can hear speakers say things like "kar 'esh" meaning  - "fiery cold" = very cold!


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## origumi

bazq said:


> to show how Hebrew expressions sometimes exhibit oxymorons.


Some better oxymorons (and their alike) contain internal twists, for example: אי שפיות בים של שגעון. Would any of the non-native speakers be kind enough to explain what אי means here?


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## airelibre

origumi said:


> Some better oxymorons (and their alike) contain internal twists, for example: אי שפיות בים של שגעון. Would any of the non-native speakers be kind enough to explain what אי means here?


Fun, this means
An island of sanity in a sea of madness.
But it is a play on אי-שפיות which means insanity. ("Insanity in a sea of madness")


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## origumi

airelibre said:


> Fun, this means


"Fun" is a pun for "pun". right?


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## seitt

> אי שפיות בים של שגעון. Would any of the non-native speakers be kind enough to explain what אי means here?


1. island
2. There aren't (= אין)
But shouldn't שפיות be שפוית?


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## airelibre

seitt said:


> 1. island
> 2. There aren't (= אין)
> But shouldn't שפיות be שפוית?



Firstly,  there could well be a correspondence between אי and אין, but אי itself doesn't mean "there aren't", it's like בלתי, un- non-.

What do you mean by שפוית? I'm not aware of that word. שפיות is shfiyut, sanity.


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## seitt

Many thanks!


> What do you mean by שפוית?


The feminine plural of שפוי (shafuy), although the full spelling would be שפויות.
But I prefer yours!


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## Drink

seitt said:


> Many thanks!
> The feminine plural of שפוי (shafuy), although the full spelling would be שפויות.
> But I prefer yours!



I think שפיות makes much more sense here than שפויות (and no one these days would ever spell that as שפוית).


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## origumi

Drink said:


> I think שפיות makes much more sense here than שפויות (and no one these days would ever spell that as שפוית).


Sure, it is shfiyyut שְׁפִיּוּת. The feminine suffix ות- makes it an "abstract noun" (as it's sometimes called), similarly I guess to Latin -tas of which English -ty is derived, as in sani*ty*.


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## seitt

Thank you so much, all clear now.


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