Hebrew is a difficult language:
In preparation for Hebrew Language Day that will begin on January 12 and toward the end of the civil year, the Hebrew Language Academy invited the public to choose the word of the year.
Out of dozens of suggestions received from the public, nine words were chosen and put to a vote on the website of the Hebrew Language Academy.
Many thousands participated in the vote and they decided what the word of the year would be.
Throughout the week, two words competed for first place: bolen and shilot.
The next word after them was hallucination.
The other words that were offered to the public to choose from were compassion, climate, gender, the phrase 'full on', Rogela and mortgage.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda, photo: from Wikipedia
Tough competition between the words on the list, photo: GettyImages
The chosen word of the year is "Bolen".
As far as is known, this word began to be used in the 60s of the last century as an alternative to the foreign word "dolina", and came in place of the term bul'a that was established in the dictionary of geography terms of the Language Academy in 1959 (1959).
A sinkhole is a large pit created by the mass of the underground layer and the collapse of the ground surface into the created space.
The phenomenon is known in a karst landscape (where there is a mass of limestone rocks and the like) and since the 1970s it has been known in the Dead Sea region (where the underground salt layers are dissolved following the retreat of seawater).
Sinkholes also open up on roads and other places where there is instability below the surface of the ground and endanger human life.
A huge sinkhole opens up in Ayalon routes // Photo: Ayalon routes
The word "governance", which came in second place, began to appear in the press from the first decade of the 21st century, and it indicates the action of one who governs.
In the biblical language, the verb for "to rule" is "government", for example "And God made the two great lights, the great light for the government of the day and the small light for the government of the night" (Genesis 1:16), the meaning of the word "people" can also be found later on The government: "And all his government [of the king of Assyria] was with him" (2 Chronicles 2 Lev, 9), hence the use of "government" in our days to indicate a member of ministers who is at the head of the state.
Another hot topic - the governance.
Riots in the south of Israel, photo: A.
Nose.
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The word that came in third place is "hallucination".
This word and the verb to hallucinate are based on a singular and obscure biblical word from Isaiah "I hallucinate that I love to sleep" (Nu, 10).
It was the translator of a confused teacher from the West, Shmuel Ibn Tivon, who gave the verb "hozim" the meaning "imagining false imaginations" following the Arabic.
The verb to hallucinate and the verb to hallucinate began to be used with this meaning in general Hebrew at the beginning of the 20th century.
In recent years, the word "hallucination" has taken on another meaning: an unthinkable state.
It was preceded by the adjective "illusory" to describe something illogical, strange, incomprehensible.
The tax authorities seized hashish "candies" and hallucinogenic mushrooms worth tens of thousands of shekels (archive), photo: YSM Netavg
Troll and stupid
We will remind you that last year the word "troll" won the title of word of the year, and the year before that the word "metosh" reached the first place at the end of the first year of the corona epidemic in which the public became familiar with the term that until then was known only to the medical teams.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of the "reviver of the Hebrew language", Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the Hebrew Language Academy invited the public to also choose Ben-Yehuda's favorite innovation.
Voting continues on the Academy's website, and the favorite innovation that will be chosen will be published on Hebrew Language Day.
The Language Academy will hold a special event at the Jerusalem Theater in collaboration with the Jerusalem Municipality at the beginning of Hebrew Week on January 8, 2023. A variety of rabbi talks, meetings, lectures and workshops and a special activity for children will be held in the theater halls from the afternoon hours.
In the evening, there will be an original performance by Rami Kleinstein with Tsurya Lahav, followed by the first ever Hebrew comedy marathon (stand-up).
Jerusalem Theater (archive), photo: Oren Ben Hakon
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