זכור

After מעריב on כל נדרי night (hey, some people are always thinking דקדוק) someone asked me what determines when זְכֹר with a שוא is used as opposed to זָכוֹר with a קמץ. The catalyst for the question was likely זכר כי עפר אנחנו in אבינו מלכנו. It would seem that there is no actual difference in meaning between the two. One interesting clue that occurred to me was that we always find זָכוֹר followed by the word את, as in זכור את אשר עשה לך עמלק and זכור את יום השבת לקדשו. And it seems that זְכֹר is never followed by את, for example, זכר אל תשכח and זכר ימות עולם. Has anyone seen anything specific on this?

Reish

Interesting short article on pronunciation of the ר:

The partial view: The" Brisker Reish", authentic and correct way how to Pronounce the letter "ר"

Shin and Sin

Cross-reference from The Daily Leaf.

New Daf Yomi Blog

A little Weekly Shtikle blog cross-promotion. I recently started the new cycle of דף יומי and decided it would be nice to put down my thoughts and observations on the דף. And so, The Daily Leaf was born, joining the Weekly Shtikle family of blogs. There is even the occasional דקדוק piece. You can link to those straight with this link. Please check it out, read, enjoy, subscribe and comment.

Sunrise

A rather heated exchange has been brewing over at our sister-blog, AstroTorah, as to the exact proper grammatical term for sunrise. Is it נץ החמה or הנץ החמה? (Further, it is הָנֵץ or הֶנֵץ?) I figured we could settle this here. Discuss!

First-born males

I just received this excellent question from my father:
Why is it מכת בכורות but תענית בכורים?
I'm sure there's an excellent answer as well but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

בעלמא די ברא כרעותיה

As per the comments, the below theory is most probably invalid. But I thought it would be nice to bring up the discussion anyway:

I once had a discussion with a friend about the specific pronunciation of the word כרעותיה in the above exerpt from the beginning of קדיש. Should there be a דגש in the כ"ף or not? He reasoned that with no דגש, the word כרעותיה connects with ברא as it is the ending vowel sound that steals the דגש. This would then group this phrase together to mean "the world which He has created according to His will."

However, if you leave the דגש in the כ"ף that disjoints the word כרעותיה from ברא, essentially forming a complete thought out of all the words that precede it. "His will" would therefore not be defining "the world He created," but rather "יתגדל ויתקדש שמיה רבא." Let His name grow exalted and be sanctified according to his will.

Leaving aside which understanding is correct, I would like to suggest the דגש does not necessarily change the meaning in this manner. I say this based on the טעם העליון and טעם התחתון, the two distinct arrangements of trop for the עשרת הדברות. Commandments 6 to 9 have a varying דגש in the leading תי"ו depending on which reading is used. But surely the meaning of the words has not changed. This would seem to imply that presence of the דגש at the beginning of the word is somewhat arbitrary and does not determine the meaning of the word on its own.