🧵 THREAD: Hebrew didn't borrow the English suffix "-able." It accidentally invented its own version — and the story shows how languages can solve the same problem in completely different ways. 1/9
2/ English has "readable," "drinkable," "breakable." Hebrew now has qari, shati, shavir. Same function, totally different system. But Hebrew had to build this from scratch.
3/ Here's why: Semitic languages work differently from English. Meanings come from root letters plugged into patterns — not suffixes. Ancient Hebrew had the qatil pattern, but it meant random things: amir ("treetop"), khalil ("flute"). No "-able" equivalent.
4/ The accidental breakthrough started in 1897 when Eliezer Ben-Yehuda coined gamish — "flexible." Then in the 1920s, American Hebrew medical publishers added massis ("dissolvable") and shavir ("breakable").
5/ Hebrew speakers started noticing a pattern: Take any verb root, plug it into qatil, and you get "able to be X-ed." Just like English "-able" but using Semitic morphology instead of suffixes.
6/ By the 1950s, it exploded: nagish (accessible), qari (readable), shati (drinkable). Hebrew had reverse-engineered one of English's most useful grammatical tools and made it work in a Semitic language.
7/ Now, whenever Hebrew needs a new "-able" word, it knows exactly how to make one. The system works instantly because it follows Hebrew's own grammatical logic, not borrowed English patterns.
8/ This is linguistic innovation at its finest: Hebrew didn't copy English — it used its own 3,000-year-old grammar system to achieve the same communicative goal. Different tools, same result.
9/ Sometimes the most elegant solutions come from working within your language's existing strengths rather than borrowing from others. Hebrew proved that ancient patterns can solve modern problems.
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