Thread by @elongilad

1/9 🧵 The Hebrew word for piano is psanter (פסנתר). It traces back to the Bible – but there, it wasn't a piano at all. It was a harp. So how did a harp become a piano? This is the wild story of a 2,000-year linguistic journey... 🎹

2/9 Early Hebrew speakers had a problem: how do you say "piano" in Hebrew?
Some just borrowed piano from Italian. Others tried recycling biblical terms like ugav or nevel.
None of those caught on. 🤷‍♂️

3/9 Then in 1885 in Rishon LeZion, someone made a breakthrough.
Possibly Berta Finberg – who owned the colony's only piano – introduced the word psanter.
But where did she find it? 🕵️‍♀️

4/9 She pulled it straight from the Book of Daniel.
There, Nebuchadnezzar orders everyone to bow when they hear "the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, psanterin..."
Perfect! An ancient word for a musical instrument. Problem solved, right? 📜

5/9 Plot twist: psanterin isn't even Aramaic (the language of Daniel).
It's borrowed from Greek psalterion – which was an ancient stringed instrument.
Basically... a harp. 🪕

6/9 But here's where it gets even better:
Whoever adapted this into Hebrew made a translation ERROR.
They mistook the Greek ending -in for an Aramaic plural marker... 🤦‍♂️

7/9 So they dropped the -in to create what they thought was the singular form: psanter.
They were essentially creating a new word based on a misunderstanding of the word's grammar.
And this mistake was about to change Hebrew forever. ⚡

8/9 The word stuck.
By the 1890s, newspapers were using psanter regularly.
It even beat out Hebrew revivalist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's suggestion: makhoshit.
Sometimes the people's choice wins over the experts. 📰

9/9 So let's trace this journey:
🏛️ Ancient Greece: psalterion (harp) 📜 Book of Daniel: psanterin (still a harp) 🎹 1885 Rishon LeZion: psanter (now means piano)
A harp became a piano through pure linguistic accident.