RBS Aleph is known ad RBS A. RBS Bet is known as RBS B. Personally I call RBS Gimmel as RBS C, yet many online call it RBS G. I keep seeing it referred to, in English, by many people, as RBS G.
And, to me, that makes no sense.
Presumably RBS Daled will be called RBS d, but what will RBS Hey be called - RBS H? and RBS Vav will be called RBS V?
This makes no sense. We will have the neighborhoods RBS A, B, G, D, H, V, and on and on..
Gimmel is not G, just because that is the letter Gimmel (in English) begins with. It makes so much more sense to call it RBS C, then RBS D, then RBS E.
But I guess this isn't the hill I need to die on. Call it what you want, but it seems silly and inconsistent to call it G.
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Another reason - according to the "RBS G" logic, RBS Aleph should be called "RBS ", (space intentional) since aleph isn't vocalized.
ReplyDeletehmm, I see your point...
DeleteOf course an א can be vocalized. If not, you couldn't pronounce the name of the letter, or אלף, אלפים or אלוף, to name a few.
ReplyDeleteBottom line: if you think of the A in RBSA as "aleph", then it's RBSG. If you think of it as RBS (A) (as in, the first), then it's RBSC. Both designations are consistent, though it will be telling when Heh is complete and we see what people do.
You're vocalizing the vowel sound that goes along with it. Calling Gimel "G" uses the English consonant which has the same vocalization. There is none for Aleph.
DeleteI see your point, but it's irrelevant. No one uses RBS G because the letter G sounds like the letter gimmel. They use G because the transliterated spelling of גימל begins with a G. The transliterated spelling of א begins with an A. If it were otherwise, it would be called "RBS <hard G>".
DeleteIt is neither silly nor inconsistent. It is a shortened version of a transliteration. Why do you call it "Ramat Beit Shemesh" and not "Beit Shemesh Heights," or even better "Heights of the Sun House"? Because you are giving a transliteration of the name, not a translation. The neighborhood, transliterated from Hebrew, is Ramat Beit Shemesh Gimmel. So it is shortened, for the sake of convenience, to Ramat Beit Shemesh G.
ReplyDeletegood answer. makes some sense. I still think, looking to the future neighborhoods, that this is a bad method and is short-sighted, and calling the neighborhoods a, b, c, etc is far better
DeleteJust saw this because the use of RBSG continues to bug me.
ReplyDeleteI think the proof that it should be ABC is that even though they are vocalised in Hebrew they are not, ever, written as אלף בית גימל , but rather always as א ב ג (ideally followed by a geresh) which indicates that they are "numbers" and we could write them I II III as well.
With respect to those who don't fit this hypothesis, I wonder whether this pattern is led by people whose language sense isn't so strong and also comfortably call RBSA "Ramat Alef" (which reflects lack of awareness of semichut or the sense of the aleph or both).