Replies

Re: “It’s sort of like the whole business of shibboleth. If you’re an intellectual, you should know what a shibboleth is. It’s from the Bible. It’s a Hebrew word that very few Hebrews could pronounce correctly. If you could pronounce it correctly, you were an intellectual. It was a test to see if you were an actual member of the tribe.”

If you could pronounce it correctly, you were an intellectual? That’s not how I remember the Book of Judges. The Gileadites could pronounce it. The Ephraimites couldn’t, and it cost 42,000 of them their lives. A tad harsh, perhaps, but those of us who value proper diction can understand ;-)

Re: “It’s sort of like the whole business of shibboleth. If you’re an intellectual, you should know what a shibboleth is. It’s from the Bible. It’s a Hebrew word that very few Hebrews could pronounce correctly. If you could pronounce it correctly, you were an intellectual. It was a test to see if you were an actual member of the tribe.”

If you could pronounce it correctly, you were an intellectual? That’s not how I remember the Book of Judges. The Gileadites could pronounce it. The Ephraimites couldn’t, and it cost 42,000 of them their lives. A tad harsh, perhaps, but those of us who value proper diction can understand ;-)

It was a password designed to detect those who weren't from Gilead. After the Gilead army had defeated the Ephraimite army, the Ephraimites were trying to get back across the river, the fords of which had been taken over by the forces of Gilead. Some really smart Gilead army guy figured out a simple way to figure out who was who. The Ephaimite dialect had no "sh" sound. So if someone trying to cross the ford was asked to say "shibboleth" and he wasn't a good mimic and said "sibboleth," he was killed.

So toomahtoe and potahtoe would be fightin’ words in the Old T?