21st Century Bible Hebrew -- segolate nouns

All right, let me catch up on something I didn’t discuss before because we haven’t seen an example.

Some nouns and adjectives have the vowel segol in both halves. When they conjugate, they do something even siach doesn’t do. Here’s melekh, “king” for an example.

Absolute	construct	Gender
מֶלֶךְ	מֶלֶךְ	singular
מְלָכִים	מַלְכֵי	masculine

A feminine adjective will be m’lachot in the plural absolute, and malkat in the construct singular.

There’s no adjective melekh that I know of, I’m just saying that when an adjective has segol for both vowels, change the vowels as you see here for the masculine plural, and use the feminine plural endings.

Perach, “flower”, is a special case because not only does it have a segol in the first syllable, it has the –ach ending that siach has. This word is an exception to the –ach nouns being feminine, too. So it’s perach, p’rachim, perach, pirchey. There are no examples of this in Tannakh but like it is pereq, “chapter”, the plural construct of which is pirqey, as in pirqey avot, “chapters of the fathers”, a famous Mishnaic tractate, parts of which are very well known and for which there is a commentary, Avot d’Rabbi Natan. You can read Avot d’Rabbi Natan here:

https://www.sefaria.org/Avot_D'Rabbi_Natan?lang=bi

Don’t choke over the Hebrew having no vowels. There is an English translation under it. Their copy of Pirqey Avot is here.

https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot?lang=bi

There are vowels on that one.