Talk:ישן

Tea Room discussion

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Tea room.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

---

This entry cautions that it refers only to elderly humans and animals, while יָשָׁן is used to refer to old inanimate objects. What about plants? What word describes an old tree? - -sche (discuss) 08:19, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Most languages that make animacy distinctions treat plants as inanimate, so יָשָׁן would be my a priori guess. —Angr 21:14, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Interesting question. I believe a tree is זקן actually, at least in older Hebrew. The commentary of w:Rashi to the Babylonian Talmud, Avoda Zara 49, reads (in part) "אם הבריך או הרכיב יחור של ערלה באילן זקן מותרים פירותיהן מיד", for example, and that's my impression from, I guess, having seen it in various other places. But I await a native speaker (or someone who'll bother Googling) re modern Hebrew.​—msh210℠ (talk) 01:49, 27 May 2013 (UTC)