Talk:Counting sheep

"Sopor sond"
''It has also been whimsically suggested that the phrase originates from a Hebrew pun on the Latin phrase "sopor sond" (literally, sleep deeply/soundly). The Hebrew pun is ספור צאן (sopwor tsoan), an imperative that means "count sheep!".''

I'm truly curious how this idea arose. It sounds clever if you don't know Latin, but is almost certainly nonsense. For one thing, sopor is a noun meaning "deep sleep", not a verb meaning "to sleep." More importantly, as far as I know, *sond doesn't mean anything in Latin. I'm not a classical scholar, so it's possible I'm wrong and there is some obscure basis for this, but I can say with certainty that sond (a) isn't in any Latin dictionary I own, (b) doesn't even look like it could be a Latin word, and in any case (c) isn't in a morphological form that would be either an adjective modifying the noun sopor, or an adverb meaning "deeply" as suggested by the translation. Note that sound as in the English phrase "sleep soundly" is from a Germanic root -- cf. German gesund, "healthy" -- and has nothing to do with e.g. Latin sonus, "a sound (audible)".

If one googles "sopor sond," one finds that this idea seems to have been put forth over and over in Web forums and on Usenet, always by the same person, one Israel "Izzy" Cohen, and represented as his own finding. I find little evidence that it has ever been taken seriously, although I haven't done an offline search. Note also that the "sopor sond" bit was added to this article by an anonymous contributor 212.150.128.5 and was originally worded as follows:

''Israel "izzy" Cohen thinks the phrase "Count sheep!" (to go to sleep) is the translation of a Hebrew pun on the Latin phrase "sopor sond", literally, sleep deeply/soundly. The Hebrew pun (transliteration) is samekh-peh-vav(oh)-resh tzadi-aleph-nun S'PoR tSo@N, an imperative that means "count sheep!".''

One suspects that 212.150.128.5 and Israel Cohen are one and the same (the same IP address has also contributed a similar "Izzy Cohen" etymology to Hair of the dog, which was subsequently removed by another contributor).

I've already modified the "sopor sond" etymology in the present article to make it clear that it's unlikely to be true. I guess my question for other contributors is: should we simply remove it altogether, or at least mark it more definitively as spurious? It hardly seems worth even dignifying with the notation "folk etymology" when not even "the folk", but one person in particular, is responsible for it... Kiscica 18:29, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Kiscica's comments are valid. Israel "izzy" Cohen now believes that "Count sheep!" is the translation of a Hebrew pun SPoR KeVeS (samekh-peh-resh kaf-vet-sin), which is the imperative "Count sheep!", on the Latin phrase sopor quies. Sopor does have the meaning described by Kiscica above and quies is a Latin word with derivatives such as quiescent and quiet in English. Note that U and V are the same letter in Latin. /s/ Israel Cohen —Preceding unsigned comment added by Izzycohen (talk • contribs) 07:17, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

"Count sheep!" (to help one go to sleep) seems to be a translation of a Hebrew transliteration pun, S'PoR KeVeS, on the Latin phrase sopor quies = sleep quietly, restfully (without moving). A soporific is a drug that makes you sleep. Quiescent means quiet, still or inactive. (U and V are the same letter in Latin.) This idiom has been borrowed back into Israeli Hebrew as LiSPoR K'VaSim, to count sheep (plural). If you are counting them, there must be more than one.

The transliteration of a (usually) foreign word or phrase directly into common words of the target language is a standard mechanism for creating idioms. After an idiom is created in this way, it may be translated into other languages. For more examples, see http://www.tesall.com/esl-tesol-teachers?id=49469 /s/ Israel "izzy" Cohen, Petah Tikva, cohen.izzy@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.111.211.187 (talk) 07:18, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Count sheep !
Limerick submitted by Israel "Izzy" Cohen:

The Latin words sopor quies [1] Do sound like Hebrew spor keves ! [2] So to help you sleep deep, We now tell you "count sheep !" That pun's for a polyglot, yes?

[1] https://translate.google.co.il/?hl=en&tab=wT#la/en/sopor%20quies [2] https://translate.google.co.il/?hl=en&tab=wT

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