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What is the proper grammar of giving/receiving mishloach manos/shalach manos? I've heard people use both terms as in, "I'm preparing mishloach manos for tomorrow" and "I hope to bring the shalach manos later".

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    As a native [Israeli] Hebrew speaker, I don't know what "shalach" in "shalach manos" is supposed to mean. (In general, Shalach is the masculine singular form of "sent".)
    – Tamir Evan
    Mar 17, 2019 at 3:00
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    The phrase שלח־מנות is perfectly good Yiddish, so I see no reason to avoid it if using-Yiddish-words-in-English is part of your dialect/register.
    – magicker72
    Mar 18, 2019 at 3:48
  • "Shalach" is shorthand for "Mishloach." It has no significance.
    – ElonMusk
    Nov 22, 2023 at 17:15

3 Answers 3

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The phrase שלח-מנות is the accepted term in Yiddish and משלוח-מנות is the accepted term in Hebrew (based on Esther 9:22).

Here is the entry in Harkavy's Yiddish-English dictionary:

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and here is the entry in Alcaly's Hebrew-English dictionary:

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Which term you choose to employ will be based on socio-linguistic context and/or personal preference.

The other answers seem to want to deliberately ignore that there are other Jewish languages. For example, the term in Ladino is פלאטיקוס. I'm sure that over the millennia in the different places we've been other terms were used as well.

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  • Shalach is also valid Hebrew as in ויהי בשלח פרעה, and that construction applied to מנות is in Beitzah 1:9
    – Heshy
    Mar 21 at 18:49
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  1. THe proper form is "Mishloach Manot/s" - משלוח מנות as it appears in the Meggilah:

    "לעשות אותם ימי משתה ושמחה ומשלוח מנות איש לרעהו ומתנות לאביונים"

    Compare to לנוח - מנוח, or לקחת - מלקוח etc.

  2. One can use derivatives of "send" - לשלוח, like "אני שולח מנות", "שלחתי מנות" etc.

  3. There's no such form of a noun as שלח מנות in Hebrew.

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As Al Berko said, the version in the Megillah is mishloach, in binyan kal.

In Mishnaic Hebrew, the word for sending things (and even sending מנות!) is written in binyan pi'el. As far as I can tell it means the same as binyan kal in this context*.

בֵּית שַׁמַּאי אוֹמְרִים, אֵין מְשַׁלְּחִין בְּיוֹם טוֹב אֶלָּא מָנוֹת

Beitzah 1:9

My guess is שַׁלַּח comes from the pi'el form of the verb, as in ויהי בשלח פרעה.


* I don't see how this distinction can be applied here since you're sending stuff, not people

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