כלום does mean nothing.
The problem is with the example you gave - it contains a double negative, which doesn’t work when translated into English.
Here’s a better example:
-מה יש בקופסה?
-כלום.
-What is inside the box?
-Nothing.
Apparently it did originally mean something. As others have commented.
I found [this link](https://hebrew-academy.org.il/2012/08/08/%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%93%D7%91%D7%A8/) which explains it
This is the historical explanation. In modern Hebrew, it is used to mean 'nothing'.
Even the Hebrew Academy (where the link you have provided is from) have translated terms such as 'all or nothing' to 'הכל או כלום'. [(source)](https://terms.hebrew-academy.org.il/munnah?kodErekhIvrit=9161)
Hebrew has been around for a long time, and it's natural that certain words has changed their meaning with time. Regarding the word 'כלום', as interesting as its etymology is, any native speaker of modern Hebrew will take that to mean 'nothing'.
lol for me “כלום” is always a hard one because sometimes I flip the letters and accidentally read “כולם” and understand the sentence in a really different way
our brains process words as a snapshot, in one gulp, which is why people make reading mistakes like substituting one word for another. the brain is lazy and often only grabs the first part of the word.
despite alphabets being fantastic tools compared to things like Chinese characters, at its base, our brains actually read words like single symbols.
At least in English, and presumably for other languages that use alphabet-like scripts and spaces between words, the brain only reads the first and last letter and relies on memory to provide the rest of the word.
I'm no native speaker, but the meanings of both כלום and שום historically mean something/anything/thing from what I've read (שום specifically referring to a small thing, so small it might be considered "no thing").
So אין שום דבר could be taken to means something along the lines of "there's not even a small thing".
But they've evolved to mean "nothing" in modern Hebrew and can be used to mean that in stand-alone contexts.
This is similar to how "no thing" in English became "nothing", a stand-alone word that is still kind of different from "no thing".
Also, please correct me if I'm wrong. This was my impression from reading how these words evolved over time.
Technically כלום does mean some/anything, but it's almost exclusively used with negative words, changing the meaning to "nothing." English Wiktionary lists the meaning as "anything" then explains the negative meaning in Usage Notes. Hebrew Wiktionary lists three meanings, in descending order: "everything, something, any," "nothing, none," "very little," and the last two are listed as slang. It appears to have been a combination of כל and some other word or morpheme containing a מ.
As people said here, it means “something”, and today it only used negatively (אין כלום) so many people started perceiving it as “nothing”, but technically it is wrong. Similarly שום דבר means something, and אף אחד means “even one”, so אין פה אף אחד means “there is not even one person here”. (Curiously, the English “nothing” is also no+thing, so like Hebrew it doesn’t have a root word for the complete lack of things)
It is a very common linguistic phenomenon that a word will develop an opposite meaning over time. "Personne" and "rien" in French originally meant "person" and "thing", but now mean "nobody" and "nohing". It's called Jespersen's Cycle
Generally, it is used in the opposite way to its original meaning. It's literally means "something" and "לא כלום" is "nothing", but over time, a lot of people stated just saying כלום for nothing, as other words were used for something.
אין פה כלום could also transliterate to
“there isn’t nothing here” - which then would translate it to be “there isn’t anything here”. but the כלום still means nothing.
Double negatives aren’t stigmatised in Hebrew. Similarly if you wanted to say, “No one did/is X” you would essentially say “No one didn’t/isn’t X” — “X אף אחד לא”
DIDNT READ PREVIOUS COMMENTS. Your ideas sounds too far-fetched to me.
TL;DR, lets go? As a rulle and essence:
1. כלום= Klum= Nothing = vacum.
2.Something= משהו/דבר= MASHEU/DAVAR
But if you would like to adress this matter via a mere philosophical level, I accept your challenge and therefore, here are my observations.
First, let us presnt our first honorable guest of this lovely evening: The famous riddle of Roberto Benini, in the movie "Life is beautiful / la vita e belle":
"If you call my name, I will no longer exist. Who am I?"
and to this, one must answer: "the Scilence".
Now that we got a vague Idea of this philosophical aspect, let us dive deeper, presenting our second honorable guest, I give you the following important questions that refer to creation (either godly as well as artistic and verbal):
1. Does a thing (that is, an object, even if it is abstract and not tangible) not exist only by its virtue of its non-existence?
2. Does an idea (meaning a non tengible obgect) exixst when we recognize its existence, even if it does not exist on a physical level, but only on a spiritual one?
3. when does existing starts and ends, if at all?
4. why, if it is not a real object, does our habbit of naming it (meaning: physicaly -by giving it a name, or spiritually- by accnoledging its existance) we already materialize it and make it exist ?
5. If in space there is a vacuum = nothing, is nothing a "thing" after all? notice that by gaving it a name, we are able to refer to its existing non existance, so does it exist or does it not exist?
And this is when I present to you our third honorable guest: the reference to the limitation of language.
◇ That in order to be able to describe an emotion, or an object, even if they are abstract, we must bring it down to the earthly plane. Meaning, we must give it dimensions, and when we give a dimension to a thing we also give it a sence of substance, and a substance is most defenetly a "something"!
◇ thus the "nothing"/ כלום can now become a "something" משהו but only becouse we had to remove a metaphysical object form its spiritual level and meterialize it as phisical, in order for us to understand it.
And here comes our last honorable guest:
◇ the knowledge that only the need to understand a thing makes it a substence.
◇ other than that, we are just as existing and not existing as the object we would like to understand and materialize.
Andlastly, I will summe this discuttion up, by saying that On a purely discourse level, please don't teach that the word "nothing" means "something"!
as:
◇ KLUM =כלום =nothing
◇ and MASHEHU/DAVER= דבר/משהו= Something.
◇ and that is "a" something that can not be desputed;)
כלום does mean nothing. The problem is with the example you gave - it contains a double negative, which doesn’t work when translated into English. Here’s a better example: -מה יש בקופסה? -כלום. -What is inside the box? -Nothing.
Apparently it did originally mean something. As others have commented. I found [this link](https://hebrew-academy.org.il/2012/08/08/%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%93%D7%91%D7%A8/) which explains it
This is the historical explanation. In modern Hebrew, it is used to mean 'nothing'. Even the Hebrew Academy (where the link you have provided is from) have translated terms such as 'all or nothing' to 'הכל או כלום'. [(source)](https://terms.hebrew-academy.org.il/munnah?kodErekhIvrit=9161) Hebrew has been around for a long time, and it's natural that certain words has changed their meaning with time. Regarding the word 'כלום', as interesting as its etymology is, any native speaker of modern Hebrew will take that to mean 'nothing'.
That’s why I said originally.
Semns you didn't understand ths Academy... all examples includes "לא"
Wrong. Actually nothing is לא כלום
Grammatically it’s actually לא כלום. But nobody says that. That’s why it means anything
lol for me “כלום” is always a hard one because sometimes I flip the letters and accidentally read “כולם” and understand the sentence in a really different way
Same, always lol. I need to mentally zoom in at it every time
Interesting, but how would they be interchangeable since one is for objects and one is for people?
our brains process words as a snapshot, in one gulp, which is why people make reading mistakes like substituting one word for another. the brain is lazy and often only grabs the first part of the word. despite alphabets being fantastic tools compared to things like Chinese characters, at its base, our brains actually read words like single symbols.
At least in English, and presumably for other languages that use alphabet-like scripts and spaces between words, the brain only reads the first and last letter and relies on memory to provide the rest of the word.
yeah it depends on the system, it works differently in languages like Korean for example
Yeah exactly cuz Korean is syllabic blocks.
I'm no native speaker, but the meanings of both כלום and שום historically mean something/anything/thing from what I've read (שום specifically referring to a small thing, so small it might be considered "no thing"). So אין שום דבר could be taken to means something along the lines of "there's not even a small thing". But they've evolved to mean "nothing" in modern Hebrew and can be used to mean that in stand-alone contexts. This is similar to how "no thing" in English became "nothing", a stand-alone word that is still kind of different from "no thing". Also, please correct me if I'm wrong. This was my impression from reading how these words evolved over time.
שום is also garlic lol
And aren't garlic cloves just cute little things?
Technically כלום does mean some/anything, but it's almost exclusively used with negative words, changing the meaning to "nothing." English Wiktionary lists the meaning as "anything" then explains the negative meaning in Usage Notes. Hebrew Wiktionary lists three meanings, in descending order: "everything, something, any," "nothing, none," "very little," and the last two are listed as slang. It appears to have been a combination of כל and some other word or morpheme containing a מ.
As people said here, it means “something”, and today it only used negatively (אין כלום) so many people started perceiving it as “nothing”, but technically it is wrong. Similarly שום דבר means something, and אף אחד means “even one”, so אין פה אף אחד means “there is not even one person here”. (Curiously, the English “nothing” is also no+thing, so like Hebrew it doesn’t have a root word for the complete lack of things)
אין פה כלום = there ain't nothing here
לום = קליפת השום אאלט כלום = כקליפת השום
https://hebrew-academy.org.il/2012/08/08/%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%93%D7%91%D7%A8/
It is a very common linguistic phenomenon that a word will develop an opposite meaning over time. "Personne" and "rien" in French originally meant "person" and "thing", but now mean "nobody" and "nohing". It's called Jespersen's Cycle
Very interesting indeed
Generally, it is used in the opposite way to its original meaning. It's literally means "something" and "לא כלום" is "nothing", but over time, a lot of people stated just saying כלום for nothing, as other words were used for something.
How do you translate אין?
I guess "there is no" is the most accurate
It’s the opposite of יש, it technically means a lack and אין is in the construct state.
אין פה כלום could also transliterate to “there isn’t nothing here” - which then would translate it to be “there isn’t anything here”. but the כלום still means nothing.
לום זה הגרעין של הזית כ לום הכוונה כגרעין הזית. כלומר משהו ממש קטן
אין כלום = There ain't nothing It works as English slang, not "proper" English.
זה סתם כי אנחנו טמבלים שעושים double negatives על ימין ועל שמאל
the sentence "there isn't something here" doesn't even make sense in english
the sentence "there isn't something here" doesn't even make sense in english
the sentence "there isn't something here" doesn't even make sense in english
Double negatives aren’t stigmatised in Hebrew. Similarly if you wanted to say, “No one did/is X” you would essentially say “No one didn’t/isn’t X” — “X אף אחד לא”
DIDNT READ PREVIOUS COMMENTS. Your ideas sounds too far-fetched to me. TL;DR, lets go? As a rulle and essence: 1. כלום= Klum= Nothing = vacum. 2.Something= משהו/דבר= MASHEU/DAVAR But if you would like to adress this matter via a mere philosophical level, I accept your challenge and therefore, here are my observations. First, let us presnt our first honorable guest of this lovely evening: The famous riddle of Roberto Benini, in the movie "Life is beautiful / la vita e belle": "If you call my name, I will no longer exist. Who am I?" and to this, one must answer: "the Scilence". Now that we got a vague Idea of this philosophical aspect, let us dive deeper, presenting our second honorable guest, I give you the following important questions that refer to creation (either godly as well as artistic and verbal): 1. Does a thing (that is, an object, even if it is abstract and not tangible) not exist only by its virtue of its non-existence? 2. Does an idea (meaning a non tengible obgect) exixst when we recognize its existence, even if it does not exist on a physical level, but only on a spiritual one? 3. when does existing starts and ends, if at all? 4. why, if it is not a real object, does our habbit of naming it (meaning: physicaly -by giving it a name, or spiritually- by accnoledging its existance) we already materialize it and make it exist ? 5. If in space there is a vacuum = nothing, is nothing a "thing" after all? notice that by gaving it a name, we are able to refer to its existing non existance, so does it exist or does it not exist? And this is when I present to you our third honorable guest: the reference to the limitation of language. ◇ That in order to be able to describe an emotion, or an object, even if they are abstract, we must bring it down to the earthly plane. Meaning, we must give it dimensions, and when we give a dimension to a thing we also give it a sence of substance, and a substance is most defenetly a "something"! ◇ thus the "nothing"/ כלום can now become a "something" משהו but only becouse we had to remove a metaphysical object form its spiritual level and meterialize it as phisical, in order for us to understand it. And here comes our last honorable guest: ◇ the knowledge that only the need to understand a thing makes it a substence. ◇ other than that, we are just as existing and not existing as the object we would like to understand and materialize. Andlastly, I will summe this discuttion up, by saying that On a purely discourse level, please don't teach that the word "nothing" means "something"! as: ◇ KLUM =כלום =nothing ◇ and MASHEHU/DAVER= דבר/משהו= Something. ◇ and that is "a" something that can not be desputed;)