Mem

ם מ
Mem doesn't have pages in BDB about itself - it's מן that does and the preposition when it clings on to a word loses its nun most of the time. This losing of letters cannot be ignored any more. Vav and yod appear and disappear as helpers of reading in full and defective spellings and 'nun' and 'he' appear and disappear if they are part of the root. Will we find examples? Just consider, if I were to look for nun - it wouldn't be there - so how will I find it? I am sure the weak consonants will appear when we need them.

Some things that we do with our gums, lips, teeth and throat are common to all tongues. I bet there is stuff on the web somewhere about sibilants (sounds like s), gutturals (from the throat), dentals (from the teeth), and labials (from the lips) and a bunch of other special terminology. How do the Hebrew letters stand in this area?

These are distracting question so I have pushed my meandering answer to the bottom of the post. Continuing with Ruth ...

Mem as a leading letter meaning 'from' is common

וַיֵּלֶךְ אִישׁ מִבֵּית לֶחֶם יְהוּדָה
לָגוּר בִּשְׂדֵי מוֹאָב

and a man went from the house of bread (Bethlehem) of Judah
to stay in the fields of Moab

also מִשְּׂדֵי from the fields - frequently repeated. and in Ruth 1:7 we have the full word (used 4 more times in the story)

וַתֵּצֵא מִן-הַמָּקוֹם

and she emerged from the place

I don't want to pass over Ruth 1:9. 'Find' is just mem as part of the root, but 'rest' appears to be a noun derived by the addition of a mem prefix from נוּחַ 'to rest'. This extended form of the word with a final 'he' is of significance in that it is used for the resting place for the ark of the covenant in Psalm 132 and for the name. (Is this also marriage related?)

 וּמְצֶאןָ מְנוּחָה

may you find rest

Ruth 1:12 looks like an idiom - having and getting wife or husband will turn out to be significant  - see this recent post by Kurk Gayle which poses some questions.

זָקַנְתִּי מִהְיוֹת לְאִישׁ

for I am too old to have a husband

Ruth 1:13 has what I thought was a comparative usage (also 3:12) but BDB notes this as a 'because of' usage rather than the usual 'from = separate from or out of' usage.

כִּי-מַר-לִי מְאֹד מִכֶּם

for bitterness to me is greater because of you

Ruth 2:1 (similar to 3:2) has an mem prefix to the word know יָדַע thus forming the noun acquaintance.

וּלְנָעֳמִי מוֹדָע לְאִישָׁהּ

Now for Naomi there was an acquaintance of her husband

Ruth 2:3 contains three mems - one with an apparently repeated root in two forms - again a noun derived from the verb, and the second a preposition but also preceding another derived noun again using mem.

וַיִּקֶר מִקְרֶהָ

חֶלְקַת הַשָּׂדֶה לְבֹעַז

אֲשֶׁר מִמִּשְׁפַּחַת אֱלִימֶלֶךְ

and she happened to happen

on the part of the field of Boaz

who was of the family of Elimelek

Ruth 2:7 gives us the preposition used with a temporal conjunction

וַתָּבוֹא וַתַּעֲמוֹד

 מֵאָז הַבֹּקֶר וְעַד-עַתָּה

and she came and she remained

from then - the morning and until now

Ruth 2:8 gives us the preposition used with a demonstrative pronoun

וְגַם לֹא תַעֲבוּרִי מִזֶּה

 and also do not pass beyond this one

In Ruth 2:14 we have again the fully spelled out preposition - one wonders, why spell it out sometimes and sometimes not?

 וְאָכַלְתְּ מִן-הַלֶּחֶם

and eat of the bread

In Ruth 2:20, the preposition precedes a participle

קָרוֹב לָנוּ הָאִישׁ מִגֹּאֲלֵנוּ הוּא

near to us is the man and he our redeemer

Ruth 3:4 (sim 3:7, 3:8, 3:14) This word in the plural is again derived from the verb or even the singular noun together with a mem. (In this form only used in Ruth and once in Daniel 10:6)

 וּבָאת וְגִלִּית מַרְגְּלֹתָיו

 and you come and uncover his feet

Ruth 3:10 we might say 'from beginning to end'. I leave it in the awkward state.

 הָאַחֲרוֹן מִן-הָרִאשׁוֹן

the end from the beginning

Ruth 3:12 - an unambigous comparative - but why two mems? My eldest son as a child could not say 'milk'. Repeated training produced mmmmm-nilk. M and N are by no means completely easy. I suspect nun has run from min and made mim because a second nun was needed for the pronoun affix. But I couldn't find a seconder for this conjecture. (Putnam did teach me a new word - nunnation - the disappearance of the nun. That could be a Poirot mystery.)

וְגַם יֵשׁ גֹּאֵל קָרוֹב מִמֶּנִּי

and moreover there is a redeemer closer than I

Addendum - letters and their sound classifications

This summary from Gesesius will save me some thinking - notice the distribution of the first 11 - the green grammatical group. I have a theory that they are 'easier' to pronounce and they make pronunciation of other letters easier especially when things need to be elided (like 'a' and 'an' in English).

(a) Gutturals	‎	א ה ע ח
(b) Palatals		ג כ‍ ק‎
(c) Dentals		ד ט ת‎
(d) Labials		ב פ‎
(e) Sibilants		ז שׁ שׂ ס צ‍‎
(f) Sonants		ו י | ר ל | נ‍ מ‍‎‎‎

א - guttural like a glottal stop in English - light
ב - must be a labial
ג - palatal - I can feel the palate 'g'
ד - dental
ה - guttural - light
ו - sonant - never seen this word before and neither has my dictionary! Sounds like it is missing a con as prefix. I think I know it as a voiced consonant. Most of the others are unvoiced except zayin, dalet, and gimel.
ז - sibilant
ח - guttural - heavy duty
ט - dental like its brother taf
י - sonant
כ - palatal (guttural?)
ל - sonant - the middle pair
מ - sonant - the last pair
נ - sonant - the last pair
ס - sibilant
ע - guttural - heavy
פ - labial (fricative?)
צ - sibilant
ק - palatal (guttural?)
ר - sonant - the middle pair - like the gutturals never takes a dagesh
ש - sibilant - ambiguous pronunciation without the diacritical mark
ת - dental