[b-hebrew] Was Schewa really silent?

Peter Bekins pbekins at fuse.net
Fri Sep 7 18:27:46 EDT 2007


 >>Still, the most commonly cited example of a vocal shewa is
 >>S'DOM,which becomes SODOM in the LXX.  It's a bad example,
 >>beause SD--- is an impossible start to a Greek word.   (We
 >>see similarly issues in the American pronunciation of "Sri Lanka."
 >>Almost everyone says"Shree..." because Enlglish words cannot start
 >>with the sounds SR---.)

Joel, I don't have anything constructive to add to the larger  
question of vocal/silent schewa, and I agree in principle that the  
Greek evidence should be taken with a grain of salt, but doesn't  
Greek usually break initial consonant clusters with a prothetic  
vowel? Ie, they would have pronounced it /Isdom/ or something like that?

[Sri] --> [Shri] is not quite the same thing, I haven't studied it in  
detail, but at first glance this seems like an allophonic shift of  
[s]-->[sh] before [r] since we Americans pronounce a retroflex [r].  
If you say a flap [r] then [sri] is fine. We do allow consonant  
clusters to begin with [s] in general.

Peter Bekins 


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