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  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: 'b-hebrew' <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ayin and Ghayin
  • Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 12:41:30 -0500


Stoney: all I mentioned is that is the way I was taught as a
child in the Mid West, and continue to speak. And I have
heard others pronounce it that way. (When I claimed that
that was the "correct" way to pronounce that, I said that
tongue in cheek, and hoped others understood it that
way.) (This should be end of discussion on "wimmin".)

Another factor that should be mentioned is that people
often hear that which they are prepared to hear. If they
expect a certain pronunciation, that's what they'll hear
even when that pronunciation is slightly different. This is
more marked in transliterations. An example of the latter
is ü (u Umlaut) which in languages that lack that vowel
usually gets transliterated as a short "i", or ö (o Umlaut)
which is often transliterated and pronounced as a "ay" or
"er" in languages that lack that sound (taking examples
from American mispronunciations). This is why I question
how much dialectal and non-native speaker data should
be used to determine how a native speaker would
pronounce his language. This will also indicate that there
can be greater idiosyncratic pronunciation differences
among native speakers of a language than what spelling
conventions will show.

I mention this also because the Masoretic text has
pronunciation guides based on how the Masoretes, as
non-native speakers of Hebrew, heard a pronunciation
tradition that had been developed over centuries by other
non-native speakers of Hebrew. The same skepticism
should attach to transliterations of Hebrew into other
languages, such as to Greek in the LXX, New Testament
and Josephus, as well as others.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stoney Breyer" <stoneyb AT touchwood.net>
>
> ...
> >> I have lots of American friends and I have never heard your claimed
> >> pronunciation of women. Women is pronounced 'wimin' not 'wumin'.
>
> > No, you got it wrong! It's pronounced "women" with the "o" like
> > the "oul" in could, would or should, not "i", and the "e" as in
> > men, again not a "i".
>
> Karl, I have lived in the Midwest for 30 years, and for 30 years I was
> an actor with formal training and practice in a wide variety of English
> dialect, and I have never encountered this pronunciation of the plural.
> The singular, indeed, has this pronunciation of the initial consonant
> (except in some varieties of Mountain Southern), but the plural has in
> my experience invariably a short "i". The "i" coloring in the unstressed
> second syllable is of course a natural assimilation from the previous
> stressed syllable. I observe that the American Heritage dictionary (all
> I have here at the office) calls for a short "i" in the first syllable
> and a schwa in the second.
>
> > . . .
>
> Stoney Breyer
> Writer/Touchwood

--
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