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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew

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Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] CV syllables, was music in Hebrew
  • Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:59:24 +0000

On 03/02/2006 10:27, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
...

No one agrees that "Biblical Hebrew" was spoken
before the Babylonian Exile. Practically all philologists
agree that Biblical Hebrew as it is spelled today in the
Bible represents a stage not earlier than the Persian
period. This means that any documents in an earlier
form of Hebrew were updated at least in spelling but
also possibly in vocabulary, sentence structure, we
don't know. From the little inscriptions we have, it
appears that perhaps a very similar form of Hebrew
(what is known as "Classical Hebrew" or "Standard
Hebrew") was being spoken 800 BCE - 600 BCE in
Judea. That doesn't change the fact that "Biblical
Hebrew" if referencing the consonantal text only refers
to the Hebrew spoken in the Persian period.

Well, we can only speculate about what was spoken. But if we look at the written consonantal text, we find very little difference (apart from letter shapes) between much of the biblical text (excluding the post-exilic "late biblical Hebrew" parts) and pre-exilic inscriptional Hebrew. There is simply not enough evidence that these were actually different languages, and so to make a hard distinction between pre-exilic and biblical Hebrew.

But this is not to suggest that the Masoretic vocalisation and pronunciation also applied before the exile, it almost certainly did not.

...

First, what you cannot pronounce is not something that
someone else may not be able to. Ancient Hebrew was
unable to represent unvocalized -n- and so the -n-
consistently assimilated to the following consonant even
in borrowed words. But you can pronounce it (note: "nc" in
"pronounce"). There could very well and probably are sounds
that you cannot pronounce but Ancient Hebrew could.

In Spanish word initial "sp" is considered unpronounceable, hence "EspaƱa", but we have no problem in English, "Spain". In London English, words end with a glottal stop and are distinguishable from the same word without a glottal stop, compare "not", with the "t" pronounced as a glottal, with "no".

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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