Biblical Hebrew Forum

[alfred.silberman AT lmco.com (Al Silberman)]

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998  Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:

>qametz qatan is an innovation, indeed a fiction. I refer you to
>sources with bibliography to follow this up:

[snip]

>the idea is simple: seven vowels for seven signs. crucially, qametz is
>always a low back *open* o everywhere. surface "length" if present was
>automatic based on stress and syllable type. hatef is a signal that an
>open syllable was not "long". period.  quite a bit different from
>later traditions. makes for an interesting phonology of Tiberian
>Hebrew as well.

I have written about this before and I will say it again:
All of the above statements including all of the statements in the
referenced bibliographies are pure FICTION. They all ignore most of
Judaism's pronunciation traditions. My pronunciation (Eastern European
Ashkenazi) makes a very great distinction between the two. So do many
others. The only one that I know of that makes no distinction at all
between the two is Western European Ashkenazi. I have not seen anyone
seriously address the various pronunciation traditions in Judaism and THEN
come up with a theory.

I have tried to understand some of these theories but they all seem like
academic "ivory tower" pronunciations without having a lifetime of
experience immersed in it. I no longer pay any attention to them.