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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Trevor Peterson <06peterson AT cua.edu>
  • Cc: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew transliteration
  • Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 04:19:29 -0800

On 19/01/2004 03:48, Trevor Peterson wrote:

Peter wrote:


How do you distinguish <C, sheva, C> from <C, dagesh>? e.g. how do you write what is HAL:LW. YFH. in M-C encoding? Would you write halluw yahh (with superscipted w)? There is something missing here, surely.


I've been thinking about this a little bit more. It seems like this sort
of situation would arise under two conditions--where the first consonant
is either lengthened or semi-lengthened. By that I mean, gemination of
the first consonant is what keeps the two consonants from converging in
the first place. In such cases, the writing of three identical
consonants in a row would be a dead giveaway that this is what's going
on. Then there are cases where gemination is not marked, both in what we
call virtual doubling with gutturals, and situations where gemination is
unmarked before a shva (our example of halelu). In these cases, the
preceding vowel still fits a closed syllable; so, as Jouon argues, there
is still some degree of consonantal lengthening present, albeit
unmarked. ...

The obvious evidence for this is the LXX transcription ALLHLOUIA (Psalm 150:1 etc). But it is interesting that here the sheva is transcribed as eta! This suggests to me that the pronunciation known to the LXX translators had something more than a sheva here, perhaps a tsere, with a dagesh in the preceding lamed. And so for the Masoretic pronunciation perhaps we have some kind of perpetual Qere, with the pronunciation as if there is one lengthened lamed; so we would have unchanged Ketiv HLLW YH but Qere HAL.W. YAH.

But I guess that there will be Jewish traditions which describe the pronunciation of this important word. GKC 10g describes a relevant rule attributed to Ben Asher explaining why some MSS have hataf patah rather than sheva between two identical consonants, but as GKC notes this rule does not apply to the oldest MSS. Obviously whoever did write this rule and adjust later MSS saw the same problem as we do.

The particular form we have seems to be a rare Piel of a geminate verb; with these Piel is usually replaced by Poel, and so GKC gives no Piel paradigm.

... Now, one strategy might be to put the gemination back into the
transcription, but that would give the impression that there is a dagesh
in the Hebrew text. Another option might be to indicate the
semi-gemination somehow graphically, like a superscripted l (or whatever
the consonant might be). Not that a superscript is a much better choice
than a subscript, and it seems like the whole thing could start to get
cluttered (not that it would be much worse than what we have in the
Hebrew text itself). In any event, I'm not sure that I like forcing a
writing of three identical consonants in a row. As I said before, the
best solution might be to find another way to indicate the presence of a
dagesh forte. Maybe it would work to put the lengthened consonant in
bold.


I don't like this because one object of any transliteration scheme I might use would be to use plain text - although I know this was not one of your aims. A capital letter might be an alternative, especially as many people are used to entering Hebrew text by using shift for dagesh.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics

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