Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Actually, Jason, the "rafe" (where does that name come from) is a recent
innovation, maybe imported from the Yiddish printers, certainly not a
masoretic mark. Different siddurim and Tanakhim use different markings in
order to mark such things as a Sheva Na(, Kamats Katan (short Kamets) and so
on. Many Sephardic siddurim use a larger print for the mobile Sheva. The
Rinnat Yisrael Siddur uses a longer "stem" for the Kamats Katan. These are
all fine as long as they are understood by their readers, but we must
understand that they are meant to indicate "correct" reading according to
some particular Jewish tradition, not an accurate representation of how the
Masoretes would have pronounced it.

Yigal

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jason Hare" <jason AT hareplay.com>
To: "B-Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 2:00 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Hebrew transliteration


> The normal way of indicating whether it should be a vocal shva in such
> situations is the rafe (a straight dash just above the letter, looking
like
> a top-side patach). At least, that's how it is used in the Artscroll
Siddur.
> I think that in Yiddish, the rafe represents a soft (aspirated) consonant
of
> the BGDKPT letters (since all things were without nikkud). In fact, I do
> think this would be like a "medial sh'va," which is slightly vocalized. I
> don't think it makes any difference in pronunciation for normal folk. Like
> they argue on the B-Greek list, does pronunciation of the ancient language
> matter so much? If so, why not follow modern pronunciation rules, which
(que
> yo sepa) would make this vocal for all real purposes?
>
> All the best,
> Jason
>
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