Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Shai Heijmans" <shaih AT post.tau.ac.il>]

Dear Moshe,

You wrote:

> I was quite shocked that you could make such a comment. I
> assumed that the Rezah's position was well known in these 
> circles. He is the one who "invented" the term Tenuah Qallah 
> which assumes that there are THREE types of vowel qualities 
> (Gedolah / Qetanah / Qallah). He is most emphatic that the 
> Shuruk under discussion is NOT a Tenuah Gedolah nor even a 
> Tenuah Qetanah but of a lesser grade called a Tenuah Qallah 
> and does not have enough force to assimilate the next 
> consonant into the same syllable as would an ordinary Tenuah 
> Qetanah. You totally misrepresented his position.
> 

Whether rz"h called it "tenua gedola" or "qalla" is besides; what
matters is that he insisted that the shwa following it should be *vocal*
(cf. Yesodei Haniqud, Amsterdam 5490, pp. 10-11).

(But since you raised the subject: of course you are right in saying
that it is "tenua qalla". Yet if I would have said "light vowel" nobody
would understand me; and "short vowel" is reserved for "tenua qetana".
That's' why I called it "long".)

> My second comment is simply that I would appreciate seeing 
> some refutations of the "proofs" I list (which I assembled 
> from the writings of the last several hundred years). It is 
> these "proofs" which have caused those who have tried to 
> systemize and provide a scientific system to the language to 
> ignore the earlier writings. Of course, the earlier works 
> which you cite do not prove how universal those 
> pronunciations were. There were and are (as you well know) 
> multiple pronunciations in usage.
> 

Well, as I said (and you do too), the grammatical writings from ashkenaz
from the 17th-18th try to systemtise the language. They do not reflect
the *real* pronunciation of the earlier period (15ht-16th century), and
they have imposed their systematization on their period's pronunciation.
I, as a university researcher, am interested in how the shwa *was*
pronounced, and not how it "should" have been pronounced. 

Shabtai Sofer, in the bit I gave, gives evidence as to how he *heard*
this shwa, in the *pre-rz"h* period (in Pshemshel, at least) - and that
was shwa nach. And since even you admit that the late grammatical
writngs are not descriptive grammars, but normative grammars, I don't
see what it is I have to refute.

By the way, in our department sits Dr. H. Cohen who is researching the
early ashkenazic linguistic tradition. He deals a lot with the
comparison between the pre-rz"h and the post-rz"h periods. You might
find his latest article interesting, it appeared in "Leshonenu", vol. 62
(5759), pp. 257-283.

Best Regards,
Shai