Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hi Sergio,

Your teacher was right.

The original pronunciation of "miriam" was indeed "mariam". At a late
stage of the hebrew development, original a-vowels in closed unstressed
syllables shifted sometimes to i-vowels. Other examples are midbar <
*madbar ("desert"), migdal < *magdal (tower). This shift happened mostly
in the tiberian tradition of hebrew; it did not effect the babylonian or
samaritan traditions, which continued to use a-vowels.

This phenomenon is called "attenuation"; see for further details
Gesenius-Cowley paragraph 27s, and more extesively Bergstrasser,
paragraph 26b). 

As for the pronunciation of Shemuel, here too your teacher was right,
since shwa was pronounced in tiberian tradition mostly as "a". The exact
rules you can find in Bergstrasser, paragraph 10h. Only non-tiberian
traditions of hebrew used "e" as the sound of shwa; and because tiberian
tradition died out, we are now pronouncing "shemuel" in hebrew with an
"e", according to the sefaradic and ashkenazic tradition.

Shai Heijmans

P.S 
Bergstrasser = Gotthelf Bergstrasser, Hebraische Grammatik, Leipzig
1918.

> Hi all,
> 
> I studied a little Hebrew at University and I remember the
> teacher telling 
> us that the Hebrew name for Mary was pronounced "Maryam" in 
> biblical times 
> (both for Moses' sister and Jesus' mother) and "Miryam" in 
> later Hebrew. 
> Also Samuel was pronounced "Samuel" in those times and 
> "Semuel" in later 
> Hebrew.
> I admit I'm not sure to remember this accurately. I'd like to 
> ask you if 
> this is so, and also which other examples of important 
> characters from the 
> Bible you could mention.
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> Sergio (Madrid)
> 
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