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b-hebrew - variant pronunciation (was Re: [b-hebrew] Draft proposal for Unicode encoding ofholam male)

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  • From: Trevor Peterson <06peterson AT cua.edu>
  • To: hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: variant pronunciation (was Re: [b-hebrew] Draft proposal for Unicode encoding ofholam male)
  • Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 21:47:45 -0400

Dora Smith wrote:
Did y'all know that (according to exactly half of my resources) undotted
dalet is pronounced "th" like the Welsh dd? I didn't know this sound
existed in Hebrew!

It doesn't in Modern Israeli Hebrew, which follows the Sephardic tradition. But as precise as the Masoretes were with their markings, it makes sense that they pronounced the letter two different ways. (And in fact there are spoken Aramaic traditions today that retain the distinction.)

And how many of y'all knew that vav is pronounced "w"? Again according to
exactly half my sources - sometimes.

If by "sometimes" you mean when it's not a vowel, this is true. Again, the vav pronunciation is Israeli, but the equivalent consonant in Arabic and Syriac is pronounced waw. The two sounds are really not all that different, when you think about it. A Spanish b is pronounced as a fricative (also Greek beta), which is very nearly a /w/ but differs from /v/ only in that the top lip is used instead of the teeth. Compare w as /v/ in German and as /w/ in English. It makes good sense that Hebrew vav was at some point /w/, and it offers the advantage of distinguishing the spoken consonant from a spirantized bet.

So the reason we get these differences in the grammars is because of different strategies. Some follow modern pronunciation; some try to reconstruct Masoretic pronunciation (or earlier stages). Any time one studies a dead language, the same issues must be addressed.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics




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