Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Re: variant pronunciation

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Joel Nothman" <jnothman AT student.usyd.edu.au>
  • To: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • Cc: "b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Re: variant pronunciation
  • Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 19:46:03 +1000


As I learned the names, qamats hatuf is your qamats qatan, and qamats with sheva next to it is called hataf qamats. Hataf qamats is also the official Unicode name.

You may be correct... Names are not my specialty!

If the Masoretes considered qamats to be an O vowel as you say, how come furtive patah is never written after qamats, or patah, although it is written after every other vowel including holam? I am not really questioning what you say, merely asking for qualification. More like qamats was a back open vowel, perhaps rounded, a bit like the Scandinavian a with ring, or Persian long a - something between "ah" and "aw" in my English.

I would still suppose that the evidence is in the orthography that teh qamats was seen to the masoretes to sound close to the hataf qamats, and to the qamats qaton, because clearly they all ended up with the same symbol, which would mean that they were seen in some ways the same.

But you have to remember that vowel changes occur naturally both over time and geography. The standard qamats was originally a long a (or a back a), and so is never followed by a furtive patah, and follows many characteristics in common with patah as the a-vowels.
Nonetheless, I would still argue that the masoretes had adopted a qamats that acted tradionally like a patah, but was classed orthographically with o-sounds.

I should note about now that I am merely a student with much interest in this area, and happen to not be hugely well read, so most things I say should be taken for interest and not for pure fact.

- Joel

--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page