Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

Dear


Best regards,

Serge
Export manager

Unikom-Ug Corp.
5 Shuhevicha St. Odessa 65011 Ukraine
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
To: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 3:17 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why assume the Masoretes recorded spoken Hebrew?


> On 10/02/2005 12:36, Peter Kirk wrote:
>
> > ...
> >
> > According to Terence Wade's "A Comprehensive Russian Grammar", the
> > following vowel sounds are heard in Russian (in IPA, you need Unicode
> > to read some of these):
> >
> > Stressed: a ɛ u o ɨ i e æ ö ü
> > Unstressed (additional): ɩ ɩ̵ ʌ ə
> >
> I failed to complete this part of my posting before sending it. Here is
> a continuation:
>
> This list indicated that modern phoneticians hear more distinct vowel
> sounds in modern spoken Russian (as well as English and many other
> modern languages) than the Masoretes heard in Hebrew.
>
> Wade notes (p.5, 2nd edition of Wade):
>
> The vowels o and a arepronounced as [o] and [a] only when they appear in
> stressed position...
>
> In pre-tonic position or as the unstressed initial letter in a word o
> and a are pronounced [ʌ] ...
>
> In pre-pre-tonic position (except as initial letters...) or in
> post-tonic position both vowels are pronounced [ə]...
>
> This is very like the position in Hebrew. The full vowel sound e.g.
> qamats or holam is found only in stressed syllables, plus in Hebrew only
> in open unstressed syllables. In unstressed syllables just before the
> stress (in Hebrew, only when closed) the vowel is shortened e.g. to
> patah or qamats qatan. And in pre-pre-tonic position (but this time in
> Hebrew only in open syllables) there is a further shortening or
> modification to the schwa sound - but not word initially after alef. The
> details are nt identical, but the general picture is remarkably similar.
> It is also in English, because these kinds of vowel reductions are
> common across languages.
>
> What is unusual about the Masoretes is that they attempted to record
> fine phonetic distinctions which had no semantic significance, whereas
> most modern Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are more phonemic i.e. not
> recording these fine distinctions.
>
> -- 
> Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/
>
>
>
> -- 
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