Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

The major difference is that modern jews owe their language to a revival 
based on 
the limited corpus of the tanakh and so are not in a position to have the 
same 
wealth of experience as an ancient hebrew who knew the full range of the 
natural
language.

-----Original Message-----
From: Awohili AT aol.com [mailto:Awohili AT aol.com]
Sent: Tue 8/2/2005 7:08 PM
To: Read, James C; b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] YHWH pronunciation
 
 
I do not wish to belabor the point, but many Jews today read unpointed  
(voweless) texts with complete comprehension, and this was the case even 
before  
the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language in Israel.
 
So, would the average  Tsabra instinctively know how to  pronounce YHWH 
correctly?  
 
Solomon Landers
 
In a message dated 08/02/2005 10:54:56 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk writes:

As with all  other verbs instincts would have guided a first language hebrew 
to the  correct pronunciation.
This is why the texts never needed a vowel  system.







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From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] YHWH pronunciation - history of matres lectionis
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Peter:

I'm not sure of the date either, just that the time of 
Nebuchadnezzar and the Exile is where the people went from 
almost total linguistic isolation, where almost none knew 
Aramaic, to the return when almost everyone knew Aramaic, 
and may even have spoken it on the street instead of Hebrew. 
The dropping of the final vowel may have happened earlier. 
It's just that languages in isolation tend to change more 
slowly than those in contact with many languages.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org>

> 
> On 02/08/2005 18:52, Karl Randolph wrote:
> 
> > Peter:
> >
> > That is, if it continued to be pronounced. But could the present 
> > use of He as a mater lectionis been the result of pronunciation 
> > changes that occured over centuries when the Hebrew language was 
> > mainly a read language, and the rules for reading were derived 
> > from Greek and contemporary Aramaic pronunciations?
> >
> >
> 
> Well, Karl, you suggestion here seems to turn on its head the 
> accepted theory of the history of matres lectionis. For you seem to 
> suggest that word final he in e.g. feminine endings was originally 
> pronounced, and only lost its pronunciation after the time of 
> Nebuchadnezzar. This is of course possible. But do you have any 
> evidence for this? I am not sure what the evidence against it would 
> be - except for one point, that the feminine ending in classical 
> Arabic is also a silent he, in what is probably a common origin 
> which dates from a very early time.
> 
> > ...
> >
> >> From the clues that I see, I theorize that pre-Exilic Hebrew
> > was pronounced in the pattern of consonant-vowel, in the same 
> > pattern as modern Japanese (That's the only place where I think 
> > the two languages resembled each other). But that later 
> > unstressed vowels were dropped, as well as some of the consonants 
> > shifted in their pronunciations. One group of unstressed vowels 
> > would have been the final vowels of most words. Another set were 
> > unstressed internal vowels that were replaced with shewas.
> >
> >
> 
> You are probably right here, that syllables were originally at 
> least mostly CV. There is good evidence, mainly from cognate 
> languages, that early Hebrew did have word final short vowel case 
> endings, and so that most if not all words ended with vowels. But 
> when these were dropped I'm not sure.
> 
> -- Peter Kirk
> peter AT qaya.org (personal)
> peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
> http://www.qaya.org/


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