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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] silent schewa v. vocal schewa

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] silent schewa v. vocal schewa
  • Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:48:23 +0100

On 10/08/2005 23:12, Yigal Levin wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: Bearpecs AT aol.com To: leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 10:33 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] silent schewa v. vocal schewa


In a message dated 8/10/2005 4:03:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il writes:
c. precceeds a long vowel

Don't you mean "follows" a long vowel?

Oops. Yes, you're right.


But I understand that this rule is controversial, that some consider that a sheva following a long vowel may be silent. Thus for example the sheva in K.FT:BFH "she wrote" may be silent, even though the first qamats is a long "a" sound. But can anyone explain which is correct?

It seems strange to me that the Masoretes apparently used the same sign for two different sounds. So I wonder if for them all shevas were more or less silent, so there was no real distinction. I know this would lead to some apparently difficult to pronounce word initial consonant clusters, but then some languages e.g. Russian, Georgian allow a very wide range of initial consonant clusters - and this may explain why sheva is not placed under "gutturals", especially word initially, but is replaced by a hataf vowel.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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