Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

> > The example shows that unaccented long a can be pronounced as short o.
>
> No, Vadim, vice versa in your Russian example. In Russian the phoneme "o" 
> when it becomes unaccented is pronounced as a short "a" sound, or in fact 
> more like English short "u"

Both relations hold. Long o, when losing accent, becames short a.
Long a, when losing accent, becomes short o, as in the example I quoted.

, but in any case indistinguishable from
> unaccented "a". So, if Russian did have any relevance here, it would not 
> support your theory. But then I don't accept that it has any relevance, 
> for the overall phonological systems of Russian and Hebrew are extremely 
> different.

Considering that I just showed how the Russian has hatef-kamatz, are they 
really so different?

Besides, the Russian example was only illustrative. In the hiphil YHWH, 
first vowel is a, and so composite schwa under hey is likely to be 
hatef-kamatz, pronounced o in Hebrew.
Less likely, is the composite schwa was hatef-patah, then very possibly the 
second a in Yahawah was taken for unaccented o by Europeans, and replaced 
with o.

Vadim Cherny