Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

It is unlikely that sade was 'ts' as the English mind understands this 
combination, as in 'watson', as these are two distinct consonant sounds 
and hebrew naturally tended away from such consonant clusters.
It is therefore more likely to be similar to the Russian letter 'tse' 
which is pronounced as English 'ts' but with the teeth closed rather that
making use of the tongue. This produces a pure sound of one pure consonant 
which is almost similar to the English 'ts'.

Vadim, you're good with Russian fonts. Can you post a 'tse' letter so that 
readers can see what I'm going on about?

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Kevin Riley
Sent: Sun 10/9/2005 5:51 AM
To: b-hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Apparently Redundant Letters
 
 Gimel without daghesh is a fricative 'g'   - a sound not found in English,
but is found in some Dutch, German, Spanish pronunciations and Gaelic.  The
distinction between the begad kepat letters with and without dagesh is
consistently fricative / stop.  It was probably originally between lenis and
fortis stops.  Teth, Qoph and Sade were 't', 'k' and 's' with either
glottalisation or pharyngealisation.  Arabic has examples of all three. 
There is a fairly recent article claiming sade was a 'ts' sound, but I haven
t tracked that down yet - it is usually 'ts' in modern Hebrew.  Sin and
Samekh have apparently been identical for a long time - probably since
Classical Hebrew times.  'Aleph and 'Ayin were most likely as in Arabic.
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: Alexander Oldernes
Date: 10/09/05 01:44:43
 
Some of the Hebrew letters appears redundant, because the pronunciation has
changed into sounds that are already used by other letters.
 
Redundant letters makes it hard to remember how to spell a word.
Therefore it's a good practice to distinguish the sounds of the letters,
making it easier to remember the spellings.
We may not be sure of the original sounds, but I think it's important to
indicate that these letters originally had different sounds.
 
I have always tried to distinguish these letters by pronouncing them
differently.
The problem is that there are so many sources with different opinions on
which sound is closest to the original pronunciation.
 
Therefore I would like to hear the general understanding among the b-hebrew
readers.
 
 
My perception is based on "A modern grammar for classical Hebrew" (Garrett),
and I have the following understanding of the apparently redundant letters..

 
Beth (withouth dagheh) - V as in "very"
Waw - W as in "wish"
 
Gimel - GH as in "aghast"
Gimel with daghesh - G as in "good"
 
Daleth - TH as in "the"
Daleth with daghesh - D as in "dot"
 
Taw - TH as in "thin"
Taw with daghesh - T as in "tin"
Teth - T as in "tot"
Teth may have been pronounced more on the palate than its counterpart Taw,
which seems to have been pronounced with the tongue on the back of the teeth
and with a slight breathing.
 
Kaf with daghesh - K as in "keep"
Qof - a K at back of throat
The letter Qof was probably pronounced further back in the throat than Kaf.
 
Sin - S as in "seen"
Samekh - S as in "sack"
Sin is a softer S than the Samekh. I haven't managed to distinguish these
two sounds.
 
Alef - The grammar book says this letter had "almost no sound". I believe it
was a glottal stop (a very brief silence, air through the glottis is
stopped)
Ayin - The grammar book says this letter is a glottal stop. I believe it's
more like the Arabic Ayn - a voiced pharyngeal fricative, without a glottal
stop.
 
Wikipedia has audio example of glottal stop and voiced pharyngeal fricative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Glottal_stop.ogg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Voiced_pharyngeal_fricative.ogg
 
If I have understood it correctly the name Be'er in Numbers 21:16 is to be
pronounced Be-(no sound, glottal stop)-er,
and Ba'al in Judges 2:13 is to be pronounced Ba-(voiced pharyngeal fricative
 withouth glottal stop)-al.
 
 
I look forward to hearing your perception on this subject.
 
 
Regards
Alexander Oldernes
Norway
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>From joel AT exc.com  Sun Oct  9 09:39:24 2005
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Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:39:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel AT exc.com>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Apparently Redundant Letters
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>My perception is based on "A modern grammar for classical Hebrew"
>(Garrett), and I have the following understanding of the apperantly
>redundant letters...

What you seem to be looking for is the general understanding of the
Tiberian Masoretic system for pronouncing Biblical Hebrew, which I
call Tiberian Hebrew.  The Tiberian Masoretes lived just over one
millennium ago, and they are the ones who gave us Dagesh and BEGED
KEFET and so forth.

The general pattern to keep in mind is this: Of the many places you
can block air flow, Tiberian Hebrew expands on three, giving us sounds
for voiced and unvoiced, stop and fricative varieties, for a total of
12 sounds, all represented by the BEGED KEFET letters.

By "voiced" I mean that the vocal chords are vibrating; so, for
example, V is voiced and its corresponding unvoiced sound is F.  If
you make these two sounds (V and F) and place your hand on your
throat, you can feel the vibrating vocal chords

By "stop" I mean that the flow of air is completely stopped.  B and K,
for example, are stops.  One result of being a stop is that you cannot
prolong the sounds.

By "fricative" I mean that the flow of air is restricted but not
stopped.  F and X are fricatives.  They can be prolonged.

Finally, the air can be restricted at the lips ("labial"), the
alveolar ridge just behind the teeth ("alveolar"), soft palate in the
throat ("velar"), further back in the throat ("glottal"),  further
back yet ("uvular") or even further back than that ("pharyngeal");
these last three are collectively called "guttural."

In BEGED KEFET, Dagesh indicates a stop, while lack of Dagesh
indicates a fricative.

Bet, Gimel and Daled are voiced; Pe, Kaf and Taf are their unvoiced
equivalents.

Bet/Pe are labial; Daled/Taf are alveolar; Gimel/Kaf are velar.

So:


                        Voiced                  Unvoiced
LABIAL:
        Stop            Bet+Dagesh (B)          Pe+Dagesh (P)
        Fricative       Bet (V)                 Pe (F)

ALVEOLAR:
        Stop            Daled+Dagesh (D)        Taf+Dagesh (T)
        Fricative       Daled (Z or Th1)        Taf (S or Th2)

VELAR:
        Stop            Gimel+Dagesh (G)        Kaf+Dagesh (K)
        Fricative       Gimel (3)               Kaf (X4)

Th1 = "Th" as in "this."
Th2 = "Th" as in "with."
We don't have (3) in English.  (Note: Gh in "aghast" is pronounced
                                just "g.")

X4 = "Ch" as in "Bach."

Because of the pattern, you can learn how to say (3).  You can try to
make Gimel fricative, or Kaf voiced; either way should give you the
same result.

Furthermore, there are some more guttural sounds:

                        Voiced                  Unvoiced
GLOTTAL:
        Stop            lacking                 Aleph

UVULAR:
        Stop            lacking                 Kuf
        Fricative       lacking                 lacking

PHARYNGEAL:
        Stop            lacking                 lacking
        Fricative       lacking                 Chet
        Approximant     lacking                 Ayin

(An approximant is when the air flow is still constricted, but not as
much as with a fricative.)

To round out the pattern, Tet was probably a combination of Taf+Dagesh
and Ayin, while Tzadi might have been a combination of Taf and Ayin.

Hope this helps.

-Joel M. Hoffman
 http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman