Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 2/3/06, Karl Randolph wrote:
> Yitzhak:
>
> Peter Kirk already well answered some of your objections.

Peter Kirk responsed to one statement of mine, and on another
statement -- the one regarding whether your ability or inability to
pronounce a certain hypothetical word suggests that word can
never have existed -- gave additional support to the effect that
your inability to pronounce is no evidence of non existence of
such pronounciation.

> > Second, the evidence you brought for those letters being
> > unpronounceable was from Modern Hebrew, against which
> > evidence was brought that 1) you are wrong (on the Ayin/
> > Aleph unvocalized issue), 2) your knowledge of Modern
> > Hebrew is faulty.  You have not answered those criticisms.
> >
> Unless you claim that "Modern Hebrew" is not the same
> as what in common parlance is the name for the language
> spoken in modern Israel, then the pronunciation I was
> taught is similar but not the same as Modern Hebrew.

You said that you were taught that "Het" sometimes drops off
the end of the word.  The fact is that in no definition you may
want of Modern Hebrew does Het drop off the end of the word.
Maybe the teacher told you, "if it's hard for you to pronounce a
Het at the end of the word, you can get by by dropping it."  But
that simply means that you will be saying a different word and
hoping you will be understood by context and perhaps the fact
that you have an accent that suggests you are not a native
speaker.  It would be like me saying "heard" and "erred" the
same and you understanding me due to context and accent.
It doesn't meant that "h" falls off the beginning of "heard."  A
"similar but not the same" pronounciation of Modern Hebrew
is simply a wrong pronounciation.  Whether that is what the
teacher intended or not, the concept of Modern Hebrew as
you have it is wrong.

> Secondly, I have come to the conclusion that even that
> modern reconstruction of Masoretic pronunciation is most
> likely incorrect when applied to the Biblical period.

Who ever said it was?

> > Finally, even if you prove that some or many words are
> > unpronounceable except as CV words, that doesn't mean
> > that the rest of the words that are left are unpronounceable
> > except as CV words.  It's quite possible for a language to
> > have some CV words and some CVCC words etc.  In order
> > to prove your theory you have to somehow show that *all*
> > words were unpronounceable except as CV words.
> >
> No I don't. Especially since neither it nor its converse
> are provable.

You have stated: "The evidence for Biblical Hebrew
having had a CV structure is again theory ... When
read in that way, many words are unpronounceable
except as CV syllables, hence my theory."
Underlying this statement is: "if many words are
unpronounceable as CV syllables, Biblical Hebrew
had a CV structure."  I pointed out that "many words"
are not enough.  Now you say it can't be proven.
In that case, the above statement has no relevance
to your theory.  I'm not sure why you brought it up.

Yitzhak Sapir