Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 2/6/06, Karl Randolph wrote:
> >
> > 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.
> >
> Yitzhak:
>
> I was not taught modern Hebrew. I don't know modern
> Hebrew. As long as you are not taking those facts into
> account, I don't know what you are talking about. All I
> know is that you are not discussing the issue at hand.

Ok.  That explains it.

In an earlier message you said:
"In modern Hebrew, as I understand it, there is little
difference between the pronunciation of a final alep, he
and ayin. Even a final chet is often lost.
[...]
Alep I believe is mainly a place holder for a vowel, as
part of a diphthong. Ayin a full glottal stop.  A final he is
a consonant followed by a voiced vowel. As such, $M)
[Aramaic for "the name"], $MH [her name] and $M(
[rumor] have different pronunciations, whereas from
the way I was taught in class, they all had the same."

Look it up yourself at:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2006-January/027630.html
Your recent statement: "I was not taught modern
Hebrew. I don't know modern Hebrew." is practically as
if you admit that you don't know the stuff you were
discussing in the above message.

This is why I thought you said you were taught Modern
Hebrew.  So, you just don't understand Modern Hebrew
correctly, having never been taught it.  You were the one
who brought up examples from Modern Hebrew to
support your point about the non-pronounceability of
some sounds.

Later you wrote perhaps as a clarification:

"All I referenced was the pronunciation I was taught in
class of Masoretic Hebrew."  So anyway, in Massoretic
Hebrew, as in Modern Hebrew, the final Het is never lost.

In any case, all the points I raised are direct responses
to sentences made earlier by you:
1) "Other evidences include letters like eyin and alep, in
order to be recognizable, would have had to end with a
vowel sound."
2) "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."

The above statements suggest:
1) Aleph, Ayin, He, and Het are unrecognizeable,
not differenciable, and unpronounceable in some
instances.
2) If you can't pronounce certain sounds unless
followed by a vowel (ie, a CV structure), Ancient
Hebrews couldn't either.
3) If some sounds were of a CV structure, the
entire language must have been a CV structure.

The above statements all relate to the reasoning
you gave to your theory.  If any one of the above
points doesn't hold, the final conclusion "entire
language must have been a CV structure" can't
be reached.  I showed evidence against every
one of those points.  Why isn't that evidence
that shows that the conclusion you support
can't be reached using the evidence you cited
as supporting evidence related to the discussion
of the issue at hand?

Yitzhak Sapir