Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

No less an authority on medieval Hebrew than Judah Halevi writes in Kuzari 
(Grammatical forms ch.80):

- qamats is  the longest U-sound
- holam is medium U-sound
- shuruk is the shortest [u]

- segol is short [a]. (That's consistent with the Babylonian system.)

- Tzere is long [i]
- Hirek is short [i].

Shewa always vocal.

Halevi's system is both Ashkenazi (qamats is [u]= unstressed [o]) and 
Babylonian (seghol is [a]).
Holam and tzere seem always unaccented (thus reduced to [u] and [i], 
respectively.)

What is the consensus about Halevi's phonology? Are the [i] and [u] 
transliterations of tsere and holam simply a matter of Arabic 
transliteration? How's the mix of Ashkenazi and the Babylonian phonology is 
explained?

Vadim Cherny
>From yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com  Mon Dec 11 16:33:00 2006
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Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:32:58 +0000
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
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Subject: [b-hebrew] Massoretic Vowels according to the Kitab al-Khazari
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On 12/11/06, Vadim Cherny wrote:
> No less an authority on medieval Hebrew than Judah Halevi writes in
> Kuzari (Grammatical forms ch.80):
>
> - qamats is  the longest U-sound
> - holam is medium U-sound
> - shuruk is the shortest [u]
>
> - segol is short [a]. (That's consistent with the Babylonian system.)
>
> - Tzere is long [i]
> - Hirek is short [i].
>
> Shewa always vocal.
>
> Halevi's system is both Ashkenazi (qamats is [u]= unstressed [o]) and 
> Babylonian

That is not what Halevi writes.  Chapter 80 in Part II is quite long.
A translation from
1905 is available at: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitab_al_Khazari/Part_Two
(Search for "I should like to ask whether thou knowest the reason why Jews 
move
to and fro when reading the Bible?").  Very simply, the seven kings of the
Tiberian Massoretes (the seven vowel qualities iin Tiberian Massorah)
are divided
according to their similarity to the three principal qualities in
Arabic.  My Hebrew
translation labels these as three as Narrowing (qibbuc), Opening (ptixa), and
Break ($eber).  According to this method, there is a wide narrowing (qamats),
a medium narrowing (holam), and a narrow narrowing (shuruq).  There is a
wide opening (patax), and a narrow opening (seghol).  There is a big break
(xiriq), and a short break (cere).  It is clear that none of this has
anything to do
with the length of the vowel itself, but rather with the way the lips are
situated when the vowel is sounded.

Yitzhak Sapir