Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 4/25/07, Uri Hurwitz wrote:
> Yitzhak Sapir  wrote, inter alia:
>
>   "....the word in discussion is
> pronounced ta(at'-t'aRE:-hu: because before a guttural the schewa
>    takes the vowel quality of the guttural...."
>
>      Wrong in the Piel -- as in the above example --  where conjugations
>     of verbs whose first letter is a guttural are regular.
>
>     The only exception is in the Tsereh under the Mem of  the
>   'Bakhlam' verbal nouns.

Dear Uri,

You corrected me a few days ago when I made a mistake in citing
the work of Bendavid, and not only don't I mind, but that's great.  Your
correction will help those who want to look up the book find it.  Also,
as I have no idea what the book is about, I have to defer to you as to
the contents of the book as well.  I don't mind corrections when I make
mistakes.

But this correction above does not correct anything.  What you seem
to be talking about is how a schewa might change to another vowel.
The tsere under the mem in your example is long -- a tsere is always
long.  A schewa is short unless it has secondary stress.  But aside
from length, a schewa also has vowel quality, and this vowel quality,
while usually 'a' (patax) can actually at times take the quality of the
following vowel.  This is how the schewa is pronounced in Tiberian
Hebrew, not in Modern Hebrew, or in the Ashkenazi reading tradition
today, etc, but in Tiberian Hebrew of about a thousand years ago as
preserved in the Aleppo Codex, the Leningrad Codex, the Diqduqe
Teamim, Hidayat al-Qari, etc.  This happens when it is a vocal
schewa and the following letter is a guttural.

See on this issue:
http://hebphil.blogspot.com/2006/07/note-about-pronunciation-of-shwa.html
(especially the last four comments)

Yitzhak Sapir