Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Garth Grenache" <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>]

Dear all,

What Peter Bekins is saying mirrors the conclusions I've been reaching 
recently: i.e. that Semitic (and pre-exilic Hebrew) was made up of CV- 
segments, pronounced on a beat. 

BUT, I am not suggesting that every CV had a V, or even that every CV had a 
C. 

The V may be null, so that the consonant passes to another consonant without 
a vowel (phoneme) between, YA-KT-TU-B(U). Doubled (Geminate) consonants 
represent CVCV where the first V is null, eg. 'I-MM-M(U). If a vowel is long 
(there were three long vowels: â (>Hebrew ô), î, û) it represents CVCV where 
the second consonant's place is filled by the V, i.e. SA-LA-AA-M(U) / 
SA-LO-OO-M(U) .  So then, what Peter Bekins is calling "CV syllables" is what 
I'm calling 'beats'.  In Yaktubu, there are four beats:  YA-KT-TU-BU.  [In 
post-exilic(I'm suggesting, due to the influence of Aramaic; I'm considering 
the 'rule of shewa' in both Aramaic and Hebrew, that c:c:c:c:- becomes 
cic-cic- as evidence for this; also vowel lengthening in open syllables...) 
Hebrew the language becomes reformated into syllables, e.g. YIK-TOB.]

I've invented a way of writing words in this 'beat' system, which I'd like to 
share with you.  It requires Courier or another evenly spaced font.



1.  List the consonants and long vowels, [Two consonants for geminate 
consonants.]:
BR' YHW SMY W'RL.  SLAM L'MM.

2. List the short vowels under each consonant:
BR' YHW SMY W'RL.  SLAM L'MM.
AAA A A AAU AA U   A  U II U

3. Fill the gaps within words: where there is no short vowel, put the 
following consonant into the second line; where the vowel is long, fill the 
gap below it and before it.:
BR' YHW SMY W'RL.  SLAM L'MM. 
AAA AWA AAU AALU   AAAU IIMU

Now you have a list of events that occur on the beat.  
B
A
..means say "ba" on this beat,
R
A
..means say "ra".
LA
AA... means say "la" on one beat and then keep saying 'aa' on the second beat 
-it is a long vowel.

'MM
IMU
.. means say " 'i" on the first beat, "mm" on the second and release the m on 
the third beat by saying "mu".  That is a geminate or doubled consonant.


[Material relevant to my suggested pronunciation of YHWH:  Do you get the 
idea?  So I've been saying "Yahwa" and meaning, YA-HW-WA  -not because it is 
three syllables (it isn't 3; it is 2 syllables, because it has two vowels).  
But "Yahwa" is three consonant releases [and no long vowels] therefore 3 
beats: 3x CV-, but the middle CV has null vowel.]

This seems to be how Proto-Semitic and Central Semitic worked, and seems to 
be how Arabic works today.

I suggest it may have been how Biblical Hebrew worked even as far as just 
before the exile.


To answer a question that has been asked, I certainly DON'T believe that 
Akkadian writing would represent these CV beats with individual signs (one 
per beat).  It cannot, because Akkadian has no signs for single consonants.  
It also apparently doesn't use single signs for all CVC syllables, and thus 
needs to write CV-VC to represent a closed syllable.  Akkadian writing was 
not designed for writing Semitic -it was adopted from use with Sumerian, a 
non-Semitic language.  Abjads are more suitable for writing Semitic, but I 
would suggest the ideal Semitic script would have maters for all long vowels, 
and would mark geminate consonants twice.  In this way each sign would 
represent a beat.


Love from Garth.
>From uhurwitz AT yahoo.com  Mon Aug 20 11:28:13 2007
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From: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
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Subject: [b-hebrew] final alef and Arabic
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             Here are two more examples that classical Arabic retained earlier
   forms of the language of which only traces were preserved in BH:

       Tha Arabic word for daughter is "Bint".The  BH is "BAT", in declension
  "BITTY" etc. with a Dagesh forte in the T, and the plural "BANOT". This
   Nun in the plural must have come from somewhere.

        Obviously the N dropped out in BH .  Its trace, however,
   was heard by the Massoretes and it was compensated with the Dagesh.
   It reappears only in the plural.

      Similarly is the case of the humble she-goat " EZ",  in declension
   "IZZY"etc. and the plural "IZZIM" with a dagesh in Z. As in the above
   example, the reason is that the N  in an earlier pronounciation, * ANZ
   or *ANZT, dropped. Again,in classical Arabic the N remains throughout,
   as the language retained the earlier form.

    This connection .was clear already to David Kimhi, the 12th century
  grammarian.

    To my knowledege no one on this list has argued  that 'Arabic is an older
   version of Hebrew'. Most Semitists recognize that classical Arabic retains
  many of the features of proto- Semitic and is an important tool in  the 
study
   of biblical Hebrew.

    Uri Hurwitz


   Joel wrote, inter alia:

    ".....there's really no reason to think that the Arabic represents more
"ancient pronunciation."  Arabic is different than Hebrew, not an
older version of Hebrew."....







.    -Joel


---------------------------------
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>From kwrandolph AT gmail.com  Mon Aug 20 13:56:02 2007
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From: "K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Masoretic Pointing and CV-syllables
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Yitzhak:

I will make this one statement, but don't expect me to answer you
should you respond.

On 8/18/07, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/18/07, Peter Bekins wrote:
> >
> > Tiberian Hebrew is a convenient standard for Biblical Hebrew.
>
> It is also the most authentic and complete reproduction.  Tiberian
> Hebrew represents an authentic tradition of Hebrew that was passed
> down even as Hebrew ceased to be spoken.  Even the fact that
> Tiberian Hebrew won out against other vocalization schemes is
> a result of the scholarship of Tiberias -- where Jerusalem's scholars
> fled after they were expelled from Jerusalem.
>
This is a vocalization scheme that was first written down a thousand
years after Biblical Hebrew ceased to be spoken as anyone's primary
language. While it gives clues as to how Hebrew was pronounced
according to the Tiberian tradition as it existed at that time,
transcriptions of names and words into other languages from the
preceding centuries indicate that the pronunciation traditions had
been in flux, so the probability that it was an accurate rendition of
Biblical Hebrew as it was spoken in Biblical times is practically nil.
That is further evidenced in that some of the pointings are
demonstrably wrong as far as meaning is concerned. Linguistic
influences that would have caused the pronunciation tradition to
change are Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek.

>
> Karl ...

Maybe you should never discuss any idea that I bring up, because
almost every time that you do, you either a) make an ad hominem
attack, b) misrepresent what I say, a straw man logical fallacy, or c)
let logic fly out the window.

> .... has been given ample evidence that Hebrew is not, nor ever was,
> a CV language in the sense that he means it.

The only evidences you have proffered is from a thousand years later,
which for the reasons given above, cannot be proof, or from other
languages which, because they are different languages, may have been
pronounced differently. Hence they cannot be proof.

> ...  Karl prides himself in
> not learning other cognate languages and has refused to take the time
> to even review them even though they seem to have clear relevance for
> his arguments.

Here is an example of where you make a straw man logical fallacy. It
is not a matter of pride, it is merely a record of how things worked
out in my life. If I had had my choice, I would have studied Ugaritic,
Aramaic, Arabic, and the other Semitic languages, but I didn't have
that opportunity. Not having had that opportunity in the past, I have
come to the realization that my loss has become my gain, in that I now
know Biblical Hebrew in a way that you don't. Your knowledge of
comparative Semitic studies is far better than mine, but my knowledge
of Biblical Hebrew is better than yours.

> ...  He now brings evidence from Akkadian, albeit from a
> 60 year old book with Akkadian transcriptions, but this is still
> significant because he has consistently denied the validity of
> transcriptions in cognate languages as evidence.

This is an out and out false statement.

> ...  (Thus, he has
> denied the validity of Egyptian transcriptions for Shin and Sin but
> apparently accepts Akkadian transcriptions for his CV theory).

Again a false statement. What you presented was that other languages
had that differentiation, but no evidence from Biblical Hebrew was
presented. My answer at that time was that just because other
languages had that distinction, does not mean that Biblical Hebrew had
it. Other languages have/had different pronunciations not found in
Biblical Hebrew.

> ...  From
> Gershon Galil's Israel and Assyria (2001, but awarded a 1998 Dan
> Bahat prize?), we have the following transcriptions - Omri = hu-um-ri-i,
> Damascus = URU di-ma-a'$-qi, Ashdod = As-du-di/du.  But Karl just
> refuses any evidence, the conclusions of which contradict what he
> thinks.
>
> Yitzhak Sapir

In this discussion, there are three possibilities: a) CV, where all
consonants must be followed by a vowel, like in prewar Japanese, b)
any consonant may close a syllable, as in modern English, or c) some
consonants may close a syllable, others must be followed by a vowel,
like in modern Cantonese. You, Yitzhak, insist on b), all I say is
that there is a possibility that it was a), but in practice it may
have been c).  I insist on none of them, rather say that the evidence
is insufficient to insist that any one is correct. However, the
evidence does indicate that more vowels may have been pronounced that
those preserved in the Tiberian tradition.

Yitzhak, I am not trying to psychoanalyze you, but there seems to be
an almost pathological effort on your part to try to prove me wrong:
pathological in that it causes you to let logic and evidence fly out
the window in your postings. How would it benefit you if you could
prove me wrong? On a professional level, I don't understand you.

Professional humility insists that we should acknowledge that there is
a lot about Biblical Hebrew of which we are unsure, even some things
that we don't know. Therefore, where there is insufficient evidence
for any one point of view, we should not insist that our
interpretation is the only right one.

I am open to evidence. But if all you have to present is like what was
in your paragraph above, don't even bother writing it, because I won't
respond to it.

Karl W. Randolph.?