Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz>]

Isaac wrote:-

>It is not the Dagesh Xazak you are hearing, methinks, but an  
>inevitable faint echo produced by the pressing and releasing of the  
>tongue, as occuring in the production of the D sound in the word  
>KADUR, 'ball', which upon a slight lingering upon the D to stress it  
>becomes KADdUR. Such reading is independent of the dagesh in the D,  
>and would be naturally articulated this way by any speaker, aware or  
>unaware of a dagesh.

In cases where a doubling of a letter would change the meaning of a word
people are quite capable of pronouncing a word without the doubling. For
example mamma (with two m-s) can easily be pronounced differently from
mama
(one m) in Italian, listen to the tenor aria Una Furtiva Lagrima to hear
an example. In English it makes no difference what you say because the
listener would understand it as the same word. In Italian they are
different words and so are pronounced differently. The word kadur can
easily be pronounced with either one or two d sounds as required. If the
pointing indicates you should double the d sound, then reading aloud you
should do that, if not, then you shouldn't. 

Yakov wrote:-

>Or like English, in which "nice to see you"  
>becoming "ni-sea." Think about it, when was the last time you heard  
>anyone say any of the "o"s in that phrase?

Obviously you live in a very different part of the world where English
is spoken differently to here. I've never heard this super contraction
you pose as an example.


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