Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Gabe:

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Gabe Eisenstein 
<gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>wrote:

> Traffic seems low so I thought I'd sneak in a dumb beginner's question
> -- actually two related questions representing areas of my ignorance.
>

Don't sweat the "beginner" part, you know a lot more Hebrew than some of
this list. After all, we all were beginners at one point of our studies.

>
> The second concerns the rules for reading hard vs. soft b/g/d/k/p/t when
> you are looking at text without points (dagesh).


There are, but it was from reading the text without points that I came to
the conclusion that when Biblical Hebrew was spoken, that there was no
difference — that all the consonants were hard.


> I found a chart online that seemed to suggest that some of the hard/soft
> differences didn't exist in BH, but emerged later. Is that right?
>

That's how I read it.

>
> Thanks,
>
> Gabe Eisenstein


Karl W. Randolph.