Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Beginner questions about hard/soft pronunciations ofbgdkpt

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Beginner questions about hard/soft pronunciations ofbgdkpt
  • Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:24:17 +0200

Dear Gabe,

Sometimes silence is golden, compared with some of the stuff that had been going on on this list. But I'll second Karl's comment with a rabbinic saying: "lo habbayshan lammed" - "the shy do not learn".

1. The "Sephardic" vs. "Ashkenazic" differences do not pertain only to "Biblical Hebrew" but to all Hebrew. The differences are in pronounciation, and developed during the Middle Ages. Remember that in the pre-modern world Jewish communities were separated by geography and by (social, political, even natural) environment and developed different traditions in many things. In fact, dividing the Jewish world into "Sephardic" vs. "Ashkenazic" is largely a modern concept. In the pre-modern world, many local communities had traditions of their own. They were in constant contact through trade and written corespondence, but rarely actually heard each other speak. Today it is widely accepted that the "Sephardim", living in a largely Semitic (Arabic) speaking environment, likely preserved a pronounciation that was closer to the "original", whatever that means.

2. Biblical Hebrew, like any other language, changed in grammar, pronounciation and vocabulary over the hundreds of years during which it was spoken. In fact, from the few inscriptions and a few references within the Bible, we know that there were several local dialects within Iron-Age Israel and Judah. The text of the Bible as we have it is in a "standardized" late-Judahite dialect, and even then there are differences within the Bible itself. There's a debate between scholars, whether these differences are mainly chonological (late BH vs. early BH) or regional or even genre-based. And even after the books were written down, they were probably read differently in different places at different times.

3. We don't really "know" how anything was pronounced in the past, since we don't have recordings. But we do reconstruct based on a continueous tradition of reading (taking into account that pronounciation changes over time and space, see no. 1 above), based on our knowledge of "cognate" or "related" Semitic languages past and present (with the same reservations) and based of the transliterations of Hebrew found in other languages, especially in the Greek Septuagint (with the same reservations, and remembering that the pronounciation of Greek also changed over time and what we know of Hellenistic Greek pronounciation is also a reconstruction). For example, the fact that the southern Philistine city, spelled "Azzah" in Hebrew (beginning with Ayin) is spelled "Gaza" in Greek, beginning with a Gamma rather than an Alpha, indicated that during the second or third centuries BCE, SOME Hebrew speakers still pronounced the "Ghayin". This is confirmed by the Arabic pronounciation, which is also "Ghazza".

4. On the other hand, the Septuagint spells "Pelishtim" with an initial Phi ("Philistines") and not Pi, and "Chanaani" with a Chi rather than a Kappa. So it would seem that at the time, Peh and Kaph were always pronounced "soft", even at the beginning of a word. But all Beth's are transcribed with Beta - does this mean that they were all "hard", or simply that Greek had no letter for "v"? SO - Chebron.

5. A similar process happened in the Latin Vulgate, with some inconsistancy: some words seem to reflect the Hebrew pronounciation of the time (5th century CE), while others retained the Greek pronounciation that had by then become "traditional" for Christians. So "Hebron", with H for Heth, while still retaining "Eve" for "Hawwah".

6. And then came the Masoretes, who took the consonental text they had received, and added the Nikkud (vowel points) as an aid to reading the text in what THEY thought was the "proper" way. They deemed this to be neccessary precisely because different traditions HAD developed, and they wanted to get everyone back on the "right" track. From that perspective, yes, ALL of the dots, including the Dagesh, are simply aids. In Jewish tradition, ONLY printed Bibles and prayer-books, which are the basic texts that are read by beginers (i.e. young children) are "dotted". More "advanced" books such as Talmuds and commentaries were never "dotted" (although many are today - which says something about the assumptions that publishers make about their readers!). The Torah and others scrolls used in the synagogue for ritual reading are also not "dotted" - the reader is expected to learn the proper pronounciation.

7. Grammers of Hebrew have been around since the Middle Ages. They provide precise rules on when to use the Dagesh. The general rule is that BGDKPT recieve a Dagesh at the beginning of a word, but there are exceptions. To a certain extent, ANY grammer of ANY language is an artificial reconstruction, but a Grammer of Biblical Hebrew even more so, since it is based on a limited corpus of texts.

8. In modern Hebrew, vowel-points are usually used only in texts meant for children up to about second or third grade. In "adult" texts (books, newspapers etc.), dots are only added where the pronounciation may not be clear - especially in transcription of foreign words. A native speaker is expected to know the rules, either by having learned them in school or simply by "living" the language. Of course, just like in any other language, some people are better educated than others, and different sub-cultures have their own spoken "dialects".

9. Since we don't REALLY know how the BGDKPT letters were pronounced in BH, most modern scholars simply ignore them in standard transcription. And, there are also "conventions". And so someone who wishes to be "scientific" would probably write (Aqiba, with ( for the gutteral Ayin and q to differntiate qoph from kaph. "Convention" ignores these details which only a Hebrew-scholar would even notice, and write Akiba, while a Jewish writer for a largely traditional Jewish audience would use something closer to the way the name is pronounced by Jews: Akiva. This, by the way, is a post-biblical name.

10. The double b in Shabbat/Sabbath reflects the "strong" or "hard" Dagesh, and has to do with conjugation of verbs and declention of nouns. "Shavat(h)" is a verb which means "(he) rested". This applies to (almost) all letters, not just BGDKPT. Our main guide to thsese rules are the masoretic vowel-points, but the fact that this doubling is reflected by both the Septuagint and the Vulgate means that it was pronounced in some form (not necesarily by the exact rules set down by the mesoretes) much earlier.

Hope all that helps.

Yigal Levin


----- Original Message ----- From: "Gabe Eisenstein" <gabe AT cascadeaccess.com>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 3:15 AM
Subject: [b-hebrew] Beginner questions about hard/soft pronunciations ofbgdkpt



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

The first concerns the differences in consonantal pronunciation between
Biblical Hebrew and what I know as "Sephardic" and "Ashkenazic". (For
simplicity I would like to sidestep other intermediate possibilities of
medieval or Mishnaic Hebrew, but you can tell me about them too if you
like.) I know that one example of the three forms is T=th,t or s. And I
know or think I know that BH w became v in S & A.

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). About all I know is
that an initial letter is (always? usually?) hard. Are the rules
complete, so that the dagesh is just an aid for people like me; or is
there some ambiguity that makes the dagesh necessary?
[While you're at it you can explain to me what the hard/soft difference
sounds like in the case of gimel and daleth.]

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?

Two examples that have me puzzled are:

Rabbi Aqiba vs. Rabbi Aqiva -- which one is right in the sense of what
he called himself?

shabath (shabas, shabat) -- why isn't there an analogous form shavath?
(I'm sure it has something to do with the "doubling" of the b, but I
don't understand how you know that it's "doubled" when the text only has
one.)

Thanks,

Gabe Eisenstein
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.237 / Virus Database: 270.10.25/1955 - Release Date: 02/16/09 06:55:00





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page