Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

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