Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

> And this:
> > - in some environments (yeshobhebh), the aspirated versions are nearly
> > unpronounceable.
>
> By no means it is. At least not for a German native speaker ;-)


I think this has to be the most sensible and valid point of this  
discussion I have read so far. All too often you see discussions of  
this kind with most parties drawing conclusions on what is  
pronounceable in their own native language.

Just about any sequence of phones is pronounceable given the right  
stimulus. When two truly phones can't be pronounced in sequence we  
deal with it with the universal adaptivity of vowels which are such  
agreeable little creatures that they can make friends with any  
consonant they come across.

When it all comes down to it what we have is:

a) a reasonable idea of what the sequence of consonants was
b) an attempt by a group we call the masoretes to record the  
vocalisation of their time period unambiguously
c) as many theories about the original pronunciation as there are  
readers of Hebrew

James Christian

--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.