Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Ratson and James:

On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 1:05 PM, Ratson Naharadama
<yahoo-arch AT heplist.com>wrote:

> James Christian:
>  > In reality the segmentation is
>  > 'woul' and 'dyou' to produce
>  > two CV syllables.
>
> …  What it would produce (with most average English speakers, we
> will ignore those persons who have been trained to enunciate a sentence
> like this to produce "would" and "you" as clearly separate syllables)
> would be the syllables "would" and "dyou".  What happens in English
> speech in this particular situation is the gemination of the final
> consonant of "would" (the consonant becomes "long").  Spanish speakers
> can frequently point out foreigners speaking spanish not only because of
> vowel accent, vowel lengths, vowel colouring, and consonant colouring,
> but also in that many Spanish consonants are pronounced geminate, even
> though they are written with one letter (and the fact that most English
> speakers aren't even aware of gemination). For example, "shovel" written
> in Spanish is "pala" but it is pronounced with a geminate-L producing
> "pal-la" (if you said "pa-la" to a Spanish speaker, their first response
> will likely be to ask What? even if you are already holding a shovel in
> your hand).…
>

What both of you ignore is how both the speaker and listener perceive the
syllabic divisions, irrespective of how it is pronounced.

Take your example of Spanish first (though I don’t know Spanish), do the
Spanish speakers and listeners divide the perceived syllables as pa:la,
pal:a, or pal:la but not spelled palla because that has a different
pronunciation?

Or take again the example of “would you” pronounced “wood-djue”? Yet if you
ask a native speaker or listener how the syllables should be divided, he
would answer as “would-dj” and “you” with the “-dj” being an ignored
sloppiness of speech. (That is also an acknowledgment that there is a
correct enunciation and that the “-dj” is not part of it.)

One has to admire the carefulness of the Masoretes in how well they heard
and recorded their late, Tiberian dialect, even recording what they
perceived as unwritten geminate consonants. But Tiberian dialect ≠ Biblical
Hebrew, which leaves unanswered many questions concerning Biblical Hebrew
pronunciation.

> --
> Ratson Naharädama
> Denver, Colorado
>

Karl W. Randolph.