Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Randall Buth wrote:
>>> "Note well: the fem. singular suffix is -a. The "-h" was never pronounced.
> The older form of the singular suffix was *-at, which is why the
> poss.pron. have
> a 't' with them.">>
>>
>>  Compare colloquial Arabic usage which is like Hebrew, to the standard
> classic Arabic used to to this day that retains this aspect of 
> Proto-Semitic.
> ezov haqqir>
>
> I almost follow you, except that classical Arabic has a dual graph for this,
> the 'ta marbutta'. The Arabs wrote a 'h' shape just like BH, and then added
> two dots to show the 't' sound. When reading "full style, with the case
> ending", the 't' will be pronounced, but when reading without "i`raab" not
> only does the case ending drop, but the 't' as well. Again, just like the
> outcome in BH.
> The process was quite natural, phonetically, and took place in the
> Hebrew verb, too.  *halakat > hal-xa.
> However, with verbs, both Aramaic and Arabic preserved the 't' sound.
>
> ezov haqqir-!-ve-tov lihyot zanab le-aryot millihyot rosh le-shu`alim

Actually, Arabic is the evidence that the -h was pronounced.  It is hard to
explain why both Hebrew and Arabic chose to add an "h" type letter to
denote the feminine that alternates between t and h.  Why wouldn't Arabic
choose something based on ta and alif?  Furthermore, there is evidence
of rhymes.  For a specific example of sura 98, you can see here:
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/browse_thread/thread/80dff4f8cf5d1c53/131203c347a2097b#msg_131203c347a2097b
This evidence (rhymes etc) is also mentioned by Blau, "The Parallel
Development of the Feminine Marker."  Blau also mentions that a weak
h is pronounced in some modern Arabic dialects.  As you might guess,
Blau suggests that parallel processes in different languages contributed
to this situation, and does not suggest that the -h was pronounced in
Hebrew.

Yitzhak Sapir