Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

> Yitzhak Sapir katab
>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? >

We don't know why Arabic chose 'h' instead of " ' ".
It's a good question.
But we can't assume that when they dropped the -t they added an -h SOUND.
That a dialect or two eventually did so, doesn't really change things. The
standard pronunciations and Arabic dialects that I know, do not pronounce
the 'h', and the predecessor was *-at(un), without an 'h'.

>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
>

Rhyme is weak evidence because Arabic is a metrical poetry and there
wouldn't be any problem in having one line slightly off 'close' rhyme.
(I didn't check the check to see how the ta-marbuta's would actually
have been vocalized vis a vis the last line.)

>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.>

I haven't read the article, though parallel processes seems pretty certain,
that is, one did not fully import and borrow a system into the other. One
could not explain the development of Hebrew orthography, like the -h
in DSS or the words without -h in inscriptions. And I'm glad that Blau
doesn't suggest that feminine -h in Hebrew was pronounced. He is a
good linguist.




-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
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