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  • From: Kevin Riley <klriley100 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Better concordance?
  • Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:10:32 +1100

Arabic is also complicated by the fact that the original text is in one
dialect, the vowel and diacritic marks in another. It is therefore likely
that the original had -ah as the feminine ending, which was then 'corrected'
by diacritics to give the more standard -at ending, just as hamza was added
to 'correct' the non-pronunciation of alif in the original dialect. I am
not sure it is possible to say that final -at in Hebrew did not become -ah
in any dialect at any time.

Kevin Riley

On 23 February 2010 02:14, Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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