Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kevin Riley <klriley100 AT gmail.com>]

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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