Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Garth Grenache <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>]

Dear all,

A clarification:
I'm actually not denying that shwa had phonemic value, although I understand 
it to be representation of a lost short vowel a, i, or u which were once 
distinguishable, with distinct meanings.  Shwa is phonemic in that it is 
distinguished from a long vowel, but it's quality (a,e,o, etc.) according to 
its position in the word and various reading traditions is meaningless: it is 
a matter for those who are pendantic about their traditions.

What I am saying is that the quality of shwa had no phonemic value.  By vowel 
quality (not quantity) I mean its sound as 'a' 'e' 'o', etc.  What I am 
saying is that if by modern or medieval traditions shwa is pronounced with a 
different vowel sound in different circumstances, all these differences are 
unphonemic(meaningless) to the language.  The shwa's consistent meaning in 
all its applications is that the consonant is not followed by a full vowel of 
any particular quality.  

I do agree with James that Greek has no schwa, and thus it's treatment of 
this no-full-vowel sign is to either not transliterate it at all, or to add a 
vowel that may be epenthetic, or may make the entire pronunciation of the 
Greek seem more like the Hebrew.  E.g. saomon for Shelomoh, which may have at 
the time been pronounced Shalomo!  But later in the Greek NT: solomon.

But if shwa had a short vowel sound of consistent quality (as it does in 
Modern Hebrew, 'e') Greek does have short vowels across the spectrum and 
would have chosen the closest vowel to consistently represent it.  It doesn't.

And then again, the LXX is before the pointed shwa, so it is not a matter of 
transliteration, but of representing the Hebrew pronunciation with the 
closest available Greek letters.

Interesting discussion.

Garth.


Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:33:51 +0300
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] 'Vocal shwa' had no true/phonemic quality at the time 
  of LXX.
From: jc.bhebrew AT googlemail.com
To: garthgrenache AT hotmail.com
CC: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Hi Garth,
I won't get involved in the pronunciation of schwa. One observation I would 
make is that as the Tiberian system aimed at one symbol for one sound you 
would expect some kind of consistency. That is to say either they are all 
vocal or all silent.

Regards your analysis of Greek transliterations I partially agree. IW likely 
corresponds to YschwaHoW. IOU likely corresponds to YschwaHuW. I agree that 
we are talking about long vowels in both cases for o and u quality vowels. 
I'm not sure that the lack of representation of schwa is hard evidence that 
it had no phonemic value in Hebrew. Any transliteration scheme must work in 
the confines of the target language. Greek clearly has no way of representing 
a short vocal schwa just as it has no way of representing a He. If we are to 
insist that this is hard evidence that schwa had no phonemic value in Hebrew 
then by the same token we must also insist that He also had no phonemic 
value. I'm sure you can agree that there are problems with this kind of logic.

James Christian                                           
Find it at CarPoint.com.au New, Used, Demo, Dealer or Private?                
                    
_________________________________________________________________
New, Used, Demo, Dealer or Private? Find it at CarPoint.com.au
http://clk.atdmt.com/NMN/go/206222968/direct/01/