Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

  To English speaking students who are introduced to BH,
 the Conversive Vav usage must sound strange indeed. It
 seems that at that stage of study, the instructor would
 do well just to describe and illustrate the usage. If
 enough  BH narration is presented, the students get used
 to it.

  There is no need to introduce at the same time various
 theoretical approaches which would just be confusing,
 just as beyond mentioning its existence in other NW Semitic
  ANE languages is sufficient, without specific exapmles 
fron Mesha, for instance.

  And now I have a controversial suggestion about the
 vowels: if intorducing reading in the current
 semi-Sephardic pronounciation used in  Israel, just
 explain that the Kamatz, Patah, hataf-patah are all
 pronounced alike! The instructor can make the specific
 point that when the Masoretes developed tham, they did
 not mean to torture the beginning student!

  Uri Hurwitz