Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Uri:

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com> wrote:

>   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.
>

Were I to teach a class, my present opinion is to demonstrate that it
exists, but that people are not sure of why. Don’t confuse students with
detailed attempted explanations.

>
>   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!
>

LOL! That’s basically how I learned them.

No matter what our theories concerning Biblical Hebrew pronunciation, I
think it best to start out with the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, because
that is a standard known world wide. They’ll have to know it anyways.

>
>  Uri Hurwitz
>
>
> Karl W. Randolph.