Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

    People stick to their opinons, regardless of facts
 which disprove those very opinions.

    Isaac Fried assumes that the current modern Heb. is
 spoken and pronounced just like the pre-exilic languagen
 in Judea - not a very tenable assumption.

    He refuses to aquaint himself with even rudiments
 of spoken or classical Arabic which preserves many 
features of proto-Semitic. The Dagesh Hazaq -"Shaddah" -
 is clearly there.

    He refuses to accept the mobile Shewa because it
 disappears often in the spoken language, but ignores
 comleteley the fact of its perseverence in thousands
 of other cases in normal talk.

  Sometimes both will occur side by side, as in the
 following example:
                   
                      "Shtuyot Bemitz" *

  Please note how the "B" in the second word is pronounced.
  Please also note that the above is just an example and
 has nothing to do with the content of this post.

   Cheers,

   Uri Hurwitz                           Wilmigton, VT     

                 * ' nonsense in gravy'