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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Yemenite Hebrew

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  • From: Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
  • To: kwrandolph AT gmail.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Yemenite Hebrew
  • Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:54:12 -0400 (EDT)

On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 19:18:25 -0700, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
> Will:
>
> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > Quite true, but there are differences in the way natively spoken languages
> > are influenced by the surrounding languages and purely learned languages.
> >
>
> My understanding is that Yemeni Hebrew was a learned language up until
> Yemeni Jews moved to Israel, at which point they incorporated their
> pronunciation into modern Israeli.

My understanding also.

> > If Yemeni Hebrew were the mother tongue to a community, I wouldn't be the
> > least surprised to see it incorporate Arabic phonemes that had not
> > previously
> > existed in their Hebrew speech (an emphatic interdental, for example). I
> > think this kind of borrowing is a good deal less likely when the language
> > community is not actively using the language for everyday communication.
>
> Actually, I think it is more likely that the language used as a second
> language to incorporate the sounds of the majority language of the
> environment, and to lose its own sounds. This I notice among children of
> immigrants, as they speak with their parents: sounds that are not found in
> English are often not pronounced by the children, and they substitute the
> closest equivalents from English for the missing sounds. There is no reason
> that Hebrew is different.

I think we are in closer agreement than you seem to think. This is a
situation where a minority language is being actively used for communication.
But this is situation different from when one is dealing with a purely
learned language, in which people are not actually conversing, but just
using for reading, liturgical purposes, or at most written composition.

> > Here the influence is mainly negative - not too negative in the case of
> > Yemeni consonants, because of the richness of the Arabic consonantal
> > inventory, but more noticeably in the other traditional pronunciations,
> > where the distinctions between daghesh and non-daghesh pronunciation of
> > letters has been eliminated where the host languages do not support such a
> > distinction.
>
> Are you sure that distinction was not introduced into Hebrew from closely
> related languages? I think it was.

Not only am I not sure that it wasn't, I think quite possibly it was.
Spirantization in BH of non-emphatic stops could very well be due to
Aramaic influence. (Of course, it is equally possible that it a innovation
shared by two languages closely related to each other and in close proximity.)

> > > How many of those phonemes are true phonemes, indicating
> > > difference in meaning?
> >
> > I imagine it would hard to find instances of minimal pairs where a daghesh
> > (lene) and non-daghesh daleth or gimel would produce a difference in
> > meaning. I don't think this precludes them from considered separate
> > phonemes, however. The Massoretes certainly heard a difference, or they
> > wouldn't have bothered with distinguishing them in the first place.
> > Compare
> > the distinction in English between the voiced and voiceless interdental
> > fricatives. To my mind, there is no doubt that they are separate phonemes
> > -
> > they are not conditional variants of each other and they are clearly
> > indicated by separate pronunciation symbols in dictionaries. But finding
> > a minimal pair is quite difficult - the only one I've been able to come up
> > with is "thy" vs "thigh", and I've had to use an archaism to do it!
>
> How about vat, fat, pat and bat? Or wit and with? Sort and short? Boot and
> booth? Float and bloat? Plot and blot?

What about them? My point was not about phonemic contrasts in general
between voiced and voiceless &c. sounds in English, but the specific case
of [θ] vs [ð], where it is hard to find words distinguished by these sounds
alone.

> Do such pairs exist in Masoretic Hebrew?

I'm not up to answering that question.

> At one time I tried to learn the Masoretic points, really tried, but that
> was years ago. I gave that up when I started realizing that the points are
> sometimes wrong as far as meaning are concerned. I have since realized more
> reasons to distrust them, including that they do not reflect Biblical era
> pronunciation.

--
William Parsons



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