Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

b-hebrew - [b-hebrew] Fw: Re: Simple Pronunciation Question...

b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Biblical Hebrew Forum

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Fw: Re: Simple Pronunciation Question...
  • Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:00:15 -0800 (PST)

    Karl,
 
    You honor me by assuming that I know the answer to
your questions.
 
     However let me give you my opinion: there is no
reason to believe that the whole population was exiled.
And those who remained must have continued their normal
speech, which indeed eventually changed.

    There is no reason to assume that those in exile
drastically changed the pronounciation of the language
they learned from their parents, even if they adopted
a new one.

   Clear written  evidence of separate letters for separate
sibilants exists in Ugaritic, a close relative of Hebrew.
 
   The latest written evidence from this older Semitic
language predates the most ancient Hebrew texts by
several centuries. I mentioned other evidence in a
previous post. So there is no need to assume that the
differentiation between the sibilants is post-exilic.

    We simply don't have enough evidence for fully
reconstructing the development of the pronounciation
in the periods that interest you.

   Look at the similar case of ancient Egyptian.
Despite  vast amount of written material which exists
for that language, pronounciation is often
uncertain.
   
   On the other hand, a bit more optimistically, one can
state, with some confidence, that a word like "Kalbi"
(my dog) could have been pronounced in the Iron Age,
and possibly earlier, exactly as the Masoretes
heard it in their day. This, incidentally,  is also
how it is spoken in modern Hebrew.

   Uri Hurwitz                           Great Neck, NY

   

 
 
 
   

 
 
 
 
--- On Tue, 11/16/10, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:




Uri:

Another question, how quickly did the pronunciation of Hebrew change during
and after the Babylon Exile? Is not evidence from immigrant children as they
speak their parents’ languages a clue?

That clue indicates that a major change in pronunciation occurred in the
first couple of generations after Hebrew ceased to be the primary language
among those who speak it. That would explain the split between the sin and
shin, for example, when evidence from the text is that they were one letter
before the Exile.

This clue indicates that that early change occurred long before any
transliteration surviving from any language.

Karl W. Randolph.


On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 8:31 PM, Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com> wrote:

   Besides Greek evidence, one should also check
  the Arabic. Now, although in that case we are
 looking at written material which is many centuries
 later than the Greek, it nevertheless retains Semitic
 elements which are far earlier than both
 the Heb. or the LXX.

  Shlomo is known in Arabic is 'Suleiman'. The '-an'
 ending may be borrowed from the Greek, but may as well
 be an original pronounciation or spelling of the name.
Comparewith the biblical name 'Naaman', for instance.
 As for the Heb. letter Shin, which becomes Sin in Arabic,
 that again may go back to early pronounciation, since
 unlike Greek, in Arabic like the Hebrew, both 'Shin'
 and 'Sin' exist.

  A further illustration is
the biblical noun 'Shemesh'
 (sun); in Arabic it is 'Shams' -- compare the last
 consonant in the two languages. One may ask, what
 relevance does it have to the MT prononciation. However,
 a brief glance at the declensions of other biblical Segolate
 nouns like Melekh, such as Malki, etc. clearly shows
 that they maintained an earlier pronounciation which is
 preserved in the Arabic.

 The original question is valid; answers can be only tentative
becuase of the complexities. To give just one example:
to what extent does tha MT represent earlier pronounciations,
and if it does, even partially as can be argued,
 from what periods?

   


    Uri Hurwitz                              Great Neck, NY
 


















Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page