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  • From: K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>
  • To: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Fw: Re: Simple Pronunciation Question...
  • Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:07:24 -0800

Uri:

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 7:00 AM, Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

The historical record indicates otherwise. While it agrees that the
Babylonians did not exile the whole population, it records that those who
remained self-exiled themselves to Egypt, and if anyone did not willingly
self-exile with the group, he was compelled to accompany the group. The end
result is that the total population was exiled, not one left on the land.

>
> 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.
>

That depends. How much did Aramaic diverge from Hebrew? We know the two
languages were mutually incomprehensible prior to the Babylonian Exile.
Beyond that, both Daniel and Ezra were written with the expectation that
their audience knew Aramaic. So how much change did Aramaic induce into
Hebrew?

>
> Clear written evidence of separate letters for separate
> sibilants exists in Ugaritic, a close relative of Hebrew.
>

Just because they existed in Ugaritic, does that mean they existed in
Hebrew? The answer is: we don’t know. But indications from the Hebrew
alphabet as it was used in the language are that they did not.

>
> 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.
>

The question is not did that differentiation exist, but did Hebrew have
them? The evidence from within the Hebrew language is that Hebrew did not
have them until post-Babylonian Exile.

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

I agree.

>
> Look at the similar case of ancient Egyptian.
> Despite vast amount of written material which exists
> for that language, pronounciation is often
> uncertain.
>

That’s only one of their problems, do not many more exist as well?

>
> 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.
>

Modern Hebrew copies the Masoretes as an artificially resurrected language,
which accounts for that similarity in pronunciation. But what clues did the
Masoretes have, if not only the pronunciation tradition that existed in
their time and place?

>
> Uri Hurwitz Great Neck, NY
>
> I know that some of my questions are unanswerable with the knowledge that
we have, but I ask them anyways because they show the uncertainty of what we
know. Is it not more honest to admit that there is much that we still don’t
know about the language?

Karl W. Randolph.




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