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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Why not patah? Why the ambiguity?

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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why not patah? Why the ambiguity?
  • Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 21:01:46 -0500

It is possible that the patax and the qamats were intended to represent different sounds, but also possibly not, I don't know. If you have any good argument for a possibly different vocalization bring it and we will listen to it.
I am afraid that the Hebrew "short" and "long" vowels (which are in any event nonexistent now) is a figment of the imagination, as is "Proto-Semitic".
One thing I am convinced of, which is that the claim that xataf-patax is a "semi-vowel" (which no one to my knowledge pronounces as such) is a terminological farce resulting from a silly interpretation of the word xataf.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On Jan 18, 2011, at 7:40 PM, Uri Hurwitz wrote:

If you'd taken the slightest trouble, you'd
have found out that whoever vocalized the consonantal
text, heard distinctly two different 'A' vowels.
Correspondingly they were given different markers.
One was a Qamatz, another a Patach, and related to
the last, a semi-vowel hataf-patach. There is no point
in explicating the differences bweteen long and short
vowels here. For one thing, Proto-Semitic may raise
its ugly head. Just dust off your old elementary
grammer books.





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