Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Leonard:

I refuse to vocalize Biblical Hebrew in my posts to avoid unnecessary
argumentation.

We don’t know what was the original pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew. All
we have are the consonants, and we don’t even agree on the pronunciation of
those. There are some of us who believe that the modern pronunciation
(Israeli or Yemini) was how the ancients pronounced Hebrew before the
Babylonian Exile, others dispute that belief. Therefore, the safest way to
deal with that in these discussions is merely to write the Hebrew
consonants as they are found in Tanakh, and/or to write them out in
transliteration. That way there is no argument as to pronunciation (useful
to avoid that argument when other questions are the main subjects of a
posting).

When I read Tanakh, I read it without points (the text I have in my
computer has no points) so when I read the text and quote it in my messages
here, it will be without pronunciation.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 3:34 AM, leonard book <lbook AT 013net.net> wrote:

> It would be helpful for those of us - or maybe it is just myself, who
> are/is not so professional at Hebrew grammar, and wishes to learn more
> through b-hebrew, if b-hebrew members would vocalize their Hebrew words. As
> one who reads with the Ashkenaz pronunciation, i.e. KoMeTZ = 'O', I read
> Est.8:5 as 'KoSher' and not KaSHeR. Therefore to thousands of Jews ‘KoSHeR’
> is an accepted vocalization.
>
>
>
> Leonard E. Book
>
>
>