Why is this so? My working explanation is starts with the fact that
among the many situations in Semitic that later developed to a qamatz
in Hebrew, is a large class of instances that had a long "a". Hebrew
Phoenician, and Canaanite developed long "a" into "o". Aramaic and
Arabic did not. The qamatz was part of this "long a to o" change. This
is the point where the Massoretes codified the vowels, so this is the
stage the vowels represent. It appears to me, that later, probably under
Arabic influence (which did not have the long a to o change), the words
which had Arabic parallels with a long a, were reread with the qamats
signifying "long a" again. In non-Arabic speaking countries, this did not
happen. This change is one of the basic differences between "Ashkenazi"
pronunciation and "Sefardi" pronunciation, Sefardi signifying spain and
Arabic speaking countries, while Ashkanzi signifies other European
countries. However, the Massoretes also used a qamats in situations
that originally developed from other "non long a" cases. The Arabic did
not have a "long a" in those cases and so did not influence the reading of
Hebrew. Those are the situations of "qamats qatan", where the original
qamats sound of "ow" remained. This is one such case. The original
Semitic root behind this word is ")ukl", and this developed in Biblical
Hebrew, without a suffix, as ")okel". Here, because of the suffix, the "o"
in ")okel" apparently became the "ow" of a "qamats".
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