On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com> wrote:
> To English speaking students who are introduced to BH,
> the Conversive Vav usage must sound strange indeed. It
> seems that at that stage of study, the instructor would
> do well just to describe and illustrate the usage. If
> enough BH narration is presented, the students get used
> to it.
>
Were I to teach a class, my present opinion is to demonstrate that it
exists, but that people are not sure of why. Don’t confuse students with
detailed attempted explanations.
>
> And now I have a controversial suggestion about the
> vowels: if intorducing reading in the current
> semi-Sephardic pronounciation used in Israel, just
> explain that the Kamatz, Patah, hataf-patah are all
> pronounced alike! The instructor can make the specific
> point that when the Masoretes developed tham, they did
> not mean to torture the beginning student!
>
LOL! That’s basically how I learned them.
No matter what our theories concerning Biblical Hebrew pronunciation, I
think it best to start out with the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, because
that is a standard known world wide. They’ll have to know it anyways.