Re: Audio - Pronunciation According to Rabbi Bar Hayyim

On May 19, 3:47 pm, mi...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Micha Berger) wrote:
jameshanle...@xxxxxxxxxxx <jameshanle...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
this is how to pronounce hebrew, from a student of rabbi daweed bar
hayyim.   (that's daweed, not the arabic, dawud)
http://www.archive.org/details/TrueHebrewPronounciation
He bases his consonants on the saadya gaon.

But it's wrong to think there was ever only one correct Hebrew
pronunciation.



I heard a similar argument from a charedi cousin..

He said - Maybe both Oh and Ay and Oy are correct for Cholem..

Thing is, if that is the case, then I would expect we would have some
community somewhere with a tradition that the Cholem has those
different pronunciations..

rabbi bar hayyim does criticise the ashkenazi pronunciation of cholem.

Babylonian custom for the undotted beged kefe"t letters was to aspirate
them. As in the English difference between /w/ in "witch" and /wh/ in
"which" (in the ideal, I don't know too many people who actually make
this distinction, at least not in this part of the world).


You picked an interesting example there, one that coincides with the
convention of h to soften. (of course, bh and gh are conventions for v
and r respectively in the BGDKFT letters) BTW, I know one woman that
did say Hwhich, I think she was from Wales.

Your point is completely irrelevant though.

Whether people in the world speaking english, distinguish between hard
and soft letters , has no bearing on whether one should in hebrew.

And you already do for BGKPT

note- I know.. some yemenites pronounce the soft gimmel - the gh, as
J. you mention it later too. I go into that..

However, we know the frictive version he teaches "veth", "thav", etc....
is equally old. It's clearly assumed by the gemara, where we are warned
not to run "eisev besadekha" together. Which doesn't fit /v/ + /b/ but
does fit "eisebh besadekha".


err.. are you saying the gemara doesn't have vowels so there is a
question as to whether a letter is a bet/vet, in the point it makes ?

either way, you can say the words without running them together. Just
pause in between them.

It's hard to know what R' Saadia Gaon meant, but I disagree with his
interpretation of a number of his identification. In particular, his
intent WRT the sound of an undotted gimmel is a heated debate among
Yemenites. To pick one rather than the other and claiming R' Saadia's
authority is a bit oversimplified. But just as the start: his alef is not
R' Saadia Gaon's. The recording identifies the alef with the vowel under
(or over or after) it. Whereas RSG clearly gives it a sound.


I had spoken to him (i.e. I spoke to the student of rabbi bar hayyim),
about the Gimmel.

He said that the yemenites cannot be correct in pronouncing soft
gimmel as J.

He said G and J are spoken with tongue in/touching a completely
different part of the mouth.

The pattern with all the BGDKFT letters is the hard and soft are
pronounced from the same point of the mouth.

So G for hard gimmel, and R for soft gimmel..

I am not sure that R is derived from that argument, but it is
consistent with it.

note- as far as this subject is concerned.. JNC learnt a bit about
pronunciation and tongue in different parts of the mouth.. From a book
by rabbi aryeh kaplan on sefer yetzirah. I learnt of it from a book
Josh mentioned once, called "how the hebrew language grew".

And even back in the book of Judges, Ephramites used the "sin" sound used
by other tribes for both "sin" and what we call "shin". Which is how
"shibboleth" became a useful password -- it highlighted the Ephramite
accent.


Was years ago when I learnt it second hand, but I remember it as being
because they couldn't pronounce a sound correctly. So it was used to
catch them..

I think the whole notion of trying to restore "the correct accent"
is misguided.


do you think the saadya gaon was misguided?

there is a bit of a difference between pronounciation and accent. An
israeli speaks english with an accent - but not an english accent. And
he might not say his israeli accent is wrong when speaking whatever
language. But he would not call it a pronunciation, that , he would
admit, is wrong.


He also doesn't understand halachic process. His comment to the kollenik
in #5 ("True Hebrew 4") means he think the primary role of halachic
process is to determine truth. But a legal process is about determining
law; as long as it doesn't contradict truth or violate the process, the
conclusion is correct.


This is where JNC asks the kollel guy, ..

Suppose there were some people that somehow ended up in a place where
there were no other jews. And in the last few hundred years, developed
some pronunciation of hebrew that we know to be completely wrong.. The
Tet they pronounce as a Yud, the Bet they pronounce as a Kaf. You name
it, they have it mixed up
When they leave, and come in contact with other jews, that may not
have a perfect pronounciation, but they know that a Bet is a B, a Peh
is a P.
So, according to halacha, When should they switch? Do they have to
switch? Or should they never switch - should they continue in this
completely mistaken pronunciation forever.

The kollel guy said they should continue forever.

I would add.. A neturei karta type I spoke to once said (not speaking
for sephardim). That ashkenazim cannot change the way we pronounce
hebrew. Because custom is as strong as law.

So as far as that .. The kollel guy is making the halachic statement
about hebrew pronunciation.

Then, JNC gives a halacha related to pronouncing letters correctly.
He mentions that in the shulchan aruch, there is a law that if you do
not pronounce aleph and ayin correctly, you cannot lead the
davening.
(of course, ashkenazim would look at the rema). The Rema, says that if
nobody can pronounce it correctly, then we still have to have
somebody, so you look for somebody that is worthy in other ways)
So according to the Rema, there is a correct pronunciation of Aleph
and Ayin, distinguishing them.. And ideally, we should be able to
distinguish them.
And if possible, then the person davening for the omed should
pronounce them correctly..

One thing JNC didn't mention was the shema example.. Lisa (another
student of rabbi bar hayyim) has mentioned it. Lengthening the
Echad, is only possible with the soft daled. That the daled without a
dot, is pronounced like the TH in THe wheTHer.



.

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