Re: Audio - Pronunciation According to Rabbi Bar Hayyim

On May 30, 3:17 pm, mi...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Micha Berger) wrote:
h3rman <crazymulg...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The same is true with the Hebrew ? (`ayin), it represents at least two
sounds in the written Tora, one similar to the sound represented by
the Arabic `ayin. For example, He. ??? B`L in Greek is ???? (baal),
but ??? (`ZH) in Greek is ???? (Gaza).

Except that the Seifer haYetzirah, which scholarship dates to 2nd or
3rd century CE <http://www.maqom.com/journal/paper14.pdf> (and tradition
attributes to Abraham's authorship and Rabbi Aqiva's redaction), lists
the letters that have two sounds, and ayin isn't on the list.

Even if one doubts the dating of Sefer ha-Yetsira, it may well be that
by that time this distinction was gone.
LXX is a few hundred years earlier.

(Reish had two sounds at the time, though. There is no religious problem
to saying a letter once had two sounds but now one is lost.)

True, there's no problem.
I find the halachic outlook on pronunciation very interesting, by the
way. Another thing that most people don't know is that the phoneme
`ayin had also in all probability disappeared from the actual Hebrew
pronunciation in the time it was still spoken (for example in the time
of the Mishna). The name Lazar is an example of that.
However many (most?) of us have been told that words like Ruach, Noa,
Shavua, Gavoah, etc. have the nice little patach at the end caused by
the guttural consonant. But this is inconsistent because the vowel
sign is under the consonant sign that follows it - an exception which
is explained when we assume that the patach was not pronounced
*before* the guttural consonant, but *instead* of it.
This fits the tradition that every charactor should be pronounced, it
also removes the exception to the rule that the vowel sign follows,
not precedes, the consonant expressed by the letter it stands below.
It may be just a tiny little detail, but for some reason I find this
very fascinating. :)

It's hard to use reasoning and analogy from other languages to disprove
an explicit statement of a speaker of the language.

It's equally hard to judge the value of "explicit statements" when
this statement is from antiquity and source dates are debatable.
Comparative linguistics has contributed to some interesting
clarifications in the case of, for instance, difficult text in Tora
(I'm not talking about emendations here). It also contributed to the
understanding of syntax. Among scholars there is not much debate
regarding the `ayin ghayin thing I explained above, I can't say much
more about it.

More likely ayin was simply a sound somewhere between a gamma and silence,
and the LXX only chose to write it as a gamma when it stuck out to his
ear -- not by some deep rule or purpose.

That I think is highly unlikely. For your idea to be true, there ought
to be far more inconsistency than there actually is. In fact, the
situation is not100% consistent, but consistent enough that we can
rule out any 'creativity' on the part of the LXX "team". ;) But anyone
please feel free to challenge the communis opinio.

"Gomoras", "Gazan" and "Pogor"
from the LXX don't represent the sound of the the Hebrew `Amorah, `Azzah,
or Pe`or that closely in the rest of the word anyway.

They do, really. Greek has case endings that might give that
impression, but those endings are not relevant in this respect. The S
in "Gomoras" for instance disappears in the accusative and the dative
cases (wanted to check, now where did my Septuagint go?).

Hebrew would not be the only semitic language to only have one such
letter: Canaanite languages and Phoenician only had one letter too.
(And so, obviously, Aramaic and Syriac.) Given such a late date to the
loss of the `ayin, even though popular among people studying biblical
texts, places it after the use of Aramaic in Judea. A parallel loss in
both languages at the same time?

The language people speak and the character of the phonemes they use
is rather independent. For instance, in Belgium both the speakers of
Dutch and the speakers of French share several phonemes, even though
this means that the Dutch don't have them. Flemish do not pronounce
the character [h] the way the Dutch do (h) but rather the way the
French speakers do. Another example is the way modern Aramaic is
pronounced in Arabic speaking countries. Even though Syriac lost its
gutturals in Antiquity, many of them are back in the spoken language -
and most people (native speakers) you'll ask will suppose that's the
authentic way.

'Somewhere' (don't ask me exactly when) Hebrew lost both the `
("`ayin") and the ? ("ghayin") phoneme, just as it lost the
distinction between the two distinct phonemes between ? ?in and ?
Samekh. The only difference is that you can see it in the latter case,
but you can't see it in the former case, because one character was
used for two phonemes there.

No, sin and samech were the same sound as far back as the acrostics in
Psalms.

We don't disagree - I meant the two distinct phonemes (as once
expressed by samekh and sin) disappeared; but once they had been
there, otherwise the spelling makes no sense - and the spelling is
consistent. The spelling also reflects different etymology and
relationships to words in neighboring languages. The question of when
phoneme distinctions disappeared exactly is secondary to the fact they
did.

rgrds
hrmn

--
Micha Berger Today is the 40th day, which is
mi...@xxxxxxxxxxx 5 weeks and 5 days in/toward the omer.http://www.aishdas.org Hod sheb'Yesod: When does
Fax: (270) 514-1507 reliability/self-control mean submitting to others?

.

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