David Paul said:

There are hard copies of other grammars that I have that speak this same lie. The evidence that these two letters are properly pronounced DIFFERENTLY is overwhelming.

And the writers of those grammars indicate that they were pronounced differently -- so what's your beef?

BKMitchell said:

Now, I wonder what David Paul thinks of David Kimhi's Hebrew Grammar(MIkhlol) translated by William Chomsky into English?

Sorry, not familiar.

BKMitchell said:

Hey, three very different David's are mentioned in this post!

 

Yes, and we are all Beloved!

George Somsel said:

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

You enriched my life with this quote.  Thank you so much.  Gives me the incentive to explore it once again!                   *smile*

I am aware of Yemenite Jews and the claim that their dialect is the "most historically accurate". I have even found video of someone pronouncing the letters in that dialect, or claiming to do so. However, it was only a single witness...and I require at least two (Deut. 19:15).  [8-|]

Having said that, do you know of any video in which someone gives examples of the various pronunciations of these letters? I would especially like to hear clear examples of  אand ע . It's great for someone to say something is a glottal stop, but still rather useless unless one has something with which to compare the description.

David Paul said:

However, it was only a single witness...

If, there is a Sephardi synagogue around you might be some Yemenite(Temani) Jews there.

Check out the http://www.chayas.com/

And here (link) you will find a Hebrew blessing being read with one version of the Temani accent.

More, great Temani (web site in Hebrew) readings can be found here (link)  and here (link)

 Another English web site(link) with Hebrew readings with accents from comm unites in Baghdad and else where

Syrian (web site In English) readings of Hebrew (link)

and What, claims to Yemenite Pronunciation Leviticus25:1-26:2 can be found here (link)

BKMitchell said:

"The reader distinguishes ayin from aleph, and double consonants are distinctly pronounced."

Listen to the Hebrew Bible as read by the late father Abraham Shmuelof  at (http://www.aoal.org/hebrew_audiobible.htm)

Excellent. His ע isn't bad at all!

Thank You. 

I wonder why Wikipedia never thought of collecting recordings of  IPA consonants. What do students of Arabic do when they need to know how to pronounce ט (or rather ط)? I mean those who are less fortunate and don't have a native speaker around.

Thank you MJ. Smith, I am glad you enjoyed the links,

Thank you David Koll, and Theolobias

I am glad you like  Abraham Shmuelof's readings. It is so great that they can be listened to for free!

Also, of note Central Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Handicapped, Netanya, Israeli  sells recordings Shlomo Bertonov's Israel reading of the Tanakh(Hebrew Bible) that were first broadcasted via Kol Israel. He reads with a standard Israeli Hebrew accent, but the recordings are very clear. I bought a copy of these a while back. Here is the web site for Library:

http://www.clfb.org.il/bible-heb.php   (Hebrew )

http://www.clfb.org.il/bible.php (English web site)

BKMitchell said:

Also, of note Central Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Handicapped, Netanya, Israeli  sells recordings Shlomo Bertonov's Israel reading of the Tanakh(Hebrew Bible) that were first broadcasted via Kol Israel. He reads with a standard Israeli Hebrew accent, but the recordings are very clear. I bought a copy of these a while back. Here is the web site for Library:

You can feel he was an actor in the Israeli National Theatre. OOPS That was Joshua Bertonov 

His ח and ע are quite good.

BKMitchell said:

David Paul said:

I would especially like to hear clear examples of  אand ע .

Now, you can!

"The reader distinguishes ayin from aleph, and double consonants are distinctly pronounced."

Listen to the Hebrew Bible as read by the late father Abraham Shmuelof  at (http://www.aoal.org/hebrew_audiobible.htm)

I downloaded all of these files years ago. This isn't exactly what I'm looking for. I want audio or video giving examples of discreet phonological sounds. Ideally, there would be at least 3-4 individuals producing the same sounds. I always pronounce double consonants.

MJ. Smith said:

David Paul said:

examples of discreet phonological sounds.

You realize that often is not possible? Linguistics use pairs of word that differ only by one phoneme because most consonants cannot be pronounced without adding a vowel (Note this is a simplified statement).

Of course...but nevertheless, I would like to hear words and/or syllables that give clear examples of the sounds in question. The reason is...I have some doubts regarding IPA pronunciations. And I suspect that many people who toss around terms like fricative and alveolar don't really know what those terms mean. It doesn't help that folks use IPA phonemes to describe sounds that do not correspond to those phonemes.

BKMitchell said:

by the late actor Shlomo Bertonov

Turns out he was an actor who was both the son of an actor and the father of an actor [:)]

MJ. Smith said:

David Paul said:

And I suspect that many people who toss around terms like fricative and alveolar don't really know what those terms mean.

Having trained in a field where such terms have been used for about 2500 years (Sanskrit) I don't know if you are right, but in this thread I saw no reasoning to question their knowledge of articulatory phonetics.

Note: you can't read, write or speak Sanskrit without knowing your phoneme classes - adjacent letters affect each other and being a final lette adds additional changes/restrictions.

With Sanskrit under your belt, you should be a natural for Greek.  If you haven't already begun to learn it, I suggest you do so.  Take a look at A. T. Robertson's grammar -- he's not shy about bringing in Sanskrit.

MJ. Smith said:

I'm actually working on reading Jonah in LXX Greek, Vulgate Latin and Hebrew. It has reaffirmed the grad school saying - Sanskrit students think the Greek majors have it easy. Greek students think the Latin majors have it easy. I'll grant that Latin and Greek are fairly easy to pick up but Hebrew really takes work. Thanks for the hint of Robertson's - it looks useful. The standard first year Sanskrit text for a century or so was Lanman who gave Greek and Latin parallels assuming no one would be interested in Sanskrit if they weren't sufficiently educated to know both Latin and Greek.

I'd be careful about translating the LXX.  I did a translation of the LXX of Ruth several years ago for a friend in Oz which turned out to be rather racy.

MJ. Smith said:

I'll grant that Latin and Greek are fairly easy to pick up but Hebrew really takes work.

You're the first person I have ever heard(or read) say that.

The Declesion charts, inflected forms, and vocabulary of Attic Greek all seem to go on infinitely. Greek uses inflection(or cases) in areas that Hebrew uses simple participles and syntax. Hebrew verbs have a foundation of seven basic conjugations and usually words come from a basic three letter stem.

Interestingly Americans and Europeans have a very different Erasmian pronunciation of Greek(at least with the vowel sounds). Why, not use modern pronunciation? I think I heard somewhere that even Erasmus used the pronunciation that the Greeks living in Italy currently used at that time, rather than the so called Erasmian accent.

George Somsel said:

BKMitchell said:

I do think, however, that removing the classical education/humanities from public schools like Greek/Latin has done more than good.

http://www.kokomo.k12.in.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=40&Itemid=156

Waaaay down at the bottom of the page.

Opps, I made another typo! I meant to type, " in has done more 'harm' than good". Well, I have edited it now, but I can see you understood my meaning anyway.

The Kokomo school is interesting! Thanks for the link! And, it would be nice to see more movements pushing for classical education and the seven liberal arts in public and private school. Moreover, it would be refreshing for the communities of faith to be once again be known for promoting scholastic endeavors, and ad fontes rather than being known as ignorant religious fanatics.

From Wikipedia (Modern Hebrew):

"The pairs /b v/, /k χ/, and /p f/, written respectively by the letters bet (ב), kaf (כ) and pe (פ) have historically been allophonic. In Modern Hebrew, however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers involving formerly distinct sounds: (/v/ merging with /w/, /k/ merging with /q/, /x/ merging with /ħ/ (which both have become /χ/), loss of consonant gemination (which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign borrowings."

By-and-large, I think it supports my earlier statements regarding bgdkpt. As I said, the "F" sound is introduced. I'm not suggesting that Wikipedia is an unimpeachable source (only Scripture is), because when it comes to language-related material on Wikipedia, info can change from one page to the next. But there are many other sources that support the above assertions and my previous input regarding Hebrew pronunciation.

I'm not necessarily trying to open this up again. I just found myself on the page where this info was and thought it related to this thread.

David Paul said:

"The pairs /b v/, /k χ/, and /p f/, written respectively by the letters bet (ב), kaf (כ) and pe (פ) have historically been allophonic. In Modern Hebrew, however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers involving formerly distinct sounds: (/v/ merging with /w/, /k/ merging with /q/, /x/ merging with /ħ/ (which both have become /χ/), loss of consonant gemination (which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign borrowings."

By-and-large, I think it supports my earlier statements regarding bgdkpt. As I said, the "F" sound is introduced.

Quite the opposite:

"The pairs /b v/, /k χ/, and /p f/, written respectively by the letters bet (ב), kaf (כ) and pe (פ) have historically been allophonic"

This means that according to Wikipedia historically פ was pronounced either as "p" or as "f" according to phonotactic considerations (the bgdkpt rules).  

"the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign borrowings"

That means that f is used also in the beginning of a syllable (in fact I am not sure if that is not a mistake for word). Thus as we all know פ in the beginning of a word is always read as p in Biblical Hebrew. In Modern Hebrew however you can find borrowed words beginning with פ and pronounced as f such as the word "פיה" which means "fay".