James: On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 11:02 AM, James Christian <[email protected] > wrote:
> But it does have a certain rhythm to it though doesn't it. > > James > That was the whole point of the experiment. I make no pretensions that I have accurately reproduced Biblical pronunciation. All I tried was to see what would happen if I pronounced each written letter as a consonant, followed by a vowel—what would be the results? I did not know ahead of time what would be the results, which is why I did the experiment. I first tried it on known poetry, and was surprised that that there is also a definite rhythm that comes through on almost every line. After experimenting a while, I find it almost easier to read poetry this way as the rhythm seems to augment the reading process (I often read out loud). When I looked at Genesis one, which, except for a few lines, has almost none of the signs that it is poetry, I had long claimed that it is not poetry. But when I tried reading it as each written letter is a consonant followed by a vowel, and a rhythm appeared, I was taken aback, to put it lightly. Is Genesis one poetry after all? Had the results been different, I would have chalked the experiment up as interesting, but evidence against the position that Biblical Hebrew originally was a C/V (consonant followed by a vowel) language. But the results turned out the way they did. There is another option: that some consonants can close a syllable, while others cannot, like in modern Chinese. But I don’t know how to test that one out. Karl W. Randolph. _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
