Actually nothing new there. Changes in pronunciation occur in any language, spoken or unspoken (such as Latin, or Hebrew for centuries). That's how dialects and eventually new languages develop. Hebrew has gone through many stages over the ages. That's why there are differences between different biblical books, even bigger differences between the Bible and the Mishnah, between orthography of the MT vs. the DDS and so on. I can think of several dialects or even sub-dialects of English, on all continents, that do not pronounce H, others don't pronounce Y. The only thing that's lamentable is many modern Hebrew speakers' non-familiarity with the classical texts of the language, starting of course with the Bible, but including many others as well. But the reasons for this go way beyond language.
Yigal Levin -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Isaac Fried Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 9:01 AM To: Isaac Fried Cc: Hebrew Forum Subject: [b-hebrew] The fate of the xirik Here http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1225856.html is an interesting article on the lingual antics of the common Hebrew speaker, including a lamentation on the eclipse of the xirik, and the decline of the H. Isaac Fried, Boston University _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
