I am not convinced that the different NQUDOT were all made for indicating different sounds. I suspect that certain things said about the NIQUD are possibly but hilarious farces due to misguided literal interpretations of the terminology. Take, for example, the xatap- patax. In my humble opinion, the xatap means only schwa, namely, the sign is but the combination schwa+patax. Yet, it is an opinion entrenched in the Hebrew "grammar" books that the name implies that it should to be read B-XATAP, in haste. Not that they actually do that, (I have never heard a xatap-patax being read "in haste" or as a "half" vowel, not in casual speech and not by a professional reader of the Torah), but, they say, it used to be so. Is it not possible that the xatap-patax is but a notational compromise for a schwa or a patax?
Isaac Fried, Boston University On May 2, 2011, at 7:06 PM, Joseph Roberts wrote: > After looking at the vowel system of Hebrew, I was curious if its uses > of so many vowels was artificial and rise from a liturgical use or is > that how it was originally spoken. I have seen similarities between > Hebrew and Arabic. Arabic of course has a Dhama which makes the "u" > sound, a Kasra which makes a "i" sound and a Fatah which makes an "a" > sound. These are considered short vowels and they have corresponding > long vowels which seem to just lengthen the time that one makes the > vowel sound. Did Hebrew originally function like this? is the Cholem a > later invention? It just seems like there are a lot of sounds that are > not present in other semitic languages that i am familiar with. > > Joseph Roberts > _______________________________________________ > 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
