Dear Will, This list deals with biblical Hebrew. The individual who laughably keeps bringing up the modern language in this context, even makes blunders from time to time in analyzing his own language, as I demonstrated to him with the idiomatic expression shtuyot bemitz ( = nonsense). A few people are dragged into this irrelevant subject on this list. I obviously do not degrade this fascinating topic which I follow all the time. However , since you commented on it, let me correct you in an important sense. You described the debate surrounding the pronunciation of the modern spoken language. Yet one must keep in mind that since then followed three generations whose first language was Hebrew. Such speakers were and are subjects to the same forces which affect other living languages. Uri Hurwitz Even more to the point, the pronunciation of Modern Hebrew does not represent a natural continuation of the Mishnaic/Mediaeval tradition, but a conscious choice to prefer, for example, BH forms over MH, and the conscious choice of preferring the Sephardic pronunciations of taw (without daghesh) and qamets over the Ashkenazic values.
-- William Parsons _______________________________________________ b-hebrew mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
