Re: Pronunciation Question

[Robert Braham <rmb...>]

>From: Dragon (David Fiedler) <david (at) infopro(dot)com>
> I posted
t>he same question myself to soc.culture.jewish, and finally got a number
>of good answers, one of which was this:

 >>In article <1992Oct10(dot)035516(dot)29038 (at) infopro(dot)com> david (at) 
 >>infopro(dot)com (Dragon [David Fiedler]) writes:
 > >last letter of the Hebrew alphabet?
 >>2. How is this letter pronounced?
 >>3. Was it always pronounced this way?
 >>4. If not, when was it changed and why?

 >  >Originally, in the early 1st. millennium B.C. it was always
>>pronounced as a plain [t] sound (like in English "tip").  Towards the
>>end of the first millennium, there was a sound change in Hebrew (and
A>>ramaic) so that [t] (and in fact all the sounds represented by the
>>six "b (at) ghadhk@phath" letters) changed from stops to fricatives when
>>after a vowel.  So the last letter of the hebrew alphabet was now
>>pronounced [th] (as in English "thin") when after a vowel (and not
>>doubled -- i.e. without _dageh_h.azaq_).  There is no real reason
>>"why" this sound change occurred; sound changes simply occur in
>>languages from time to time.

  >> This distribution of sound variants ("allophones") can still be
>>observed in a few pronunciation traditions (I think the Yemeni), but
[excerpted]
>>         --Henry Churchyard     churchh (at) emx(dot)cc(dot)utexas(dot)edu
--
BTW, this is why you sometimes see "Bnai Brith"
                                            ^^
Or, "Shearith tfilla," etc. (in fact, as an "english" adopted
word, the "th" in Bnai Brith is almost always vocalized.
 You can still hear, when speaking
with people of Yeminite background (is it in ofra haza?) the
"th", as henry relates, as well as the glottal in words with
ayin (ie you can hear a difference between ayin and aleph, which
in "standardized" sephardic pronunciation, prevalent in Israel,
you cannot hear.  I often with  you _could,_ because it would
help lift my hebrew spelling from abysmal to extremely bad.
--
Robert Braham   |   Graduate School of the City University of New York
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