[Mesorah] kodashim

[Mike Stein]

Seth,

I appreciate your taking the time to write about this topic. I, for
one, would be interested in understanding the evidence for some of
your statements (as I reread, I realize that you may simply be
asserting that we can make deductions about pronunciation, number of
vowels, etc. from the various written vocalization systems, in which case the
question becomes "do we know how accurately these systems represented
the pronunciations of the various communities?".)  Can you suggest
additonal reading, especially scholarly articles on these topics?  For
details, see below - I've excerpted and numbered the statements that
interest me.

Thanks and shabbat shalom.

Mike


On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 12:20:48AM +0000, Seth Mandel wrote:
> 
> However, the Tiberian vocalization, with its system of basically 7
vowels, augmented with signs such as the ge'aya (meteg) and hataf
vowels, did not match any of the traditional pronunciations of the
medieval Jewish communities.  

1. The S'faradim and Ashk'nazim at that time used a system of 5
vowels, like the system of vocalization known as the "Palestinian."
The Yemenites had 6 vowels, like the system known as the "Babylonian."

> least theoretically, then, the matter of whether a specific word
is > pronounced with an /o/ or an /a/ or some variant by S'faradim
cannot > be decided by the Tiberian vocalization, but rather by a >
vocalization system matching the S'faradi pronunciation.  

2. There the > evidence is not debatable: qodashim is pronounced with
an /o/ vowel > in the first syllable.


> Mordechai Breuer z'l was well aware of these issues, but lived in a
  place where he had to support the practices of a community whose
  ideology he supported.  This community had adopted the
  pseudo-S'faradi pronunciation of Hebrew invented in Israel during
  the 30's, and had abandoned their ancestral traditions of
  pronunciation.  

3. (My question): Surely there were "sefardi" communities that stayed
   in their traditional homelands and maintained their traditional
   pronunciations even in the 1930s -- what does their evidence tell
   us?  For example, an Iraqi Jew I know who went straight from Bombay
   to America says kadashim and asserts emphatically that he was
   taught this from an early age by his teachers. 

-- 
Michael R. Stein		     mike at math.northwestern.edu
Mathematics Department, Northwestern U, Evanston, IL 60208-2730
voice: +1 847-491-5524			    fax:+1 847-491-8906