[Mesorah] kodashim

[Seth Mandel]

Unfortunately, I have not the time to list the sources, although any article about the vocalization systems will list much of them.
Regarding question three: we know that there was a massive change in details of pronunciations following the Qimhi's.  There influence on S'faradi and Ashk'nazi grammarians and teachers cannot be overestimated.  Already a few hundred years ago S'faradim started to model their Hebrew pronunciation (it was not their spoken language, so there was no mimetic tradition) after the theories of the Qimhi's.  So that every qame.s with a ge'aya/meteg was pronounced as /a/, even in places where the original vowel was an /o/.  Evidence that the vowel in qdshm was pronounced /o/ does not come from any S'faradi community alive today, but from the Palestinian vocalization, where the first syllable always had the sign for /o/ (not a .holem, but the used in the Palestinian niqqud of where the Tiberian vocalization had either a .holem or a qame.s qaton or what the Ashk'nazim call a chataf qomatz). > Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:31:54 -0600> From: mike at math.northwestern.edu> To: sethm37 at hotmail.com> CC: mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> Subject: Re: [Mesorah] kodashim> > 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> 
_________________________________________________________________
Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live.
http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/mesorah-aishdas.org/attachments/20080222/1e9c29fc/attachment-0010.htm>