[Mesorah] She'ata / Sha'ata

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 06:27:00PM +0000, R. Rich Wolpoe wrote:
: Even the Niqqud of Tanach was not settled until the Masoretes circa 700 CE

: And there are still different schools  on that too

Not even how to pool the various vowel sounds into actual vowels is
agreed upon. Different havaros have different vowel sounds, the same
phoneme can be different allophones depending on the rest of the
syllable.

Eg In Hebrew speaker's ear, /ee/ (as in "heat") and /i/ ("hit") are the
same phoneme. Some of my HS classmates used to use this for entertainment
by asking the Ivrit teacher if she had a sheet of paper, and then wait for
them to say "sheet" -- to the response of giggles. To an English speaker,
very different vowel sounds, to a Hebrew speaker -- they can say both,
but they tend not to notice which they're using.

And so when you have a lot of vowel sounds in each of a lot of accents,
you could end up without consensus about how to divide them into phonemes
and then specific vowels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberian_vocalization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_vocalization
    (where patach and segol are one vowel,
     but while sheva na is a vowel, sheva nach isn't written at all.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_vocalization

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "I think, therefore I am." - Renne Descartes
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