[Mesorah] She'ata / Sha'ata

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 1:58 PM, <HayyimObadyah at aol.com> wrote:

> RE:  Even the Niqqud of Tanach was not settled until the Masoretes circa
> 700 CE
>
> This is correct if "settled" means authoritatively documented, put into
> writing and accepted by the community.  I think there's often confusion
> when  people talk about "*niqqud*" as to whether they are talking about
> the vowel sounds or the vowel points.  The scholarly consensus is that the
> Masoreteso documented a living reading tradition....
>

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 07:17:00PM +0000, R. Rich Wolpoe wrote:

> (where *patach *and *segol *are one vowel, but while *sheva na *is a
>> vowel, *sheva nach *isn't written at all.)
>>
>

> Indeed there are differing techniques WRT *hataf patach *vs. *Sh'va na *with
> Heidenheim on one extreme, GRA and R M Breuer on the other, and EG Koren in
> the middle somewhere.
>

I'm talking about various schools of Baalei Mesorah: Bavel vs Teveriah is a
whole different kind of extreme than the variations among *acharonim*.

RHO and my emails crossed paths, I didn't see his before hitting "send" on
my prior email. Besides, there are things in it I could have phrased more
clearly.

1- There were multiple accents in the days of the Masoretes. As in any
other time in Jewish History. (E.g. we know *shevet Ephraim* had the same
sound for *shin* as they and most other *shevatim *has for *sin*.

2- There were and are many more vowel sounds than vowels. (For those who
know even less about this stuff than I do: The finest grain division is the
allophone, e.g. the difference between the /p/ in "spin" and the "p" in
"pin". Multiple allophones that all share the same linguistic role can be
one phoneme. Often the speakers of a language lose the ability to notice
the difference between two allophones that are the same phoneme. Such as
the two /p/ I just spoke of -- which are obviously different to Mandarin
speakers. Much like I was saying about Israelis, *chiriq*, and the
sophomoric "sheet of paper".

But it's worse than that -- a single letter can represent multiple
phonemes, too. Qamatz qatan and qamatz gadol. The "a" in each of hat, hate,
hard....

So, they not only created vowel signs, they divided a continuum into
discrete values.

So here you have the Mesoretes, taking a see of different allophones, and
needing to divide them into phonemes and then into vowel marks. We might
all agree what the word "*geshem*" should sound like, but one person feel
that the two sounds are different enough to play different roles
linguistically and should be written differently, and another can't notice
the difference. As I noted, the Bavliim didn't think *patach *vs *segol *were
different vowels. (And in fact Rashi calls the latter a "*patach qatan*"!)
And (back to #1) all our various *eidos *do NOT agree on what "*geshem*"
should sound like.

I am reminded also of the Bach (and explicitly rejected by the Magein
Avraham), who seems to say that the Yekkes in his day pronounced the *patach
*of* **sheim Adnus* as "*notah letzeirei*". A
*patach*-colored-by-*tzeirei *sound
which would have to share a symbol with a regular *patach*. (BTW, the MB is
clear that it is a *chataf patach*, and not be said like a *patach*.) A
strange sound in the space of vowel sounds used in Hebrew which wouldn't
fit any of the discrete values well.

*Shetir'u Batov*!
*-Micha*

--
Micha Berger             You cannot propel yourself forward
micha at aishdas.org        by patting yourself on the back.
http://www.aishdas.org                   -Anonymous
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