[Mesorah] shuruq pronounced like chiriq

[Mandel, Seth]

Not to be too curmudgeonly, but is is important to remember that this was not a Hebrew-specific sound change, but a sound change affecting the spoken language, i.e. Yiddish. The sound change affected not "qomatz" but rather the "aw" vowel. The Hebrew qomatz had long before ceased being realized as "aw" in an unaccented position and thus was not affected by the sound change, but remained in hiding as a variant of the schwa vowel in Yiddish. Phonologists can easily hear this variant in European Yiddish and Hebrew. 
There, I hope that that sufficiently confuses the issue :-)

Rabbi Seth Mandel
Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 23, 2013, at 8:30 AM, "Micha Berger" <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 01:02:23PM +0000, Elazar M. Teitz wrote:
> :      To my (admittedly uneducated-in-such-matters) ears, the Galitzianer komatz I pronounced like the Litvishe shuruk in a havara p'sucha, but is indistinguishable from the Litvishe komatz in a havara s'gura.  Thus, it's Avrooham, never Avroohoom.
> 
> Truth is that despite my "qootoon", I noticed that too. It's the source of my
> theory that originally it was a qamtatz qatan -- qamatz gadol thing.
> 
> I just didn't spend that much brain effort on what was supposed to be
> humorous transliteration.
> 
> Tir'u baTov!
> -Micha
> 
> -- 
> Micha Berger             I have great faith in optimism as a philosophy,
> micha at aishdas.org        if only because it offers us the opportunity of
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