[Mesorah] sh'va na and nach

[Michael Hamm]

R'Micha:
<<The way I think of it... In English, if a syllable is closed with the
same consonant as the next syllable begins, we double the letter --
"butter", "mammal", etc... In Hebrew, the letter is written just once,
degushah.>>

WADR, English may not be the best example of this: "butter" doesn't have a
doubled consonant sound in its middle, despite the spelling.  (Perhaps it
once did.  I don't know enough to say.  But not now.)  And the
first syllable in "butter" or "mammal" ends with a vowel sound.  A better
analogue than English to Hebrew would be Italian.  In words like "tutti" (
http://www.vocabolaudio.com/it/tutto ) and "mamma" (
http://www.vocabolaudio.com/it/mamma ), you can actually hear the middle
consonant longer.  In Hebrew in such a case, the consonant is counted as
both the end of one syllable and the start of the next, as R'Micha noted.
 (I don't know how Italian counts syllables.)

Kol tuv,

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