[Mesorah] Bamidbar 23:18

[Mandel, Seth]

Sholom has hit the nail on the head.

Most people lack the background information to understand ben Asher's use of chataph vowels to reprent that the sh'wa is na‘/pronounced.

Ashkenazim and Sefaradim long ago stopped pronouncing sh'wa according to the be Asher rules.  Perhaps they never started: just as much as the Teimani pronunciation is based on the Babylonian tradition and was adapted to the ben Asher vowels (i.e they kept their ealier pronunciation, not that they changed the ben Asher pronunciation, which they never had), it appears that the same applies to the Sefaradi/original Ashkenazi pronunciation (back in the very early days when "vos" was still pronounced "was" in Ashkenaz). So the Sefardi/Askenazi pronunciation of a sh'wa na‘ as similar to the second vowel in the English word "roses" (as distinct from "Rosa's") may have been a feature of the early pronuciation system of EU before the ben Ashers.  We know enough about that system (called the EY system, as opposed to the Babylonian and the Tiberian) from mss. to suspect that might be the case.

But that was not the case with ben Asher and probably most of the schools in the Tiberian system. We have early mss. written from the Tiberian school discussing exactly how a vocal sh'wa is pronounced.  b'qittzur, the rule was that a vocal sh'wa was pronounced like a short patach, unless it was 1) before a yod, in which case it was pronounced like a short hiriq, or 2) before a guttural (aleph, he, het, ‘ayin), in which case it was pronounced a a short version of the vowel that followed the sh'wa.

So in a word like sh'ma‘ or ush'ma‘, the sh'wa na‘ would be pronounced as a short patach, and that is identical to a chataph patach, which is why ben Asher wrote it that way.


Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330     Fax (212) 613-0718     e-mail mandels at ou.org


________________________________
From: sholom90 at gmail.com <sholom90 at gmail.com> on behalf of Sholom Simon <sholom at aishdas.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 1, 2018 7:20 PM
To: Henry Topas
Cc: Mandel, Seth; Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org
Subject: Re: [Mesorah] Bamidbar 23:18

Or, perhaps the question should be:

Is there any difference in pronunciation between a shva na and a chataf patach? !

-- Sholom


On Sun, Jul 1, 2018 at 7:04 PM, Henry Topas via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>> wrote:
Thank you Rabbi Mandel.

Should I then understand the chattam to be more of a place holder and the shwa to be pronounced (as a shwa na) as opposed to the chattaf patach?

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 1, 2018, at 6:46 PM, Mandel, Seth <mandels at ou.org<mailto:mandels at ou.org>> wrote:
>
> Dear Mr. Topas,
> The answer to your question does not lie in any grammar book yet written, all of which are based on the printed text of the T’NaKh.
> But the T’NaKh existed for a little b’h time before printing was invented, and the Ben Asher school of Masoretes became acknowledged as the most careful. They had many differences with other school (e.g. they punctuated  “b’yisrael,” whereas other groups punctuated it as “bisrael”).
> Aharon Ben Asher, the latest and greatest of the family, was developing a system of using the vowels to reflect very small differences in how words are pronounced, for instance when the sh’wa is pronounced and when it is silent. One way he did that was to use a Chatham vowel instead of a plain sh’wa.
> The Masorah shows that sometimes the sh’wa was pronounced after the prefix “u-“ although most of the time it is not. They show when it is, Aharon Ben Asher and some other members of his school used the chataph vowel.
> So the direct shottbandwer to your query is: to show that the sh’wa undervthe shin is not silent but rather pronounced.
>
>
>
>
>
>> On July 1, 2018 at 4:51:29 PM EDT, Henry Topas via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>> wrote:
>> In yesterday's kriat hatorah, the phrase "kum balak u'sh'ma" is vowelized in many seforim as "kum balak u'sha'mah with a chataf patach in place of the sh'va.  The Minchas Shai also draws one's attention to the same situation in Va'etchanan on the phrase "k'rav atah u'sh'mah or u'sha'mah" and in Daniel "Hatei .....aznecha u'sh'ma".
>>
>> My understanding was always that the vav ha-chibur changes to the shuruk when followed by a consonant vowelized by a sh'va (or if followed by either vet, vav, mem or phay)
>>
>> If the shuruk at the beginning of the word is a given, why would the chataf patach be an option instead of the shva?
>>
>> Thank you,
>>
>> Henry Topas
>> Dollard des Ormeaux, Montreal
>>
>>
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