[Mesorah] Pitda

Sun Mar 22 15:12:03 PDT 2020

All this is regarding Biblical Hebrew.
In the Hebrew of Chaza’l there are many, many more examples, partially due to the influence of Aramaic words (such as פתגם, where the tac is without a dagesh, because the word comes from the Aramaic, where it is a borrowing from Persian, where it had a /th/ sound) and other loan words. The Aramaic of Onqulus, which is the Aramaic spoken at the time of Chaza’l, is full of forms where the rules of BG’D KP’T do not work. And that influenced the Hebrew of Chaza’l.
Or maybe the other way round? In languages there are many chickens and eggs lying around, and it is impossible to tell which came first. All that linguistics can show us is that if they were spoken at the same time by the same people, they influence each other.

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On March 22, 2020 at 3:56:21 PM EDT, Danny Levy <danestlev at gmail.com> wrote:
Many thanks to you both, R' Seth and R' Aharon for the detailed explanation and the reference respectively.
I was familiar with the absence of the dagesh in BG"D KP"T following a shva merachef, but did not realize that there are many other exceptions without similar neat explanations.

Danny

‫בתאריך יום א׳, 22 במרץ 2020 ב-16:13 מאת ‪Mandel, Seth‬‏ <‪mandels at ou.org<mailto:mandels at ou.org>‬‏>:‬
Dear R. Danny,
It comes as a shock to most people (as it did to me) that "rules" of grammar are not like laws.  Words that do not obey them are not tortured, forced to confess in public for their misdeeds and sentenced (remember despite all the gloom and doom that surrounds us that it  is still Ador!).
Rules are meant to describe the 95% of cases that follow them.  In all languages that exist there is always that pesky 5% that do not work.  Sometimes there are subrules, and sometimes there are just those words that refuse to follow the rules. After a couple of hundred years, they usually succumb to the force of analogy, and then other words sprout up to take their place.
One of the purposes of the Ba'aei Masorah was to preserve all the oddities.  Everyone know how to pronounce words like shomayim, and no one needed vowels to show them.  But then there are these words that are pronounced one way in this posuq and differently in another, like the famous קוי: in Isaiah 40:31 it is read /qoye/, whereas in Psalms 37:9 it is /qowe/. The Masoretes carefully vocalized it differently, and noted that each form was a hapax legmenon and not like the other.
Nowadays, I remember all the rules I was taught as a boy, and it took me many years to realize that rules are really summaries for how the 95% behave.
It is generally true that after a silent sh/'wa the BG'D KP'T is of the fricative variety (without the dagesh qal), but NOT all the time.  Words like מלכי ישראל were always pronounced with a silent sh'wa. And there are hundreds of words like them, versus the tens of thousands that follow "the rules."
פטדה in all mss. is vocalized without a dagesh in the dalet, and in some even specifically has the rafeh sign above the dalet; it belongs to the group that numbers in the hundreds rather than the general rule.
But my compliments to you.  Most people cannot handle the idea of two hard dentals following each other.  Several times I have been asked how to pronounce ועבדתם and ואבדתם in Q'S or words words like ושפטתי in Exodus 18:16.  I usually respond (sometimes with my tongue in cheek, which makes it quite difficult to say the words properly) that the ones in Q'S one must pronounce with great care, and the other with lesser care.
It is a truthful answer, although I know it is not what they are asking. I do not need to argue that if one pronounces the soft BG'D KP'T differently than the hard then there is absolutely no problem in pronouncing the ones in Q'S correctly. Even if one pronounces them hard, one can separate the syllables, as we were taught in elocution class.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel

________________________________
From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org>> on behalf of Danny Levy via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>>
Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2020 4:11 PM
To: mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org> <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>>; Mesorah List <mesorah at aishdas.org<mailto:mesorah at aishdas.org>>
Subject: [Mesorah] Pitda

While reading the Parsha to my family today in the confines of my home, I wasn't sure whether to read the shva of pitda (39:10) as na or nach.  On the one hand it apparently follows a short vowel but on the other hand there is no dagesh kal in the dalet.

As I was using a Breuer Tanach, which does not mark a ga'ya kala by every long vowel that is followed by a shva na, I wondered whether maybe this is a chirik gadol that is written chaser (without the yud).  Later I checked Koren, which marks all the ga'yot kalot, but it is not there either.

So it looks like it must be a shva nach, but why is there no dagesh in the dalet?

When reading Parshat Hachodesh I was struck by the similarity of our current situation to our ancestors in Egypt on leil Pesach. May we like them experience geulah soon.

Danny Levy

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