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Dear R. Danny,</div>
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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!).</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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."</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.<br>
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<div class="PlainText"><font size="3" face="Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel</span><br>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt" face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Mesorah <mesorah-bounces@lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of Danny Levy via Mesorah <mesorah@lists.aishdas.org><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, March 21, 2020 4:11 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> mesorah@lists.aishdas.org <mesorah@lists.aishdas.org>; Mesorah List <mesorah@aishdas.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Mesorah] Pitda</font>
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<div dir="ltr">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.</div>
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<div dir="ltr">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.</div>
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<div dir="ltr">So it looks like it must be a shva nach, but why is there no dagesh in the dalet?</div>
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<div dir="ltr">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.</div>
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<div dir="ltr">Danny Levy</div>
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