Speiser, The Pronunciation of Hebrew According To The Transliterations in The Hexapla, 1926
Speiser, The Pronunciation of Hebrew According To The Transliterations in The Hexapla, 1926
Speiser, The Pronunciation of Hebrew According To The Transliterations in The Hexapla, 1926
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW
THE HEXAPLA
INTRODUCTION
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344 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 345
with the cuneiform and hieroglyphic modes of writing. In the case of both, signs and
pictures originally stood each for a given word or idea. However, with the further
development of the afore-mentioned scripts, a syllabic form of writing was occasionally
substituted for the historical ideographic one, when many original ideograms came to
have in course of time an independent syllabic value. Thus, for example, Sumerian
ibila (written DUMU-NITA) "heir" is found as early as the time of Gudea, ca.
2400 B.C., written syllabically i-bi-la. Similarly the name of the shrine 'Giguntu',
usually written gi-(g)unu, appears sometimes, even in the older records, as gi-gu-nu
(Poebel, Grundzuge der Sumerischen Grammatik 9ff). The number of such purely
syllabic transliterations will naturally increase with the further development of the
language and its writing.
When the Sumerian script was taken over by theAkkadians, syllabic writing became
gradually the rule, and the ideographic representation of words the exception. After
the feeling for the historical signification of the Sumerian ideograms had been lost
syllables similar in sound came to be used interchangeably. Thus, for example, tri-
literal syllables like mat, tab, hat are frequently represented each by two simpler
syllables, i.e.: ma-as, ?a-ab, ha-at. The word ?arrum, meaning 'king', is found as tar-
rum, tar-rum, ?a-ar-rum, ?ar-ru-um, and ?a-ar-ru-um. (Ungnad, Ass. Grammatik
? 3, 6). Quite frequently those variants are our only clue to the reading of a rare word,
particularly since most cuneiform signs have more than one syllabic value.
In Egyptian the case is very much the same. Words in that language could be
written pictographically, syllabically, or alphabetically, and not infrequently by a
combination of the former two methods. These varying ways of writing the same word
are consequently responsible for many transliterations. Their value, however, is not
as great as that of the cuneiform transcriptions. The Egyptian writing having had
no way of indicating the vowels, its transliterations are only instructive as regards
the sound of the consonants.
9 Cf. Bohl Die Sprache der Amarnabriefe, Leipsic 1909, 80ff.
10 Thus, e.g., the transcription of Heb. frl?3 'incense' as qtrt in the Egyptian writing
indicates that the partial assimilation of the rn to p which was responsible for the change
of the dental to t: had not yet taken place at about 1160 B.C., else we should have had
qtrt. Cf. G. Bergstrasser, Hebrdische Grammatik (Brg.) 19 d, Leipsic 1918. For other
Egyptian transcriptions cf. M. Burchardt, Die Altkanaandischen Fremdworte und Eigen-
namen im AegyPtischen (1909. 1910).
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346 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
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THE PRONUINCIATION OF HEIREW-SPEISER 347
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348 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
A much more extensive field for investigation along similar lines was open to Sieg-
fried who attempted to reconstruct Jerome's pronunciation of Hebrew from the com-
paratively numerous Latin examples scattered throughout the many voluminous works
of the Church's greatest biblical scholar (Cf. ZAW IV, pp. 39ff.) Siegfried bases
himself primarily on the material furnished by the extant examples of Jerome's trans-
criptions of Hebrew word-forms and not on transliterations of proper names. He
deals, therefore, with a series of transliterations at once more pliable and potentially
more instructive than the material employed by Frankel and Konnecke. Yet, the work
of the German scholar fails to satisfy with regard to method. Comparatively little
space is devoted to the very important treatment of vowels, where the very elusiveness
of the subject as compared with the more tangible problems of consonants ought
to have attracted more attention. There is furthermore too much mechanical tabu-
lation in the brief treatise.
21 The first one to collect Hexaplaric fragments was Petrus Morinus, who printed
the latter in the so-called editio Sixtina of the Greek Bible published in 1587 in Rome.
After him the work was continued by Joannes Drusius, Lambertus Bos and Bernardus
Montfaucon. Cf. H.B. Swete, Introduction to the old Testament in Greek (Swete, Intr.)
2ed. Cambridge 1902, p. 76.
22 Field, Prolegomena LXXII-IV.
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 349
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CHAPTER I
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 351
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352 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
3 Where the reference is to Psalms, the book is not indicated. The number of a
cited psalm is that of the Hebrew Bible.
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW SPEISER 353
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354 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
2. DITTOGRAPHY.
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 355
3. HAPLOGRAPHY.
< l a-yt 'T)' 18.29 (l precedes), Xa <a > taScoO (?) ni9'Ik_P
18.34, < t > 6Oaz-' 'Xn"rn 30.4 (t precedes), -OoVl<l?> < t? >
31.8, <t> EpE Mbtl' 49.11 (Xt precedes)
4. TRANSPOSITION.
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THE PRONUJNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 357
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358 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
a. ADDITION
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HIEBREW-SPEISER 359
b. OMISSION
Here again the letter t seems to have been the main of-
fender. Cf. E-y'ya<t>cov 1i',7 9.17, ov,u<t> '"1 18.32,
< C > ao-a ' PI 32.8, the afore-mentioned X)Ep < t > dt l'2
35.20; OcEgAov < r > 51zI31 46.6, E-tawV (?) 1'11i 92.4, and also in
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360 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
'Z'8 is written oLE faL 18.38, oLE f3aL 30.2, and oLEf3'q
it is E,u/LOVVEL/u.
m is transliterated as o-ovp in 89.27, 44 but o-wp in
Is. 26.4.
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 361
12 Cf. especially Jespersen Lehrbuch der Phonetik,3 (LPh.) Leipsic 1920, 246ff.
13 Ib. 102ff.
14 Ib.
15 Sturtevant, LCh 16.
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362 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
16 Ib. 10.
17 Ib.
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THE PRONIUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 363
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364 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
a. Habitual proclitics.
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 365
b. Occasional proclitics.
22 For Syriac analoga see R. Duval, Grammaire Syriaque (1881), 41, 2 and 3.
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366 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 367
CHAPTER II
THE CONSONANTS
1. THE BEGADKEFAT
I The name "stops" is phonetically more exact than the hitherto used term "ex-
plosives". What is essential in the formation of the sounds discussed here is the fact
that the passage of air through the mouth is entirely stopped for a brief period of time.
The explosion which takes place when the air is finally allowed to escape is for the for-
mation of the sound of secondary importance only. See among others E. Sievers,
Grundzisge der Phonetik, (Sievers, Phon.) 5th ed. Leipsic 1901, pp. 106, 137 and 457;
0. Jespersen L. Ph. 12.
2 Not to be confused with "aspirates" (Sievers, Phon. 137), as is sometimes the case
even in recent handbooks of grammar. "A slight aspiration of Z b and 9 p modifies
these sounds into v and f" (sic!) Wright, Lectures on the Comparative Grammar of
Semitic Languages, Cambridge, 1890. Even as modern a scholar as Kahle is guilty of
confusing the two terms. Cf. P. Kahle, Masoreten des Ostens (MO), Leipsic 1913,
p. 167. Aspirates are stops with a following breathing whereas spirants are hissing
sounds formed without complete closure of the lips. The air is allowed to escape through
a narrow passage and the resultant friction is responsible for the breathed nature of
the given sound. The transmuitation of stops into spirants may be phonetically ex-
plained as the result of the loosening of the closure under the influence of a preceding
vowel. Cf. Sievers, MSt. 15.
3 Spirantization after vowels is not the exclusive peculiarity of Semitic. Old
Irish, for instance, shows some interesting parallels. See Haupt Z4, 2 p. 263 and
Sievers, MSt. p. 15, n. 1. It is worthy of notice that the Spanish b will sometimes appear
as a spirant if the speaker is not precise in the articulation of the sound. Cf. Jespersen,
LPh. 15.
4 See Brockelmann, Grundriss der Vergleichenden Grammatik der Semitischen
Sprachen (GVG) Berlin 1908, vol. 1, 194 and the literature given there.
Among the Hebrew sounds which had a twofold pronunciation should also be
included 1, although the laws governing this pronunciation have not as yet been
established (see below). See P. Kahle, Der Masoretische Text des Alten Testamentes
nach der jiberlieferung der Babylonischenjuden (MT), Leipsic 1902, p. 38-44, but cf. also
Grimme J Auspr. p. 135. Among the Jews of today rlT)1 are still pronounced in
most countries as both stops and spirants. See Idelsohn, op. cit. a.l.
5 By this term is meant the Semitic parent-language before the separation of the
groups (proethnic) which later branched off into the various Semitic peoples. The term
Old-Semitic is misleading and cannot take the place of the convenient German Ur-
Semitisch.
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368 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
with the later spirants P and d.6 Cf. (a) Arab. ," Heb.
?4',Arab. A'jL Heb. tO"', Arab # Heb. "ItV, but Phoen. in
Greek transliteration = Owp. (b) Arab. < s Heb. nrw, Arab.
'i Heb. 3;it, etc.7
It is impossible at the present stage of our knowledge
of the subject to determine the exact age of the process
of spirantization in Hebrew with any degree of certainty.
However, it can be made probable that the distinction
between stops and spirants was not yet known at the
time when the Greeks took over the West-Semitic al-
phabet. This follows from the earliest transliteration
of what are later the Hebrew spirants nfD, by the Greek
tenues 7r, X, K. The best examples of those early corres-
pondences are furnhished by the names of the sounds of
the Greek alphabet. Those names, as is well known, have
been adopted from West-Semitic together with the alphabet
itself; now their spelling gives no indication of the existence
of spirants in the parent alphabet at the time of the borrow-
ing. Thus Hebrew n'M is found in Greek as :3iTa and not
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 369
the symbol for o was found more suitable than the letter
n for the purpose of a graphic representation of the Greek
aspirate 0. Now it appears that the necessary criterion
was here furnished by the relative amount of emphasis
appropriate to the two t-sounds of Greek. From this
point of view, the symbol for the "emphatic "8 (or shall we
rather say '' breathed ") sound u was indeed more suitable
to represent the Greek aspirate than the other Canaanitish
t-sound. However, not long after the Greeks had borrowed
the North-Semitic alphabet, the Hebrew stops themselves,
including of course a1, began to be pronounced with as-
piration,Io a process which usually, though not necessarily
always, precedes that of ultimate spirantization. This
change naturally entailed a rearrangement of the Greek
system of transcribing the Hebrew t-sounds. Now it is
fl which is transliterated as 0, while D is assigned to the
Greek T.I
Other early Greek transliterations, as e. g. Kfnrpos
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370 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
Hebrew nflf and Greek reniavvV/ut "I widen," "open," Latin patulus "spread out."
Raumer Fortsetzung 12, Delitzsch 55, M6ller 205. Hebrew -- and Greek 7rOL/l77V
"shepherd" Moller 195. (For the interchange of 2 and 9 in Semitir, see Wright,
Comparative Grammar of Semitic Languages,64ff; 9D appears on the Hadad Inscription
I.17 (bis) as V23, Lidzbarski, Nordsemitische Epigraphie, vol. 11, pl. 24; see also Cooke,
North-Semitic Epigraphy, p. 168. (Btut most cases cited above may be duie to par-
tial assimilation). Hebrew 1.;t and Greek AypoS, Lat. ager, Raumer, Fortsetzung 21,
(but M6ller, p. 2, compares the above Indo-European root with Hebrew Vsi1). Hebr
9'1h and Greek KapIr6S, "fruit, "Lat. carpo, "Ipluck", Delitzsch 77f., M6ller 141, and
many others.
ditional dot. This he considers the first known Dagesh-sign! Such a statement scarce-
ly requires a refutation. Even if the writers of that word had known the twofold
pronunciation of M, which is extremely doubtful, they would yet not have felt the need
of differentiating the two sounds in writing by the use of the Dagesh. Such a device may
be necessary for those who know the language only from literature and not from actual
usage, and are therefore liable to mispronounce rarer words. To accuse the writers of
the Sinaitic inscriptions of such ignorance is manifestly absurd. The introduction of
diacritical points into Hebrew is lust about two thousand years later than Eisler would
have it, and years in philology still have a slightly greater relative value than they do,
say, in astronomy.
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 371
symbols there is a special sign to represent the sound bh (The stop and the semivowel
share one sign, whereas the aspirate has a separate one). The question may be, there-
fore, raised, whether in representing v the Hindus were not under the influence of the
Semitic parent alphabet; that is to say, whether the Hindu b-sign is not a modification
of the symbol for v because the alphabet from which theirs was derived had only one
sign to represent two similar (though not identical) sounds. This would of coturse
imply a very early date for the dual pronunciation of 2 in Syria and Palestine, as the
introduction of the alphabet into India (about 700 B.C.) antedates considerably the
oldest Hindu documents known at present. The graphic differentiation by means of
an additional mark is, of course, of purely Hindu origin and is to be expected in a foreign
alphabet which had to be adapted to the use of a language for which it had not been
invented. (The Hebrews arrived independently at the same stage many centuries later
when they ceased to be at home in the uise of their own language for every day purposes.) .
There may have been, of course, entirely different reasons, if any at all, that were
responsible for the close graphic relationship of the Sanskrit symbols for b and v.
Nevertheless the problem is well worth considering.
I5 Sievers, MSt. p. 23. Brockelmann, Syrische Grammatik, 63, considers the change
as "Urnordsemitisch ".
16 Cf. H. Grimme OLZ, 1925, col. 533, on very superficial grounds. He admits,
however, elsewhere that the phenomenon may be much older (J Auspr. p. 137).
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372 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 373
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 375
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 377
on the remarks of E. Sapir in Language, New York 1921, pp. 183-204). The old
Anglo-Saxon paradigm ran originally:
Sing. Plur.
N. Ac. fot foti >fet
G. fotes fola
D. foti >fet fotum
In the nom. sing. and in the nom. and accus. plur. the o of the first syllables was changed
to e under the influence of the i of the following syllables. (This type of the so-called
i-umlaut is well known in the Germanic languages, especially in West-Germanic. For
similar developments in Old Icelandic, cf. A. Heusler, Allislandisches Elementarbuch'
Heidelberg 1921, pp 20ff.). As such sound changes work mechanically, the above
morphological group was only affected in part, thus introducing a disturbing element
into the pattern of the forms in question. For this reason the paradigm could not
long stand unmodified. The alteration of o>e had proved welcome in so far as it
roughly distinguished the singular from the plural. (Cf. the similar part played by the
alteration of the stop to a spirant in the Hebrew examples discussed above). The
dative singular (fet), however, was soon felt to be an intrusive feature. On the analogy
of simpler and, at the same time, more numerously represented paradigms, the dative
was, therefore, changed to fote. Thus the singular received o throughout. But this
very fact made the genitive and dative o-forms of the plural seem out of place. Since
the nominative and accusative plural forms were more in use than the remaining ones,
fet was soon extended to the whole paradigm of the plural. As a result, there is a less
complicated paradigm at the very beginning of the Middle English period:
Sing. Plur.
N. Ac. fot fet
G. fotes fete
D. fote feten
From there on, the development into the present formsfoot and feet was simply a matter
of time. It hardly needs stressing that, contrasted with these extensive levelings, the
Hebrew analogical formation mentioned above is exceedingly simple. For the influence
of analogy see further V. Henry, Etude sutr l'analogie, Paris 1883.
31 N6ld, 23D.
32 Ib. 93.
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378 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
33 6 m. As his terminus post quem he assumes the period of the loss of Hebrew
= g and 1= h. Else, he believes, there would have been too much confusion
between the aforementioned laryngal and the spirants J and D. This, in turn, would have
left some traces in the form of wholesale interchanges of the sounds in question. The
argument can be scarcely considered convincing. Among others, it is further invalidat-
ed by the fact that the date of the loss of the cited laryngals has been by no means
definitely established. Some scholars would even go so far as to doubt the existence
of the g-sound in Hebrew. Cf. Ruizicka, ZA, 1908, 293-340. We have thus seen that
definite data for the origin of the process of spirantization are as yet lacking. In the
meantime we must be satisfied with what scanty evidence we are able to adduce, in the
hope that the cumulative force of such small points may in the future lead us to more
satisfactory results. In this connection the alternate use of 1 and n as shows in the
writing of the word D'll1E 'precincts' 2 Ki. 23.11 and 1 Ch. 26.18 is certainly wor-
means that the consonant after 1 is to be pronounced as a spirant. This inexact spell-
ing may be explained on the assumption that 3 had in the meantime become ambiguous.
In consequence the spelling J1'D is witnessed in the Bible. According to the Hebrew
rules, however, this sound is pronounced as a stop after a vowelless consonant (hence
the Dagesh lene in the text). To avoid such misunderstandings the semivowel I is
rather inexactly, to be sure, used instead. It is also possible that I was used in similar
connections until 3 could appear as a spirant. (All these difficulties are due to the
fact that the word is originally Indo-European, its component parts being very likely
cognates of Sanskrit para 'distant' and bhr 'to bear'. To represent it with accuracy
in a Semitic alphabet was, therefore, a matter of some difficulty). If the above
inferences are correct the date of spirantization is at any rate earlier than the afore-
mentioned passages in Chronicles. More definite as to date is the evidence of an Ara-
maic inscription of the Achamenian period, where the spelling 11'D is also found;
cf. Torrey, The Bilingual Inscription from Sardes, AJSL XXXIV, (1918) 185ff.
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 379
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380 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
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THE PRONUNCIATION OF HEBREW-SPEISER 381
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382 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
1. STOPS.
2. SPIRANTS
of jq3 for 3, cf. e.g. D1yp7 'A143pajgi. It is due to an imperfect timing in the motions of
the organs required for the pronunciation of two contiguous sounds. In the present
case it is attributable to the premature closing of the soft palate after the utterance of
the nasal (Jespersen LPh 62). Out of the many examples of that class I shall only cite
Engl. timber from Goth. timrjan (cf. Germ. Zimmer), thuinder as compared with Germ.
Donner and Lat. empsi from emo.
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