Re: Hanukkah -- the Feast of the Dedication?=?windows-1256?Q?=FE?=

[James Foley]

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On Monday Sep 21 2009 at 10:11 am, Mark J. Reed (markjreed@...) wrote:

 

<In any case, to go back to "abib" vs "aviv", either one may reflect
the pronunciation current at the time the passage was written;
further, it's not clear whether the distinction had even been
established yet. "Biblical Hebrew" covers a wide range of time, and
the phonemicization of /v/ happened during that time.>

 

We could argue whether Latin was really a dead language but on the central question about the correct pronunciation being “b” we seem to agree that the more ancient pronunciation would be “b.” You, however, say that we can’t be sure how the Israelites would have pronounced the phoneme because of uncertainty about the timing of the changeover to “v” which you date around the time of the Mishna.

 

To go back to the original context of this discussion, the point was raised in the context of the Pentateuch and specifically the Passover.  This is said to have occurred in “abib.”  Now we know that this term for the first month dropped out of use shortly after 587 BCE and was replaced by Nisan.  There can really be no doubt that the pronunciation then was with the “b” phoneme. Therefore, a careful scholar would clearly want to write abib rather than the modern transliteration aviv.

 

[Mark J. Reed]

Just to clarify a couple of things:

1) it's entirely possible that the word was always pronounced [aviv],
but to the Hebrews of the time there was no difference between that
and [abib].  The reason the two sounds are spelled with the same
letter is because they were the same sound.  It's just like English,
where we use the single letter P for both the sound at the beginning
of "pin" and the one after the s in "spin" (which any Hindi speaker
would tell you are clearly two different sounds, but which Anglophones
stubbornly insist are the same).

2) My only claim about the timing of the introduction of /v/ as a
separate phoneme is that it occurred sometime *between* the Pentateuch
and the Mishna.  That's very different from "around the time of the
Mishna".

3) Classical Latin may be a "dead" language because nobody speaks it
as their L1 anymore, just as Old English is in that category.  But
neither Latin nor English ever ceased to be an everyday spoken
language.  The difference with Hebrew is that Israelites essentially
stopped speaking Hebrew and started speaking what became Aramaic
instead. Sure, it was gradual, but it was a shift to dominance by a
different language.  It wasn't that Hebrew itself transformed into
Aramaic; rather, it was supplanted by Aramaic's ancestor,
Neo-Babylonian.

Whereas the Italians never stopped speaking Latin.  It's just that
each generation's Latin was slightly different from that of the
previous generation, and over time those changes added up.  The only
reason we don't still call Italian "Latin" is because it's not
specific enough - the same sort of changes that happened in Italy also
happened throughout the previous Roman empire, in France and Spain and
Portugual and Rumania, but differed in the details, resulting in a
whole bunch of languages with equal claim to the title "Modern Latin".

In the context of Italian languages, then, Hebrew is more like
Etruscan than Latin.  Fortunately for Hebrew, its former speakers kept
it alive in the religious tradition, so it didn't disappear utterly
the way Etruscan did.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Irv Bromberg]

On 2009 Sep 22, at 08:25 , Mark J. Reed wrote:

Fortunately for Hebrew, its former speakers kept it alive in the religious tradition

Correct.  That is why there exists a long unbroken tradition of pronouncing the word as "aviv", not "abib".  Although there are regional differences in pronunciation of certain Hebrew letters, there is universal agreement among Jews and rabbinical scholars on the pronunciation of "aviv" in the Torah and other traditional sources.

The transliteration as "abib" surely arose during the production of the Septaguint (3rd to 1st century BC), the first translation from Hebrew into a foreign language, Greek in this case.  In Greek the letter beta was used, which has a "b" sound, and there is no "v" sound in Greek.

That is why "Irvember" transliterated to Greek is Ιρβέμβριοσ, which transliterates back to English as Irbembrios, because there is no "v" sound in the Greek alphabet.

-- Irv Bromberg, Toronto, Canada

<http://www.sym454.org/>

[Pavel Konovalov]

Irv Bromberg:

That is why "Irvember" transliterated to Greek is Ιρβέμβριοσ, which transliterates back to English as Irbembrios, because there is no "v" sound in the Greek alphabet.

It should be "Ιρβέμβριος" (with stigma at the end). The letter σ is not used in word-final positions.

[Peter Zilahy Ingerman, PhD]

Surely "sigma", not "stigma"?

Hellerick C. Ferlibay wrote:

Irv Bromberg:

That is why "Irvember" transliterated to Greek is Ιρβέμβριοσ, which transliterates back to English as Irbembrios, because there is no "v" sound in the Greek alphabet.

It should be "Ιρβέμβριος" (with stigma at the end). The letter σ is not used in word-final positions.

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[Mark J. Reed]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Irv Bromberg <irv.bromberg@...> wrote:
> Correct.  That is why there exists a long unbroken tradition of pronouncing
> the word as "aviv", not "abib".  Although there are regional differences in
> pronunciation of certain Hebrew letters, there is universal agreement among
> Jews and rabbinical scholars on the pronunciation of "aviv" in the Torah and
> other traditional sources.

Sure, but that pronunciation isn't as old as the Pentateuch. At the
time that the word was still in use as a month name, there was no
difference between B and V in the minds, ears, or alphabet of the
Hebrews.  If you went back in time, you could take turns pronouncing
it 'abib' and 'aviv' and nobody would notice the difference.

So when referring to the old name in modern texts, it's really down to
a matter of taste whether to use B or V - much like the choice to use
lowercase and/or the letter U and/or the letter J in modern spellings
of old Latin.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Mark J. Reed]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Irv Bromberg <irv.bromberg@...> wrote:
> In Greek the letter beta was used, which has a "b" sound, and
> there is no "v" sound in Greek.
Beta didn't always have a [b] sound, either.  It has had a [β] sound -
which is the same as the Spanish medial b/v.  In modern Greek, the
sound of the letter Beta is actually [v], so we've come full circle.
(There's also a /b/ sound, but it's spelled <μπ> and comes from what
used to be /mp/ sequences.)

Sound change is constant and sound distinctions are language-specific.
 At the time of the Pentateuch there was no difference between B and
V, so it's kind of a silly thing to argue about.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Brillig]

You've mentioned the Spanish b/v now a couple times with an
implication that it's a single sound. It's not. It's a spectrum that
ranges somewhere between what we in English spell with a b or a v.
Where on the spectrum it is has no relation to whether it is spelled
with a b or a v, though, and varies by dialect/local pronunciations.

Victor

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:14 AM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Irv Bromberg <irv.bromberg@...> wrote:
>> In Greek the letter beta was used, which has a "b" sound, and
>> there is no "v" sound in Greek.
> Beta didn't always have a [b] sound, either.  It has had a [β] sound -
> which is the same as the Spanish medial b/v.  In modern Greek, the
> sound of the letter Beta is actually [v], so we've come full circle.
> (There's also a /b/ sound, but it's spelled <μπ> and comes from what
> used to be /mp/ sequences.)
>
> Sound change is constant and sound distinctions are language-specific.
>  At the time of the Pentateuch there was no difference between B and
> V, so it's kind of a silly thing to argue about.
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>
>

[Brillig]

Ah, the TRVTH at last!

Victor

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

> So when referring to the old name in modern texts, it's really down to
> a matter of taste whether to use B or V - much like the choice to use
> lowercase and/or the letter U and/or the letter J in modern spellings
> of old Latin.

[Mark J. Reed]

2009/9/22 Victor Engel <brillig@...>:
> You've mentioned the Spanish b/v now a couple times with an
> implication that it's a single sound. It's not.

It's a single *phoneme*.  Naturally it varies from dialect to dialect,
but what matters is how the sound is perceived within a given dialect.
 In that context, even though the sound changes depending on position,
it is always perceived as the same sound by the native speakers. That
is, the word "vaca" sounds like the word "vaca" whether I say it by
itself (with a [b] at the beginning) or with "la" in front of it (in
which case the b becomes a [β], the aforementioned
like-a-[v]-but-with-both-lips-instead-of-lip-and-teeth sound).


--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

[Brillig]

Agreed.

Victor

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

> 2009/9/22 Victor Engel <brillig@...>:
>> You've mentioned the Spanish b/v now a couple times with an
>> implication that it's a single sound. It's not.
>
> It's a single *phoneme*.  Naturally it varies from dialect to dialect,
> but what matters is how the sound is perceived within a given dialect.
>  In that context, even though the sound changes depending on position,
> it is always perceived as the same sound by the native speakers. That
> is, the word "vaca" sounds like the word "vaca" whether I say it by
> itself (with a [b] at the beginning) or with "la" in front of it (in
> which case the b becomes a [β], the aforementioned
> like-a-[v]-but-with-both-lips-instead-of-lip-and-teeth sound).
>
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>
>