Some weird-looking doublings appear in my transliteration when there's dagesh ḥazaq after maqaf, i.e. the connected (maqaf compound) form of the conjunctive dagesh. We run into this pretty early in Torah, e.g. in Gen 1:12: This looks particularly weird when we have both "together" and "split" forms of the same doubling in close proximity, as in Gen. 15:2: And this looks particularly weird (in a different way) when we have two letters representing one sound, as with "sh": To be fair, that weirdness is not specific to the connected form of the conjunctive dagesh. It looks pretty weird i ..read more

For all 594 maqaf marks in Tanakh surrounded by the same sound-code (one or two letters), I use a slash instead of a dash. Update: I found one more case, making my current total 595. That new case is worth showing because it is a pretty wild one, because it is the only case I've found for which the sound-code surrounding the maqaf is a vowel sound-code: "u" (1 Chr. 23:13): Now, of course we could debate whether, regardless of the sound-codes used in this transcription, if those are The sounds that should be made, ideally (in a given dialect of Hebrew) The sounds that would be made, reall ..read more

נצטרפו כאן שתי שיטות של ב״נ. תחילה היה מרפה את היו״ד; ואחר כך הודה לב״א והדגיש את היו״ד; והשוה כא״צ ה. 4. [/list] The following translation of the main part of this note has been graciously provided to me: The text reflects Ben Naftali, who changed his mind. First he considered the letter י [yod] rafah, then he accepted Ben Asher's tradition that it has dagesh. Statistics: Posted by bdenckla — Wed May 08, 2024 2:43 pm ..read more

1. I've noticed that there is no change in the Maqaph sign. I only changed dash to slash for maqaf marks that would introduce ambiguity if they were left as a dash. I.e. I only changed dash to slash for maqaf marks that are surrounded by the same sound-code (e.g. b, v, ts, sh, etc.). 2. Why on verse 3 [of Exodus chapter 1] the word יששכר is written ישכר? Because this is a qere-only edition and ישכר is the (implicit) ("perpetual") qere. E.g. in an edition of MAM I have prepared for a paper publisher, the ketiv/qere is made explicit, like this: 3. I've noticed that there is no Mobile Shev ..read more

You're right. The main subject was ignored. The cantillation marks divide the verses differently and with that the vowels change as well. A word whose pronunciation varies between cantillations in all communities I'm aware of is כל־מלאכתך, which, in superimposed form, looks like this: Again (but for a different reason) I feign surprise by saying: what the heck? Assuming we even remember what rafeh normally means, what the heck does it mean when combined with dagesh?! Here it may help to see the cantillations separated rather than superimposed. I provide those below, along with some phon ..read more

Hi, 1. I've noticed that there is no change in the Maqaph sign. 2. Why on verse 3 the word יששכר is written ישכר? 3. I've noticed that there is no Mobile Sheva in cases of M after a definite article, like the word המילדת on verse 15 for example. (In this case, there are two exceptions in this chapter that even though there is a Meteg, the Sheva is still silent (twice המילדות on verses 17 and 19). Statistics: Posted by ducky — Tue May 07, 2024 6:42 pm ..read more

BTW I have now web-published the current state of my Jacobson-style transliteration of all of Exodus. The transliteration is based on the edition of MAM at the core of the Al-Hatorah Mikraot Gedolot. Statistics: Posted by bdenckla — Tue May 07, 2024 5:40 pm ..read more

I started a new topic over in a different (sub-) forum since nominally, the original topic here did have to do with pronunciation, but was quite narrowly concerned with some particular words whose pronunciation varies in the two cantillations of the Decalogues. Statistics: Posted by bdenckla — Tue May 07, 2024 5:35 pm ..read more

As some of you know, I've been working on a phonetic transcription of the entire Hebrew Bible. As such, I've been looking at other similar work out there, and as part of that process I decided to write up A Review of Hebrew World's Phonetic Bible as a GitHub Gist. Sorry I didn't compose this review right here as a post. The reason I didn't do that is I find it cumbersome to include images in posts here. (Am I missing some technique that makes including images less cumbersome?) Statistics: Posted by bdenckla — Mon May 06, 2024 5:24 pm ..read more

8. Consonants. Last thing (hopefully) is about your decision to give two letters the same English letter. For example: כ-ק are both transcript as K. ו-ב are both transcript as V. ט-ת are both transcript as T. ס-ש are both transcript as S. Maybe, just like you are going for punctilious in the vowels and in the organization in the word's-letter, it would be nice to give another sign for each letter. Just maybe. These are phonetic transcriptions and thus they need to use the same Latin letter to represent the same sound. Since I am targeting a pronunciation of Hebrew that gives the same sound t ..read more