Talk:Tiberian Hebrew

Judea: did not exist during the time stated
The article currently reads: "... Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Judea c. 750–950 CE."

No such political entity as Judea existed during the Abassid Caliphate. Also, the normal definition of ancient wouldn't include the 10'th Century of the common era.

I'm no historian. Anyone care to correct this? IAmNitpicking (talk) 03:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

No political entity perhaps, but Judea is also a geographic term for "the mountainous southern part of Palestine". It has not ceased existing simply because the area changed hands. Dimadick (talk) 08:59, 24 December 2016 (UTC)


 * That may be, but Tiberias was most definitely not in that region; it was in the Galilee. The Hebrew pointing tradition of Judea is called, ironically, the Palestinian vocalization. פֿינצטערניש (Fintsternish), she/her (talk) 17:14, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Premature Clickage
Meant to say, Undid vandalism by 107.77.220.64. Didn't feel like restoring the vandalism to fix the missing IP address. — Preceding unsigned comment added by IAmNitpicking (talk • contribs) 16:30, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Biblical Pronunciations
The biblical pronunciations do not cite any sources, at the time that I am writing this. Most of the pronunciations are corroborated by (A) grammarian's writings and (B) liturgical pronunciations. However, some of them seem questionable, and others seem blatantly wrong, but I can't be sure without the author's citations.

ע and ח I have read in many grammatical writings, including an appendix on the Kuzari that there are four "guttural", i.e. pharyngeal/epiglottal letters, namely אהח"ע. Likewise, ח and ע were definitely pronounced and, since they are both pharyngeal, and both consistent with the Sephardi and Yemenite pronunciations. However, according to the article, ח and ע might also have been pronounced as  and , respectively. Neither of them are biblical, because neither of them are neither pharyngeal nor epiglottal, and I have no idea where they get this "ע as " pronunciation from.

שֹ The שֹ is almost unanimously pronounced like the letter ס, namely. I understand that it is very unlikely that God designed his language with two letters that make the same sound, especially when one is an allophone of another unrelated consonant, but the article claims that it was pronounced like the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative. Never in my life have I heard such a pronunciation, and it sounds nothing like, so this pronunciation is almost definitely incorrect, even if the author didn't just pick a random unique consonant and call it the "biblical" pronunciation of שֹ.

ק The ק is almost unanimously pronounced, the outlier being the Yemenite pronunciation, which reserves the sound for ק and pronounces the letter גּ as  rather than. Although these consonants are unique, the letter גּ is the only one of the six בג"ד כפ"ת letters, or plosive-fricative pairs of allophones, whose allophones come from differents parts of the mouth. In Yemenite Hebrew, Labial: ב = voiced labial fricative בּ = voiced labial plosive פ = voiceless labial fricative פּ = voiceless labial plosive Dental: ד = voiced dental fricative דּ = voiced dental plosive ת = voiceless dental fricative תּ = voiceless dental plosive Velar: ג = voiced velar fricative גּ = voiced postalveolar affricate (the outlier) כ = voiceless velar fricative כּ = voiceless velar plosive Therefore, the letter גּ was almost definitely pronounced like the voiced velar plosive,. The article claims that the letter ק is pronounced, which makes sense, since it's similar enough to the nearly unanimous , but distinct from כּ, and similar to the Yemenite צ and ט which are different from ס/שֹ and תּ, because the former two are pharyngealized, and the latter two are not. Nevertheless, the article is yet to cite a source for this.

ר The ר is unanimously a rhotic consonant. I have read in many grammatical writings, including the aforementioned appendix to The Kuzari that the ר cannot take a dagesh because it cannot be doubled. Therefore, the ר was definitely pronounced as an alveolar trill or uvular trill, because trills cannot be audibly doubled. However, the article incorrectly asserts that the ר was pronounce like an alveolar flap, which can be doubled, in the Spanish word "perro", for example. SapphireBrick (talk) 21:33, 3 January 2022 (UTC)


 * The origin of these suggested pronunciations come the Greek translation of the bible, in particular the way they transliterate names. First of all, ח. This letter is transliterated as χ in the name Ραχήλ (Rachel) but as σ in the name Ισαάκ (Isaac). As for ע, it's transliterated as Γ in Γάζα (Gaza) but as nothing in Ιακώβ (Jacob). Both of these can be attested in Arabic as well. As for ש, we've got the כשדים (Chaldeans) where the ש is transliterated to λ. [ɬ] is between [s] and [l]. Also, this sound exists in south Semitic languages. TFighterPilot (talk) 13:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

The variant שׂ lost its unique pronunciation very early, possibly at the end or near the end of biblical times, and and started to be pronounced as [s]. The pronunciation as voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] is the most common reconstruction I saw for שׂ. From what I read it is hypothesis that the letters ח ,ש and ע all represented two different vowels in biblical Hebrew:

ח was both voiceless pharyngeal fricative [ħ] and voiceless uvular fricative [ꭓ].

ע was both voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ] and voiced velar fricative [ɣ].

And ש was both voiceless palato-alveolar fricative [ʃ] and voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ].

We know that the letters ח and ע were pronounced differently since when the bible was translated into Greek names with those letters were consistently transcribe in two different ways and they also correspond with those names in Arabic were they have two different letters for those different consonants, ح and خ for ח and ع and غ for ע. As with ש those second consonants change but unlike שׂ they merged with the first consonant and there was only one sound to those letters when the Niqqud was invented. 2A01:73C0:600:4F75:4F39:7716:5294:54AB (talk) 16:55, 26 March 2022 (UTC)


 * I also do not agree with much of this description, as it takes features from different points in time, without citation. I can clear up a few points, as well.
 * In the Second Temple Period, and possible after in some places, ע and ח had dual pronunciations like ש. These disappeared without a trace in modern reading traditions, but can be adduced primarily from Greek and cuneiform transcriptions of Hebrew during the second temple period, e.g. עזה = Γάζα.
 * The letter שֹ likely had a lateral pronunciation, which disappeared by the (late?) Second Temple period. We know this due to confusion of שֹ and ס in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
 * The letter ק is almost universally pronounced [q] by Jews throughout the Arab world, including parts of Yemen. The letter was almost certainly and emphatic k-sound in antiquity. The main question is whether it was originally glottal, as in Ethiopic, or originally pharyngeal.
 * In the Biblical period ר and the gutterals could be doubled, and only later did that weaken in Tiberian Hebrew. Resh could be doubled even in many traditions of Rabbinic Hebrew. אידיש שרייבער (talk) 21:05, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Conjunctive /ʔu/
The article currently says that conjunctive וּ was read as /ʔu/, equivalent to אוּ. But Geoffrey Khan's Tiberian Pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew (page 178) contradicts this, saying "the onset of the syllable represented by conjunction וּ was not ʾalef." Is this correct? Should we change the article? AJD (talk) 17:42, 21 March 2024 (UTC)