B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Jason asks

Do you, claiming that you don't read qamats qatan as [​o​], read ישמר differently in יִשְׁמֹר and יִשְׁמָר־ (whether joined by maqaf to the following letter or bearing a pronominal suffix)? In other words, do you read the ḥolam in the red below differently than you read the qamats in the blue?

יְֽהוָ֗ה יִשְׁמָרְךָ֥ מִכָּל־רָ֑ע יִ֝שְׁמֹ֗ר אֶת־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ׃
יְֽהוָ֗ה יִשְׁמָר־צֵֽאתְךָ֥ וּבוֹאֶ֑ךָ מֵֽ֝עַתָּ֗ה וְעַד־עוֹלָֽם׃

Nearly everyone who reads this pronounces both as the same imperfect form: yishmor. It doesn't matter if it's independent (יִשְׁמֹר yišmōr) or joined (יִשְׁמָרְךָ yišmorḵá or יִשְׁמָר־צֵאתְךָ yišmor-ṣēʾṯḵá).

When I read in public I read exactly as it is written. I invent no "qamats qatan", no "schwa mobile" and no "dagesh forte", and it comes all out very good.
The only question is how to read the hatephim which are made up of a double marking.

Isaac Fried, Boston University
www.hebrewetymology.com

It's weird that I keep thinking that the questions I ask will demonstrate the absurdity of what you had previously stated, that you will say, "Well, I obviously use the pronunciation that everyone else does in that case," but you don't at all. You just keep going with these weird pronouncements. I'm honestly at a loss for words.

אפרים should be seen from פרה - just like אשכר from שכר and אפרח from פרח and so on.

Isaac,
When you write that פרת is brother of פרד פרץ (and with that, you dismiss the פרה root) - you let things jump over your head.

Notice that I didn't say that you are wrong completly, but you just fail to understand what you are really saying.
And I told you once that it is weird that a guy who wrote a book about the roots don't understand what lies behind the things he writes.

(By the way, I don't want to start a conversation about this root subject, only to maybe tell you to read your own book again)

I think we've reached an impasse. Everyone knows where everyone stands. Let's close this topic.

Thanks.

So I guess no one wants to add to the spreadsheet?

Charles Loder wrote: ↑Sun Oct 18, 2020 9:33 pm So I guess no one wants to add to the spreadsheet?

I don't really know how a spreadsheet with qamats qatan forms might be advantageous. Think about it: שָׁמְרָה could be read either as 3fs perfect "she kept" [שָֽׁמְרָה šāmərâ] or as 2ms imperative "keep!" [שׇׁמְרָה šomrâ], the latter having a qamats qatan. So, making a spreadsheet and (apparently) memorizing the form as having qamats qatan won't be too effective for recognizing when a qamats qatan is used. Rather, you should learn the syntax that would indicate if it's this or that form.

That might be what keeps people from participating in the project, since it doesn't seem the most effective use of your time.

Charles Loder wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 11:51 am I've been compiling a spreadsheet of occurrences of qamets qatans. If anyone is interested is interested in helping, you can edit the sheet.

I went into the sheet, and you actually can't edit it. It's set to view only.

Jason Hare wrote: ↑Mon Oct 19, 2020 1:20 am

Charles Loder wrote: ↑Sun Oct 18, 2020 9:33 pm So I guess no one wants to add to the spreadsheet?

I don't really know how a spreadsheet with qamats qatan forms might be advantageous. Think about it: שָׁמְרָה could be read either as 3fs perfect "she kept" [שָֽׁמְרָה šāmərâ] or as 2ms imperative "keep!" [שׇׁמְרָה šomrâ], the latter having a qamats qatan. So, making a spreadsheet and (apparently) memorizing the form as having qamats qatan won't be too effective for recognizing when a qamats qatan is used. Rather, you should learn the syntax that would indicate if it's this or that form.

That might be what keeps people from participating in the project, since it doesn't seem the most effective use of your time.

I updated the permissions so people should be able to edit it now.

It's less about helping people to learn the forms, but more about sanitizing text for computer processing, especially for a project I've been doing for syllabification.

For a word like חָפְשִׁי, without lexical information there is no real way to know if the qamets under the chet is supposed to be a qatan or gadol because the character is simply a qamets. Because a regular qamets is a long vowel, the shewa would be interpreted as vocal and thus syllabified as ḥā-phǝ-šî.

If the text is preprocessed correctly, then the regular qamets can be converted to the correct qamets-qatan character, (e.g. חׇפְשִׁי not sure how well that character will print on a screen, but it is different than a regular qamets) so the computer can interpret it as a short vowel and syllabify it as ḥoph-šî.

Hopefully that makes some sense...

It looks nice. I don't know why you've included יָמִים, though. It's an unaccented open syllable, so it's ā [yāmîm] rather than o [*yomîm].

Understood. So, you want to specifically convert all the instances of qamats (U+05B8) into qamats qatan (U+05C7) for computing purposes. You need to be careful, though, that it doesn't convert חָֽכְמָה [qal perf 3fs of חכם] into חׇכְמָה [fem noun with qamats qatan]. How are you searching for the occurrences within the text to make the substitutions?

Jason Hare wrote: ↑Tue Oct 20, 2020 11:44 am It looks nice. I don't know why you've included יָמִים, though. It's an unaccented open syllable, so it's ā [yāmîm] rather than o [*yomîm].

I was under the impression that since it derives from an etymological /o/, that it is still a qamats-qatan. Similar to נָעֳמִי where the vowel under the nun is a qamats-qatan because it is from an etymological /o/.