how to pronounce some words

[bdenckla]

The Tiberian didn't make Qamats distinctions because they had only one Qamats with one sound- so there was nothing to distinct.
It is only other dialects that didn't pronounce the Qamats but used the Tiberian system, created two sounds for the Qamats according to their tradition (the tradition that we basically follow in speech).

I don't think it is so clear that Tiberians only intended qamats to represent one sound. I would be curious to know what Khan has to say about this. There are some intriguing instances in the Tiberian manuscripts where they use ḥataf qamats where we would use qamats qatan today, indicating a possible "desire" for something like a qamats qatan symbol. I can't find the references at the moment. All very speculative, I admit. So, overall yes, I agree, all we can say is that from our perspective, qamats distinctions are missing from the Tiberian manuscripts. The Tiberians may well have perceived nothing to be missing, either because they found those distinctions clear from context, or because there were no such phonetic distinctions being made in their target dialect of Hebrew!

As for the Shewas - it is somewhat fluid.
Because in the traditional reading, it is not fully about "grammar".
A grammatical Mobile Sheva can be read as silent and vice versa.
And the Tiberian dialect for example, had different ways.
But indeed, there are cases that it was "nice" to see more signs.

I agree that part of the problem with sheva is that there is disagreement among different traditions as to which is vocal and which is silent. And even within a community, in fact even within a single person, there are more elevated/careful reading styles (e.g. chanting publicly) vs. reading the Bible more informally (e.g. during small group study). This is true in English, if you think about it. When carefully pronouncing a word (to a non-native speaker or even a native one, who is having problems understanding you) I think certain sheva sounds become vocal, i.e. syllables (albeit short ones) come "out of nowhere".

And as you point out there is the question of theory vs. even "elevated" practice. This is one reason we have two encodings of many words in MAM: we have both a "theoretical" one, in which a disputed qamats is qatan, and a "Sephardic/practical" one, in which that qamats is gadol.

[ducky]

Hi Ben,

Can you please give an example about the Qamats instances that you wrote at the beginning of your comment.
I have to see a specific verse to have an opinion.
The Hataph-qamats is basically the same sound of the Qamats (but reduced).

In Sephardic, there is a distinction between Qamats Qatan (o) and Qamats Gadol (a) which actually makes the readers sometimes go against the intention of the Masora. (just like in the case of לקחה-זאת in Adam and Eve story or אלקטה in Ruth story).
Those who wants to read so "accurate" do not realize that they are doing exactly the opposite of the Masora intentions.

[bdenckla]

Can you please give an example about the Qamats instances that you wrote at the beginning of your comment.

I found the references, but they are in a pre-publication article I got directly from the author. So, I don't feel free to share it publicly until the article comes out. For now, I will share them with you via private message.

[ducky]

Hi Ben,

Thank you very much.
I'll read it later and write you.