IPA symbols for practico and van pelt

[Matthew Longhorn]

Hi all, wondering if anyone has come across a reliable guide to showing the pronunciation scheme used in Pratico / Van Pelt’s grammar?
I would be especially interested in it for the 3rd singular type 2 pronominal suffix - qamets yod waw

[Jason Hare]

It's pronounced as av. For instance, סוּסָיו is read as IPA /su.'sɑv/.

I wouldn't get too hung up on pronouncing it like the authors of that textbook. Their pronunciation is very American. (I'm being political.)

[Matthew Longhorn]

Thanks for the response Jason.
I know there is a pronunciation debate in Greek with approaches from Modern, Erasmian, restored / imperial Koine etc. Is that the case with Hebrew as well?
Any guides you know of that do follow IPA for a scheme you reckon is authentic. And is authentic for you an attempt to reconstruct the sounds of the letters and words as they would have sounded? I am assuming even that is a broad question given the range of time the Hebrew texts were written across?

[Jemoh66]

It’s -av today. Sometime in the middle ages the waw became a vav. The Yemenite Jews have preserved the waw. The -aw pronunciation is itself an obvious development since the consonants suggests a primordial -ayu

[Matthew Longhorn]

I was confused about why the yod seems silent if av or aw. I was really struggling to wrap my mouth around ayw

[Jason Hare]

The yod is simply marking the plural. It's present so that there is a visual distinction between סוּסוֹ "his horse" and סוּסָיו "his horses." You pronounce it as if the yod were not there. So, it can appear as סוּסָו (written defectively) in the Bible without affecting either the meaning or the pronunciation.

Vav was probably v in Hebrew long before the Middle Ages. We know that the word "back" is spelled both as גַּב and as גַּו in the text of the Bible (link). I don't know if that's explicable apart from the letter ו being pronounced like ב, which allows gav to come across both as גַּב and as גַּו in Hebrew.

There are those who advocate a w sound based on Arabic and other Semitic languages. It seems more reasonable, though, to look at the evidence for long-standing pronunciation within Hebrew if there is evidence. What we have actually shows that vav has been v since at least the Second-Temple Period.

[Matthew Longhorn]

Thanks both. Really useful and had hopefully stopped me sounding completely stupid when trying to pronounce things.

In a similar vein - I sometimes have trouble distinguishing the pronunciation of the hateph vowels from their counterparts. Eg hateph patach from the patach. Should there be a distinction when pronounced?

Sorry for what must be such basic questions

[Jason Hare]

No, there is no distinction.

Kamats sounds like patach sounds like chataf-patach [ɑ].
Tsere sounds like segol sounds like chataf-segol [ɛ].
Cholam sounds like kamats-katan sounds like chataf-kamats [o].

The vowel lengths generally have to do with syllabification. A word's specific shape may affect the coloration of the e vowels, so that (just as in Spanish) [ɛ] sometimes becomes more like [e], especially at the end of a word.

[Jemoh66]

Jason, it's entirely possible it goes that far back. There was a parallel movement in Greek away from w to v. For example eu from ew to ev

[ralph]

It's pronounced as av. For instance, סוּסָיו is read as IPA /su.'sɑv/.

I wouldn't get too hung up on pronouncing it like the authors of that textbook. Their pronunciation is very American. (I'm being political.)

What do you mean re how it's "American"?

(Besides that pronunciation has not got much to do with world politics)

They pronounce the Dalet like the TH in THe. That's not exactly "American". That's a reconstruction of the ancient hebrew. And is the Yemenite pronunciation of the letter.

Have you listened to the audio in their vocabulary cards?

What words are they saying there that you think they are saying in an american accent?

And by the way they way you say it is pronounced, That it's like the "a" in "father", which is this in IPA /ɑ/ which is what you wrote there with /su.'sɑv/. So that's the same sound that you say there, not different.

And a related note re the OP's question.

They transliterate the kamatz with this system http://www.viceregency.com/Translit.htm (SBL Handbook Of Style) (link mentioned by jemoh66 here viewtopic.php?t=781 ). But note that, that isn't an indicator of pronunciation, it isn't IPA. But they do use the word "father", which would have the a like IPA /ɑ/

(I sometimes think of it like /ʌ/ as in the u in "duck", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_ ... nded_vowel I don't know if that's right,
But most sources put it as /ɑ/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_unrounded_vowel including pratico and pelt, so you can't go far wrong there! ).