B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Hi:

I was listening to Jonah 2:3 (in some versions this is also Jonah 2:2) over at animatedhebrew.com (speaker='Beeri') and when he pronounces שִׁוַּ֖עְתִּי (šiw·wa‘·tî)I keep hearing 4 syllables. It's as if I'm hearing the "silent ayin" - I'm hearing "shi - va - ah - ti".

so my question is - is the "silent ayin" being pronounced as it's own syllable, or is Beeri just "elongating the pathach", sort of like pronouncing it as "shi - vaaaaaa - ti"

Thanxs!

Glenn

They're probably just trying to express the fact that there is an ayin there. It sounds like a vowel to you, but it is a consonant.

http://bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org/

one way to "capture," and thereby recall, the presence of ayin is to make it a glottal stop, like alef, AND then "nazalize" its vowel;

First of all, all Hebrew letters were consonants.

Secondly, how the letters were pronounced is still guesswork.

That the Ayin is sometimes transliterated as a “g” gives a clue that it was a glottal stop, i.e. neither a full “g” nor silent.

As for modern pronunciation, we’re not talking about that.

Karl W. Randolph.