Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...

of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Hebrew: ''Tān ...

(Tanakh) committed to writing by

Masoretic The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...

scholars living in the Jewish community of

Tiberias Tiberias ( ; he, טְבֶרְיָה, ; ar, طبريا, Ṭabariyyā) is an Israeli city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's Fo ...

in ancient

Galilee Galilee (; he, הַגָּלִיל, hagGālīl; ar, الجليل, al-jalīl) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Galilee traditionally refers to the mountainous part, divided into Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and Lower Galil ...

under the

Abbasid Caliphate The Abbasid Caliphate ( or ; ar, الْخِلَافَةُ الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, ') was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib ...

. They wrote in the form of

Tiberian vocalization The Tiberian vocalization, Tiberian pointing, or Tiberian niqqud (Hebrew: ''haNīqqūḏ haṬəḇērīyānī'') is a system of diacritics (''niqqud'') devised by the Masoretes of Tiberias to add to the consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible to p ...

, which employed

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...

added to the

Hebrew letters The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish ...

: vowel signs and consonant diacritics ( nequdot) and the so-called accents (two related systems of

cantillation Cantillation is the ritual chanting of prayers and responses. It often specifically refers to Jewish Hebrew cantillation. Cantillation sometimes refers to diacritics used in texts that are to be chanted in liturgy. Cantillation includes: * Chant ...

signs or ''te'amim''). These together with the marginal notes masora magna and masora parva make up the Tiberian apparatus. Though the written vowels and accents came into use in around 750 CE, the oral tradition that they reflect is many centuries older, with ancient roots.

Sources

Today's Hebrew grammar books do not teach the Tiberian Hebrew that was described by the early grammarians. The prevailing view is that of

David Qimchi ''Cervera Bible'', David Qimhi's Grammar Treatise David Kimhi ( he, ר׳ דָּוִד קִמְחִי, also Kimchi or Qimḥi) (1160–1235), also known by the Hebrew acronym as the RaDaK () (Rabbi David Kimhi), was a medieval rabbi, biblical comme ...

's system of dividing the graphic signs into "short" and "long" vowels. The values assigned to the Tiberian vowel signs reveals a Sephardi tradition of pronunciation (the dual quality of qames () as , ; the pronunciation of simple ''sheva'' () as ). The

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

of Tiberian Hebrew can be gleaned from the collation of various sources: * The

Aleppo Codex The Aleppo Codex ( he, כֶּתֶר אֲרָם צוֹבָא, romanized: , lit. 'Crown of Aleppo') is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The codex was written in the city of Tiberias in the tenth century CE (circa 920) under the ...

of the Hebrew Bible and ancient manuscripts of the

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''

Israel Yeivin Israel Yeivin (Hebrew: ישראל ייבין) (born January 7, 1923 in Berlin – died December 19, 2008) was an Israeli linguist, scholar of Masorah and the Hebrew language. Biography Israel Yeivin was born in Berlin. His family immigrated to P ...

) as well as the anomalous use of the raphe sign over letters that do not belong to or . * The explicit statements found in grammars of the 10th and the 11th centuries, including the ''Sefer haQoloth'' of Moshe ben Asher (published by N. Allony); the ''Sefer Dikdukei ha-Te'amim'' ( Grammar or Analysis of the Accents) of

Aaron ben Moses ben Asher Aaron ben Moses ben Asher (Hebrew: ; Tiberian Hebrew: ''ʾAhărōn ben Mōše ben ʾĀšēr''; 10th century, died c.960) was a Jewish scribe who lived in Tiberias in northern Israel and refined the Tiberian system of writing vowel sounds in Hebr ...

; the anonymous works entitled ''Horayath haQoré'' (G. Khan and Ilan Eldar attribute it to the Karaite Abu Alfaraj Harun); the ''Treatise on the Schwa'' (published by Kurt Levy from a

Genizah A genizah (; , also ''geniza''; plural: ''genizot'' 'h''or ''genizahs'') is a storage area in a Jewish synagogue or cemetery designated for the temporary storage of worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics prior to proper ceme ...

fragment in 1936), and ''Ma'amar haschewa'' (published from Genizah material by Allony); the works of medieval Sephardi grammarians including Abraham Ibn Ezra and

Judah ben David Hayyuj Judah ben David Hayyuj (Hebrew: ר׳ יְהוּדָה בֶּן דָּוִד חַיּוּג׳ Arabic: أبو زكريا يحيى بن داؤد حيوج Abu Zakariyya Yahya ibn Dawūd Hayyūj) was a Moroccan Jewish linguist. He is regarded as the fath ...

. In the last two, it is evident that the chain of transmission is breaking down or that their interpretations are influenced by local tradition. * Ancient manuscripts that preserve similar dialects of

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

Palestinian Aramaic The Western Aramaic languages represent a specific group of Aramaic languages once spoken widely throughout the ancient Levant, from ancient Nabatea and Judea, across Palestine and Samaria, further to Palmyra and Phoenicia, and into Syria proper ...

but are vocalized in Tiberian signs in a "vulgar" manner and so reveal a

phonetic spelling A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the phonemes (significant spoken sounds) of the language. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographi ...

rather than a

phonemic spelling A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the phonemes (significant spoken sounds) of the language. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographi ...

. They include the so-called "pseudo-Ben Naphtali" or "Palestinian-Sephardi" vocalized manuscripts, which generally conform to the rules enumerated below, such as pronouncing ''sheva'' as before consonantal yod, as in . * Other traditions such as the vocalization of the

Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine (see also Isra ...

and (to a lesser extent) the

Babylon ''Bābili(m)'' * sux, 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠 * arc, 𐡁𐡁𐡋 ''Bāḇel'' * syc, ܒܒܠ ''Bāḇel'' * grc-gre, Βαβυλών ''Babylṓn'' * he, בָּבֶל ''Bāvel'' * peo, 𐎲𐎠𐎲𐎡𐎽𐎢 ''Bābiru'' * elx, 𒀸𒁀𒉿𒇷 ''Babi ...

ian vocalization. Each community (Palestinian, Tiberian, Babylonian) developed systems of notation for pronunciation in each dialect, some of which are common among the traditions. * The transcriptions of Biblical text into Arabic characters and then vocalized with Tiberian signs (by members of the Karaite community) provide an aid to pronouncing Tiberian Hebrew, especially for syllable structure and vowel length (which is marked in Arabic by

matres lectionis ''Matres lectionis'' (from Latin "mothers of reading", singular form: ''mater lectionis'', from he, אֵם קְרִיאָה ) are consonants that are used to indicate a vowel, primarily in the writing down of Semitic languages such as Arabic, ...

and the sign

sukun The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , '). The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where sh ...

). * Various oral traditions, especially that of

Yemenite Hebrew Yemenite Hebrew ( ''ʿĪvrīṯ Tēmŏnīṯ''), also referred to as Temani Hebrew, is the pronunciation system for Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Hebrew has been studied by language scholars, many of whom believe it to retai ...

pronunciation and the Karaite tradition, have both preserved old features that correspond to Tiberian tradition, such as the pronunciation of schwa according to its proximity to gutturals or yod.

Phonology

Consonants

Tiberian Hebrew has 29 consonantal phonemes, represented by 22 letters. The

sin dot Shin (also spelled Šin (') or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Shin , Hebrew Shin , Aramaic Shin , Syriac Shin ܫ, and Arabic Shin (in abjadi order, 13th in modern order). Its sound value is a voice ...

distinguishes between the two values of , with a dot on the left () being pronounced the same as the letter Samekh. The letters (

begadkefat Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the name given to a phenomenon of lenition affecting the non- emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not geminated. The name is also given to similar cases of s ...

) had two values each:

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...

and

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

. The following are the most salient characteristics of the Tiberian Hebrew consonantal pronunciation: *

Waw Waw or WAW may refer to: * Waw (letter), a letter in many Semitic abjads * Waw, the velomobile * Another spelling for the town Wau, South Sudan * Waw Township, Burma *Warsaw Chopin Airport, an international airport serving Warsaw, Poland (IATA ai ...

conjunctive was read, before the labial vowels () and shva (), as , rather than (as is the case in some eastern reading traditions). * The threefold pronunciation of

Resh Resh is the twentieth Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician Rēsh , Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew Rēsh , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic Rēsh , Syriac alphabet, Syriac Rēsh ܪ, and Arabic script, Arabic ...

. Even though there is no agreement as to how it was pronounced, the rules of distribution of such pronunciation is given in ''Horayath haQoré'': : a) "Normal" Resh pronounced thus (according to Eldar, as a uvular sound ) in all other instances (except for the circumstances described below): : b) The "peculiar" resh before or after Lamed or Nun, any of the three being vocalized with simple ''sheva'' and Resh after Zayin , Daleth , Samekh , Sin , Taw , Tzadi , Teth , any of them punctuated with simple ''sheva'': , . Because of the proximity of a

dental consonant A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , . In some languages, dentals are distinguished from other groups, such as alveolar consonants, in which the tongue contacts the gum ridge. Dental c ...

, it is likely that Resh was then pronounced as an

alveolar trill The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. ...

, as it still is in

Sephardi Hebrew Sephardi Hebrew (or Sepharadi Hebrew; he, עברית ספרדית, Ivrit S'faradít, lad, Hebreo Sefardíes) is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jewish practice. Its phonology was influenced by ...

. : c) There is still another pronunciation, affected by the addition of a dagesh in the Resh in certain words in the Bible, which indicates it was doubled : . As can be seen, this pronunciation has to do with the progressive increase in length of this consonant (). It was preserved only by the population of Ma'azya (מעזיה), which is in Tiberias. * A possible threefold pronunciation of Taw ת. There are three words in the Torah, Prophets, and Writings in which it is said that "the Taw is pronounced harder than usual". It is said that this pronunciation was halfway between the soft Taw ת and the hard Taw תּ :

Vowels

#marginal The vowel qualities have phonemic status: (Lev. 5:19) and 'guilty', 'when' and 'mother'. has phonemic value in final stressed position , but in other positions, it may reflect loss of the opposition : . By the Tiberian period, all short vowels in stressed syllables had lengthened, making vowel length allophonic.In fact, all stressed vowels were first lengthened in pause, see , as can be seen by forms like Tiberian < *, pausal < * < * < *. The shift in Tiberian Hebrew of * > * occurred after that lengthening but before the loss of phonemicity of length (since words like with allophonically long show no such shift). Vowels in open or stressed syllables had allophonic length (such as in , which was previously short).That is attested to by the testimony of Rabbi

Joseph Qimḥi Joseph Qimḥi or Kimchi (1105–1170) ( he, יוסף קמחי) was a medieval Jewish rabbi and Hebrew Bible, biblical commentator. He was the father of Moses Kimhi, Moses and David Kimhi, and the teacher of Rabbi Menachem Ben Simeon and poet Jo ...

(12th century) and by medieval Arabic transcriptions: . There is also possible evidence from the cantillation marks' behaviour and Babylonian pataḥ: . The Tiberian tradition possesses three reduced (ultrashort, ''hatuf'') vowels of which has questionable phonemicity.See 'ships' 'I', 'sickness' 'ornament', 'ascend!' (Num 21:17) and '(with the) pestle' (Prov 27:22). alternates with frequently and rarely contrasts with it: '

Edom Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east.N ...

' versus 'Edomite'. is clearly phonemic but bears minimal

functional load In linguistics and especially phonology, functional load, or phonemic load, refers to the importance of certain features in making distinctions in a language. In other words, features with a high functional load distinguish more words from others i ...

. is written both with ''mobile šwa'' and ''hataf patah'' . , under a non-guttural letter, was pronounced as an ultrashort copy of the following vowel before a guttural ( ) and as preceding , ( ). However, it was always pronounced as under gutturals: .

Stress

Tiberian Hebrew has phonemic stress ( 'they built' vs. 'in us'). Stress is most commonly ultimate, less commonly penultimate, and rarely antepenultimate stress: 'into the tent'. In fact, it is not clear that a reduced vowel should be considered to be a whole syllable. For example, a word's stress shifts to a preceding open syllable to avoid it from being adjacent to another stressed syllable skips over ultrashort vowels: 'with those who go down into the pit' 'pierced with a sword'. See

Phonotactics

As described above, vowel length is dependent on syllable structure. Open syllables must take long or ultrashort vowels; stressed closed syllables take long vowels; unstressed closed syllables take short vowels. Traditional Hebrew philology considers ultrashort vowels not to be syllable nuclei.

Orthography

The simple ''sheva'' sign changes its pronunciation depending on its position in the word (mobile/vocal or quiescent/

zero 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation Positional notation (or place-value notation, or positional numeral system) usually denotes the extension to any base of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system (or ...

) and its proximity to certain consonants. In these examples, it has been preferred to show one in the Bible and represents each phenomenon in a graphic manner (a chateph vowel), but the rules still apply when there is only a simple ''sheva'' (depending on the manuscript or edition used). When the simple ''sheva'' appears in any of the following positions, it is regarded as mobile (na): * At the beginning of a word, which includes the ''sheva'' (originally the first of the word) following the attached particles bi-,ki-,li- and u- and preceded by ''metheg'' (the vertical line placed to the left of the vowel sign, which stands for either secondary stress or its lengthening). Examples: Genesis 2:12; Psalms 74:5. But is not pronounced if there is no ''metheg''; that is, they form a closed syllable. * The ''sheva'' following these three vowels , except for known types of closed syllables (and preceded or not, by metheg). Examples: Exodus 3:18; Exodus 4:18. * The second of two adjacent ''sheva''s, when both appear under different consonants. Examples: Jeremiah 31:33; Jeremiah 32:9 (except for at the end of a word, ). * The ''sheva'' under the first of two identical consonants, preceded by metheg. Examples: Gen. 14:7; Exodus: 15:10. * The ''sheva'' under a consonant with

dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of mod ...

forte or lene. Examples: Isaiah 9:3; Ezekiel 17:23. * The ''sheva'' under a consonant that expects gemination but is not so marked, for example, the one found under . And sometimes even when preceded by the article. Examples: Genesis 12:3; 2 Chronicles 33:18. * In case a quiescent ''sheva'' was followed either by a guttural or

yodh Yodh (also spelled jodh, yod, or jod) is the tenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Yōd /𐤉, Hebrew Yōd , Aramaic Yod , Syriac Yōḏ ܝ, and Arabic . Its sound value is in all languages for which it is used; in many lan ...

, it would turn into mobile according to the rules given below, if preceded by a metheg. Ancient manuscripts support that view. Examples: Proverbs 28:22; Job 1:3. * Any ''sheva'', if the sign metheg is attached to it, would change an ultrashort vowel to a short, or normal length vowel. For this, only ancient, reliable manuscripts can give us a clear picture, since, with time, later vocalizers added to the number of methegs found in the Bible. The gutturals (), and yodh (), affect the pronunciation of the ''sheva'' preceding them. The allophones of the phoneme follow these two rules: * It would change its sound to imitate that of the following guttural. Numbers 3:17; Numbers 5:28. * It would be pronounced as ''ḥireq'' before consonantal ''yodh''. Examples: Jeremiah 21:1; in

Maimonides Musa ibn Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (); la, Moses Maimonides and also referred to by the acronym Rambam ( he, רמב״ם), was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah ...

' autograph in his commentary to the Mishnah.These two rules, as well as the rule that ''metheg'' changes ''sheva'' from an ultrashort to a normal vowel, are recorded by

Solomon Almoli Solomon ben Jacob Almoli (before 1485 – after 1542) was a rabbi, physician and Hebrew author of the sixteenth century; lived in the Ottoman Empire, probably in Constantinople. As a physician he seems to have enjoyed quite a reputation, but he is b ...

in his ''Halichot Sheva'' (Constantinople 1519), though he states that these differences are dying out and that in most places vocal ''sheva'' is pronounced like ''segol''. In

Oriental The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the ...

communities such as the

Syrians Syrians ( ar, سُورِيُّون, ''Sūriyyīn'') are an Eastern Mediterranean ethnic group indigenous to the Levant. They share common Levantine Semitic roots. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indi ...

, these rules continued to be recorded by grammarians into the 1900s (such as Sethon, Menasheh, ''Kelale Diqduq ha-qeriah'', Aleppo 1914), but they were not normally reflected in actual pronunciation. The rules about ''yodh'' and ''metheg'', though not the rule about gutturals, is still observed by the

Spanish and Portuguese Jews Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the i ...

of Amsterdam: Rodrigues Pereira, Martin,'' 'Hochmat Shelomoh''. It must be said that even though there are no special signs apart to denote the full range of furtive vowels, the remaining four () are represented by simple ''sheva'' (ḥaṭaf ḥiriq () in the Aleppo Codex is a scribal oddity and certainly not regular in Hebrew manuscripts with Tiberian vocalization). All other cases should be treated as zero vowel (quiescent, nah), including the double final ''sheva'' (double initial ''sheva'' does not exist in this Hebrew dialect), and the ''sheva'' in the words and , read by the Tiberian Masoretes as and respectively. This last case has similarities with phenomena occurring in the Samaritan pronunciation and the

Phoenician language Phoenician ( ) is an extinct language, extinct Canaanite languages, Canaanite Semitic languages, Semitic language originally spoken in the region surrounding the cities of Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre and Sidon. Extensive Tyro-Sidonian trade and commerci ...

. Depending on the school of pronunciation (and relying on musical grounds, perhaps), the

metheg Meteg (or meseg or metheg, Hebrew: , lit. 'bridle', also , lit. 'bellowing', , or ) is a punctuation mark used in Biblical Hebrew for stress marking. It is a vertical bar placed under the affected syllable. Usage Meteg is primarily used in ...

sign served to change some closed syllables into open ones, and therefore, changing the vowel from short to long, and the quiescent ''sheva'', into a mobile one. That is referenced specifically by medieval grammarians: The names of the vowel diacritics are iconic and show some variation:

Notes

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tiberian Vocalization Language of the Hebrew Bible Medieval languages Extinct languages of Asia