Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I'm considering converting since much of my family is historically Jewish and I'd like the chance to reconnect to Judaism.
Thank very much for your effort. I am just starting and this video was really helpful for someone like me with absolute no connection to Jews or to Judaism. I am someone to whom everything is very extremely new. I want to learn more. I'd love to learn more.
After six months this video is in my inbox again and it is welcome revision . I'm learning the basics, for me its about HaShem so He can understand a guy with many accents and pronunciations, I will keep on practising by recording myself, but I cringe when I listen to the playback. I will keep going. Thank you Rabbi.
Hello dear man, I thank you for the interesting and important video At the same time, allow me to illuminate and comment on a number of things First, most of Spain's Jews after the deportation in 1492 arrived in the Netherlands! It was not until the 16th century that some moved to Turkey when the Ottoman Sultan invited them to establish his economic empire. Another part also arrived in Italy (mainly Florence and Genoa), also following the invitation of the princes of these city rulers. As mentioned, most of the Spanish Jews deported rolled and most of them found themselves rolling to Poland (most Galician Jews are of Spanish origin) and then to Russia. A very small minority of Spanish deportees came to North Africa ruled by pirates until the 18th century (restore the Marine anthem and learn that they liberated North Africa from the pirates), so there was no point in going from bad place to even worse place! The development of Yiddish from Dutch (close to German) is accompanied by Hebrew - one must not forget that the Ladino, which developed after the expulsion of Spain, is mixed in Spanish, which is itself an Indo-European language close to German! (It must not be forgotten that most of the inhabitants of Spain are of German tribal origin). (During the Islamic period of Spain, the Jews spoke Hebrew and Jewish Arabic - Maimonides wrote his books in Arabic-Jewish) The accent of Ashkenazi Jews comes from the European language that they speak that, as is well known, European languages are not guttural! Therefore, Hebrew had to be adapted to the non-throaty language! To this day, the Jews of Europe in Israel speak non-lethal Hebrew compared to the Eastern Jews who emphasize the throaty consonants! Thank you again for everything successfully
While the video somewhat explains that Yiddish, as a European (Germanic) language, is responsible for the non-Semitic pronunciation of Ashkenazi Hebrew (a liturgical language), it still doesn’t quite go into detail of why it does so. Yes, Ashkenazi Hebrew follows the stress patterns of Germanic languages rather than Semitic languages, but the reason why ת versus תּ are pronounced differently is also because of the influence of Yiddish. The same applies to other Hebrew consonant letters which have diverged in Ashkenazi Hebrew. But let me concentrate on the Taw with and without daggesh. In Ancient Hebrew, the ת has a /t/ sound (like the T in time), but the תּ had a /θ/ sound (like the TH in three). So a word like תלמודית would be pronounced Talmudith (meaning of or relating to the Talmud), the two Taws are pronounced differently in Ancient Hebrew. In Sephardic Hebrew, the ת also has a /t/ sound (like the T in time), but the תּ has lost its original Ancient Hebrew /θ/ sound value and it assimilated into the /t/ sound because at that time there was no /θ/ in the vernacular languages spoken by the Sephardim in Iberia (Old Spanish, Portuguese, Ladino, although now modern Castilian Spanish in Spain, except for the south of Spain and also nowhere in Latin America, has evolved a /θ/ sound for words with a “z” and a “c” before “e” and “i”). But in Old Spanish and consequently in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) there never was a /θ/ sound, so Jewish persons who spoke those languages didn’t have the sound inventory to use it in their Sephardic Hebrew either. So what did they do? They merged it into the /t/, and the distinction was lost, both ת and תּ came to be pronounced the same, because Romance-speaking (Ladino, Portuguese, Old Spanish) Jews couldn’t pronounce the /θ/ sound which doesn’t exist in Ladino, Old Spanish, Portuguese. Compare to the way Irish people can’t pronounce the /θ/ because it doesn’t exist in Gaelic and the Irish instead pronounce it as /t/, therefore a Hiberno-English speaker (whose community historically adopted English as a second language in Ireland, with Gaelic as their primary tongue) will even today not say “I have three things to say” but instead say “I have tree tings to say”. In Ashkenazi Hebrew, conversely, while the ת also has a /t/ sound (like the T in time) in the same way as Ancient Hebrew and Sephardic Hebrew, nevertheless the תּ lost its /θ/ sound and was replaced by an /s/ sound because the Germanic (Yiddish) speaking Jews couldn’t pronounce the /θ/ sound which doesn’t exist in Yiddish or German or any of their other historical vernacular languages. But instead of converting it into an /t/ sound and merging the two into one sound like Sephardim did, the Ashkenazim merged the /θ/ with the /s/. Compare this to the way French people can’t pronounce the /θ/ because it doesn’t exist in French, and they instead pronounce it as /s/, therefore a second language English speaker whose first language is French will not say “I have three things to say” and instead they will say “I have sree sings to say”. Now let’s get to Mizrahi pronunciation. Mizrahim follow Sephardic pronunciation in some respects, but in other respects follow Ancient Hebrew pronunciations the same as other modern Semitic languages (like Arabic, Aramaic, etc). This is because true Sephardim are those actually descended from the Jewish exiles of Spain and Portugal, while Mizrahim are not true Sephardim although they are broadly called “Sephardim” for historical reasons. Mizrahim are those descended from the pre-existing Jews of Arab countries (except Yemen) who were distinct from true Sephardim but became heavily influenced by the Sephardi refugees following their arrival into Mizrahi communities during the exile from Spain and Portugal in 1492. During this time Sephardim became significant minorities in Mizrahi regions, and in some cases like Morocco even became the majority. Whether they did or didn’t merge together initially, true Sephardim who arrived as refugees did merge eventually with the pre-existing Mustaarabi Jews (Arabic speaking Jews) many generations later, sometimes just a few generations before they moved back to Israel after its modern founding. Through this merging, most Mizrahim came to be at least partially descended from Sephardim, but even in places where the mixing was minimal because the number of Sephardic refugees wasn’t that big compared to the pre-existing Arabic-speaking Jewish population, the liturgy and Hebrew pronunciation of the Sephardic immigrants did eventually overwhelm the old Jewish customs of the pre-existing Jews. The pronunciation of Sephardim was seen as more prestigious for whatever reason because they were Jews from Spain, that is, Jews from Europe. And so Mizrahi Hebrew is a mixture of Sephardic pronunciation with the earlier Mustaarabi Jewish pronunciation. Finally, Teimani (Yemenite) Jewish pronunciation is the closest to Ancient Hebrew pronunciation. They retain the distinction between the two Taws. However, they also aren’t pure Ancient Hebrew, because like all Jewish communities, their community vernacular language has influenced their Hebrew. Therefore some Yemenite Arabic sounds are also used for Yemenite Hebrew which most likely were not the original Hebrew either, such as the pronunciation of the Tsadi. That’s my two cents.
@@breishis you’re welcome. It’s interesting how the sounds of Hebrew letters, and therefore the pronunciation of Hebrew itself as a language, have changed so much from ancient times. Hebrew is a vastly different language today than it was when spoken by the Jewish forefathers in Ancient Israel thousands of years ago. Like all languages, it has evolved despite the best attempts to preserve it. The different pronunciation traditions of Hebrew found in different Jewish communities is a tell tale sign that the preservation wasn’t successful despite the best of efforts. I posit that Ancient Hebrew-speaking Abraham would not understand spoken Modern Hebrew of Israel today, any more than a Latin-speaking Caesar would understand the modern “Latin” of France (i.e. French) or of Spain (i.e. Spanish) today, etc etc etc. Abraham likely would struggle to understand even the recited written Biblical Hebrew of the Torah in whichever Hebrew reading traditions we were to chose (the most divergent and less likely to be understood being Ashkenazi Hebrew). The only exception being that he might understand a bit more quite possibly of Yemenite Hebrew recitation of the Torah, but even then, that tradition of Hebrew pronunciation has not escaped divergence from Ancient Hebrew either, it’s merely the most conservative version. One thing we know for sure is that Abraham wouldn’t be able to read any Torah scroll today because it is in Ashuri script (the Aramaic “Square Hebrew” alphabet adopted during the Babylonia exile). That is not the original Paleo-Hebrew script which the Torah he read in his lifetime would have been written in, which is an almost indistinguishable regional variation of the other Canaanite scripts (including the Phoenician script). I just recently viewed an old TH-cam video on the Chinook language’s letter “Ɫ” ( th-cam.com/video/_lgIaYy0C2M/w-d-xo.html ) and another video on the Welsh language’s letter “LL” ( th-cam.com/video/hQBGOb7iQZ0/w-d-xo.html ) both of which are pronounced as the IPA /ɬ/. The sound of this /ɬ/ phoneme to me sounds somewhat in between a difficultly pronounced English “s” and a difficultly pronounced English “sh” sound. It is fascinating to note that this very /ɬ/ sound representing the Chinookan “Ɫ” (an Amerindian language) and the Welsh “LL” (an Indo-European language) was actually also the original pronunciation of the “ש” in the most ancient stages of Hebrew (a Semitic language). The “ש” was in those ancient times likely called /ɬin/. However, this original pronunciation of the Hebrew “ש” as /ɬ/ was lost, probably because it became too difficult to pronounce as the Hebrew language evolved and the sounds around that original sound also evolved and affected the articulation of /ɬ/. Eventually, the original /ɬ/ of Hebrew ש evolved into the two pronunciations that the letter ש has today, “s” (/s/) and “sh” (/ʃ/). Each of the two pronunciations “ש” has today depends on where in the word the phoneme appears, because it is affected by the surrounding phonemes. So, the Ancient Hebrew letter “ש” (ɬin) has for a long time now been pronounced as either [ʃ] and written “שׁ” (the “Shin”) or as [s] and written “שׂ” (the “Sin”). Before the pronunciation of ש evolved into its two modern pronunciations , it was actually only the letter “ס” (the Samekh) which had the /s/ sound, so now there’s two letters in Hebrew (or three letters in Ashkenazi Hebrew) with the same /s/ sound (the Samekh /ס/, Sin /שׂ/, and in Ashkenazi Hebrew also Sav /תּ/). This phonemic redundancy of so many Hebrew letters with the /s/ sound is a testament to the fact that the letters representing the /s/ other than Samekh once upon a time had a different sound. Meanwhile, the Tsadi צ was originally likely an emphatic letter pronounced as /t͡sˤ/, not the current [t͡s] sound of Yiddish and modern Hebrew through influence of Yiddish, while Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews traditionally pronounce Ṣade צ as [sˤ] because of the influence of Arabic׳s letter Ṣad, while some true Sephardim (Spanish and Portuguese Jews) pronounce the Sade צ as yet another regular /s/ sound. So no Jewish community today pronounces צ properly, just as no Jewish community today pronounces ש properly.
@@SammytheawesomeILikePotatoes according to linguistic academics, Ancient Hebrew, at least at the time the Bible was originally composed, did in fact retain some of those ancient proto-Semitic features. The SH vs S split of ש is not a proto-Semitic era split, it occurred later, well after Hebrew had already branched out as a language in its own right. As already mentioned, the modern pronunciation of ש as an [s] or “sin” and as a [ʃ] or “shin” is not the original Ancient Hebrew pronunciation. The ש was in fact the [ɬ] sound found today only in Welsh among Indo-European languages, some Native American languages, and a surviving modern Semitic language. That [ɬ] sound is extremely difficult to produce, whereas Shin and Sin are not. It is only when [ɬ] is mispronounced that it distorts and collapses into either sounding like “s” or “sh”. This then explains the story of Shibboleth. It wasn’t that the Ephraimites couldn’t pronounce “ʃibboleθ” or “sibboleθ”, it was that they by that stage already couldn’t pronounce “ɬibboleθ”, and instead pronounced something closer to sibboleθ. Either way, now no modern Israelite can pronounce ɬibboleθ either, whether Jews (whatever traditional pronunciation of whichever Jewish community one chooses) or Samaritans. Edit: the original pronunciation may have been ɬibolét rather than ɬiboléθ since the ת split into two sounds later in the history of the Hebrew language under the influence of Aramaic, a long time after the era the Biblical story of the Shibboleth is recounting.
When I was new to Judaism, I asked a Jewish man, and he opined that if Tav said an 's' noise, then there would be THREE letters for the 's' sound (Shin, Samech, and Tav), but no ways to make a 'th' sound, (as in 'beth', as in Bethlehem).
, My understanding is that in Spain, many of the the medieval Jews pronounced tav as 'th'. (I think of how some Spaniards pronounce Barcelona as Barthelona) That is how we get synagogues called Beth Israel, Beth Jacob, etc. That 'th' sound now only survives (I stand to be corrected) in English transliterations of some Hebrew words/names. (e.g. Bethlehem)
My focus in this video is the current pronunciations of Sephardi/Israeli and (some) Ashkenazi dialects. I didn't go into other pronunciations. For example, how Yemenite Jews sometimes pronounce the letter gimmel as a "J:. A convert, to them, would be a Jer.
@@breishis Thank you for this. I was going to ask, but you answered before I could. I have taken some Spanish in school and through Rosetta Stone, so I know about Castilian Spanish, I didn't make the connection, however. Thanks again.
Sephardic Tav with a dot (dagesh) is hard T sound, without dagesh = th sound. (Like with Yemenite) Same with Gimmel. Gimmel with dagesh = hard g sound, without davesh = sound like "y in yellow" th-cam.com/video/u6ACA15p2rc/w-d-xo.html
all of the B a G a D C a F a T letters have 2 pronunciation in original Hebrew. one soft one hard. the Beth is B or V, the Gimmel is G or Gh, the Daleth is D or Th (as in Them), the Chaf is K or Kh, the Pey is P or F, the Tav is T or Th (as in Thanks). therefore neither the Sefaradi nor the Ashkenazi pronunciation is correct.
"Don't be drawn into the argument or into the mindset that one style of pronunciation is somehow 'correct' and the other is 'incorrect', that one is 'right' and one is 'wrong'. If I had a buck for every time a well-meaning Israeli came up to me to try to "correct" my pronunciation when I said Shabbes, tallis, mitzvahs... I'd be rich."
Thanks Daniel....Good info....
Baal teshuva here! Thank you!
You're so good at explaining thinks, a dank! :)
Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I'm considering converting since much of my family is historically Jewish and I'd like the chance to reconnect to Judaism.
Thank you. Zei Gesund.
Thank you Rabbi, you are a light in a world full of darkness.
Thank you!!
Great presentation! Thank you!
wow you explained this really good! B'H
Crystal clear.
Thank you Rabbi
Thank very much for your effort. I am just starting and this video was really helpful for someone like me with absolute no connection to Jews or to Judaism. I am someone to whom everything is very extremely new. I want to learn more. I'd love to learn more.
After six months this video is in my inbox again and it is welcome revision .
I'm learning the basics, for me its about HaShem so He can understand a guy with many accents and pronunciations, I will keep on practising by recording myself, but I cringe when I listen to the playback.
I will keep going.
Thank you Rabbi.
Keep going. He building and strengthening your relationship with the Creator! May you grow from strength to strength!
Great video! I'm converting right now, and in my synagogue, it's overwhelmingly in the Sephardic pronunciation. Thanks for helping me to learn!
Believe me, the pleasure is mine. Thank YOU for your kind and encouraging words.
I would like to hear the pronunciation on the letter r and z
Where can I find out how to learn the galitzianer pronunciation of lushn kodesh?
it is good. Good job, but Why didn't you mention the Yemenite Hebrew Pronunciation?
Hello dear man,
I thank you for the interesting and important video
At the same time, allow me to illuminate and comment on a number of things
First, most of Spain's Jews after the deportation in 1492 arrived in the Netherlands!
It was not until the 16th century that some moved to Turkey when the Ottoman Sultan invited them to establish his economic empire.
Another part also arrived in Italy (mainly Florence and Genoa), also following the invitation of the princes of these city rulers.
As mentioned, most of the Spanish Jews deported rolled and most of them found themselves rolling to Poland (most Galician Jews are of Spanish origin) and then to Russia.
A very small minority of Spanish deportees came to North Africa ruled by pirates until the 18th century (restore the Marine anthem and learn that they liberated North Africa from the pirates), so there was no point in going from bad place to even worse place!
The development of Yiddish from Dutch (close to German) is accompanied by Hebrew - one must not forget that the Ladino, which developed after the expulsion of Spain, is mixed in Spanish, which is itself an Indo-European language close to German! (It must not be forgotten that most of the inhabitants of Spain are of German tribal origin). (During the Islamic period of Spain, the Jews spoke Hebrew and Jewish Arabic - Maimonides wrote his books in Arabic-Jewish)
The accent of Ashkenazi Jews comes from the European language that they speak that, as is well known, European languages are not guttural! Therefore, Hebrew had to be adapted to the non-throaty language!
To this day, the Jews of Europe in Israel speak non-lethal Hebrew compared to the Eastern Jews who emphasize the throaty consonants!
Thank you again for everything successfully
Thank you for your comments and insights.
While the video somewhat explains that Yiddish, as a European (Germanic) language, is responsible for the non-Semitic pronunciation of Ashkenazi Hebrew (a liturgical language), it still doesn’t quite go into detail of why it does so.
Yes, Ashkenazi Hebrew follows the stress patterns of Germanic languages rather than Semitic languages, but the reason why ת versus תּ are pronounced differently is also because of the influence of Yiddish. The same applies to other Hebrew consonant letters which have diverged in Ashkenazi Hebrew. But let me concentrate on the Taw with and without daggesh.
In Ancient Hebrew, the ת has a /t/ sound (like the T in time), but the תּ had a /θ/ sound (like the TH in three). So a word like תלמודית would be pronounced Talmudith (meaning of or relating to the Talmud), the two Taws are pronounced differently in Ancient Hebrew.
In Sephardic Hebrew, the ת also has a /t/ sound (like the T in time), but the תּ has lost its original Ancient Hebrew /θ/ sound value and it assimilated into the /t/ sound because at that time there was no /θ/ in the vernacular languages spoken by the Sephardim in Iberia (Old Spanish, Portuguese, Ladino, although now modern Castilian Spanish in Spain, except for the south of Spain and also nowhere in Latin America, has evolved a /θ/ sound for words with a “z” and a “c” before “e” and “i”). But in Old Spanish and consequently in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) there never was a /θ/ sound, so Jewish persons who spoke those languages didn’t have the sound inventory to use it in their Sephardic Hebrew either. So what did they do? They merged it into the /t/, and the distinction was lost, both ת and תּ came to be pronounced the same, because Romance-speaking (Ladino, Portuguese, Old Spanish) Jews couldn’t pronounce the /θ/ sound which doesn’t exist in Ladino, Old Spanish, Portuguese. Compare to the way Irish people can’t pronounce the /θ/ because it doesn’t exist in Gaelic and the Irish instead pronounce it as /t/, therefore a Hiberno-English speaker (whose community historically adopted English as a second language in Ireland, with Gaelic as their primary tongue) will even today not say “I have three things to say” but instead say “I have tree tings to say”.
In Ashkenazi Hebrew, conversely, while the ת also has a /t/ sound (like the T in time) in the same way as Ancient Hebrew and Sephardic Hebrew, nevertheless the תּ lost its /θ/ sound and was replaced by an /s/ sound because the Germanic (Yiddish) speaking Jews couldn’t pronounce the /θ/ sound which doesn’t exist in Yiddish or German or any of their other historical vernacular languages. But instead of converting it into an /t/ sound and merging the two into one sound like Sephardim did, the Ashkenazim merged the /θ/ with the /s/. Compare this to the way French people can’t pronounce the /θ/ because it doesn’t exist in French, and they instead pronounce it as /s/, therefore a second language English speaker whose first language is French will not say “I have three things to say” and instead they will say “I have sree sings to say”.
Now let’s get to Mizrahi pronunciation. Mizrahim follow Sephardic pronunciation in some respects, but in other respects follow Ancient Hebrew pronunciations the same as other modern Semitic languages (like Arabic, Aramaic, etc). This is because true Sephardim are those actually descended from the Jewish exiles of Spain and Portugal, while Mizrahim are not true Sephardim although they are broadly called “Sephardim” for historical reasons. Mizrahim are those descended from the pre-existing Jews of Arab countries (except Yemen) who were distinct from true Sephardim but became heavily influenced by the Sephardi refugees following their arrival into Mizrahi communities during the exile from Spain and Portugal in 1492. During this time Sephardim became significant minorities in Mizrahi regions, and in some cases like Morocco even became the majority. Whether they did or didn’t merge together initially, true Sephardim who arrived as refugees did merge eventually with the pre-existing Mustaarabi Jews (Arabic speaking Jews) many generations later, sometimes just a few generations before they moved back to Israel after its modern founding. Through this merging, most Mizrahim came to be at least partially descended from Sephardim, but even in places where the mixing was minimal because the number of Sephardic refugees wasn’t that big compared to the pre-existing Arabic-speaking Jewish population, the liturgy and Hebrew pronunciation of the Sephardic immigrants did eventually overwhelm the old Jewish customs of the pre-existing Jews. The pronunciation of Sephardim was seen as more prestigious for whatever reason because they were Jews from Spain, that is, Jews from Europe. And so Mizrahi Hebrew is a mixture of Sephardic pronunciation with the earlier Mustaarabi Jewish pronunciation.
Finally, Teimani (Yemenite) Jewish pronunciation is the closest to Ancient Hebrew pronunciation. They retain the distinction between the two Taws. However, they also aren’t pure Ancient Hebrew, because like all Jewish communities, their community vernacular language has influenced their Hebrew. Therefore some Yemenite Arabic sounds are also used for Yemenite Hebrew which most likely were not the original Hebrew either, such as the pronunciation of the Tsadi.
That’s my two cents.
Thank you for the explanation. It also clears up why so many American synagogues are named 'Beth Israel' and 'Beth Tzedek'.
@@breishis you’re welcome. It’s interesting how the sounds of Hebrew letters, and therefore the pronunciation of Hebrew itself as a language, have changed so much from ancient times.
Hebrew is a vastly different language today than it was when spoken by the Jewish forefathers in Ancient Israel thousands of years ago. Like all languages, it has evolved despite the best attempts to preserve it.
The different pronunciation traditions of Hebrew found in different Jewish communities is a tell tale sign that the preservation wasn’t successful despite the best of efforts.
I posit that Ancient Hebrew-speaking Abraham would not understand spoken Modern Hebrew of Israel today, any more than a Latin-speaking Caesar would understand the modern “Latin” of France (i.e. French) or of Spain (i.e. Spanish) today, etc etc etc.
Abraham likely would struggle to understand even the recited written Biblical Hebrew of the Torah in whichever Hebrew reading traditions we were to chose (the most divergent and less likely to be understood being Ashkenazi Hebrew).
The only exception being that he might understand a bit more quite possibly of Yemenite Hebrew recitation of the Torah, but even then, that tradition of Hebrew pronunciation has not escaped divergence from Ancient Hebrew either, it’s merely the most conservative version.
One thing we know for sure is that Abraham wouldn’t be able to read any Torah scroll today because it is in Ashuri script (the Aramaic “Square Hebrew” alphabet adopted during the Babylonia exile). That is not the original Paleo-Hebrew script which the Torah he read in his lifetime would have been written in, which is an almost indistinguishable regional variation of the other Canaanite scripts (including the Phoenician script).
I just recently viewed an old TH-cam video on the Chinook language’s letter “Ɫ” ( th-cam.com/video/_lgIaYy0C2M/w-d-xo.html ) and another video on the Welsh language’s letter “LL” ( th-cam.com/video/hQBGOb7iQZ0/w-d-xo.html ) both of which are pronounced as the IPA /ɬ/. The sound of this /ɬ/ phoneme to me sounds somewhat in between a difficultly pronounced English “s” and a difficultly pronounced English “sh” sound.
It is fascinating to note that this very /ɬ/ sound representing the Chinookan “Ɫ” (an Amerindian language) and the Welsh “LL” (an Indo-European language) was actually also the original pronunciation of the “ש” in the most ancient stages of Hebrew (a Semitic language). The “ש” was in those ancient times likely called /ɬin/.
However, this original pronunciation of the Hebrew “ש” as /ɬ/ was lost, probably because it became too difficult to pronounce as the Hebrew language evolved and the sounds around that original sound also evolved and affected the articulation of /ɬ/.
Eventually, the original /ɬ/ of Hebrew ש evolved into the two pronunciations that the letter ש has today, “s” (/s/) and “sh” (/ʃ/).
Each of the two pronunciations “ש” has today depends on where in the word the phoneme appears, because it is affected by the surrounding phonemes.
So, the Ancient Hebrew letter “ש” (ɬin) has for a long time now been pronounced as either [ʃ] and written “שׁ” (the “Shin”) or as [s] and written “שׂ” (the “Sin”).
Before the pronunciation of ש evolved into its two modern pronunciations , it was actually only the letter “ס” (the Samekh) which had the /s/ sound, so now there’s two letters in Hebrew (or three letters in Ashkenazi Hebrew) with the same /s/ sound (the Samekh /ס/, Sin /שׂ/, and in Ashkenazi Hebrew also Sav /תּ/). This phonemic redundancy of so many Hebrew letters with the /s/ sound is a testament to the fact that the letters representing the /s/ other than Samekh once upon a time had a different sound.
Meanwhile, the Tsadi צ was originally likely an emphatic letter pronounced as /t͡sˤ/, not the current [t͡s] sound of Yiddish and modern Hebrew through influence of Yiddish, while Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews traditionally pronounce Ṣade צ as [sˤ] because of the influence of Arabic׳s letter Ṣad, while some true Sephardim (Spanish and Portuguese Jews) pronounce the Sade צ as yet another regular /s/ sound.
So no Jewish community today pronounces צ properly, just as no Jewish community today pronounces ש properly.
@@dsp6373 the shin sin difference is so old, that I don’t even know if you would consider that ancient Hebrew, or Proto semetic.
@@SammytheawesomeILikePotatoes according to linguistic academics, Ancient Hebrew, at least at the time the Bible was originally composed, did in fact retain some of those ancient proto-Semitic features. The SH vs S split of ש is not a proto-Semitic era split, it occurred later, well after Hebrew had already branched out as a language in its own right.
As already mentioned, the modern pronunciation of ש as an [s] or “sin” and as a [ʃ] or “shin” is not the original Ancient Hebrew pronunciation. The ש was in fact the [ɬ] sound found today only in Welsh among Indo-European languages, some Native American languages, and a surviving modern Semitic language.
That [ɬ] sound is extremely difficult to produce, whereas Shin and Sin are not. It is only when [ɬ] is mispronounced that it distorts and collapses into either sounding like “s” or “sh”.
This then explains the story of Shibboleth. It wasn’t that the Ephraimites couldn’t pronounce “ʃibboleθ” or “sibboleθ”, it was that they by that stage already couldn’t pronounce “ɬibboleθ”, and instead pronounced something closer to sibboleθ. Either way, now no modern Israelite can pronounce ɬibboleθ either, whether Jews (whatever traditional pronunciation of whichever Jewish community one chooses) or Samaritans.
Edit: the original pronunciation may have been ɬibolét rather than ɬiboléθ since the ת split into two sounds later in the history of the Hebrew language under the influence of Aramaic, a long time after the era the Biblical story of the Shibboleth is recounting.
@@dsp6373 ahh I see, though I guess technically wouldn't it be shibbolet? I think the double sounds were later during Aramaic era Hebrew.
Todah rabah
that book looks like L’Shoni, the beginner’s book
When I was new to Judaism, I asked a Jewish man, and he opined that if Tav said an 's' noise, then there would be THREE letters for the 's' sound (Shin, Samech, and Tav), but no ways to make a 'th' sound, (as in 'beth', as in Bethlehem).
, My understanding is that in Spain, many of the the medieval Jews pronounced tav as 'th'. (I think of how some Spaniards pronounce Barcelona as Barthelona) That is how we get synagogues called Beth Israel, Beth Jacob, etc. That 'th' sound now only survives (I stand to be corrected) in English transliterations of some Hebrew words/names. (e.g. Bethlehem)
My focus in this video is the current pronunciations of Sephardi/Israeli and (some) Ashkenazi dialects. I didn't go into other pronunciations. For example, how Yemenite Jews sometimes pronounce the letter gimmel as a "J:. A convert, to them, would be a Jer.
@@breishis Thank you for this. I was going to ask, but you answered before I could.
I have taken some Spanish in school and through Rosetta Stone, so I know about Castilian Spanish, I didn't make the connection, however.
Thanks again.
Sephardic Tav with a dot (dagesh) is hard T sound, without dagesh = th sound. (Like with Yemenite)
Same with Gimmel. Gimmel with dagesh = hard g sound, without davesh = sound like "y in yellow"
th-cam.com/video/u6ACA15p2rc/w-d-xo.html
all of the B a G a D C a F a T letters have 2 pronunciation in original Hebrew. one soft one hard. the Beth is B or V, the Gimmel is G or Gh, the Daleth is D or Th (as in Them), the Chaf is K or Kh, the Pey is P or F, the Tav is T or Th (as in Thanks). therefore neither the Sefaradi nor the Ashkenazi pronunciation is correct.
Yemenite Hebrew and Iraqi(Baghdadi) Hebrew have Closer to Biblical Army.
Шалом увраха. Как жаль что нет перевода на русский язык...
Я приношу извинения за неудобства
The Sephardic pronunciation is the correct one. Ashkenazim really distort the pronunciation.
"Don't be drawn into the argument or into the mindset that one style of pronunciation is somehow 'correct' and the other is 'incorrect', that one is 'right' and one is 'wrong'. If I had a buck for every time a well-meaning Israeli came up to me to try to "correct" my pronunciation when I said Shabbes, tallis, mitzvahs... I'd be rich."