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From: rao@utcsstat.UUCP (Eli Posner)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Pronouncing Hebrew and Wombat Mitzvah
Message-ID: <1751@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Feb-84 19:14:24 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1751
Posted: Tue Feb 28 19:14:24 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Feb-84 19:43:15 EST
References: <197@masscomp.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
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[]

Andy Tannenbaum states:

>>There is no TH sound in Hebrew!  When you see TH in a transliteration,
>>it means that the Hebrew letter was an S sound, but they want you to
>>pronounce it like a T sound.  This is because there are two major
>>ways to pronounce Hebrew, as there are two major places where Jews
>>have lived in the old world:
>>
>>	The Ashkenazim (the right way - the way I was taught ;-)
>>	pronounce the S as S.  Ashkenazim are Eastern European Jews.
>>
>>	The Sephardim (the other way) are Middle Eastern and Spanish
>>	(African) Jews.  They pronounce the S like a T.
>>
Although I know that you were joking when you said that Ashkenazit was
'the right way', I still would like to comment.

First of all, Ashkenazit AND Sepahrdit are BOTH WRONG. They are both
distant imitations of the real 'loshen haKodesh'. The Sephardic way
is MUCH closer though. (Since they pronounce the 'ayeen' and 'chet'
and other letters, distinct to the 'aleph and 'chof' respectively; in
addition to other reasons).

Personally, I was brought up to talk and read like the Ashkenazim (my parents),
but I have recently changed to the Sepahrdic pronunciation.

Andy mentioned that 'th' was really 's'. NOT CORRECT!!!!!!!
This past year I learned 'in depth' about the Hebrew language. Here are
some things I learned that are relevant to this discussion:

Letter	                        Old Hebrew Pronunciation
___________________________________________________________

'Taf' with DAGESH (dot in it)		'Th' as in 'THing'

'Taf' without Dagesh (known as 'Suf')    'Th' as in 'THe'

BELIEVE IT OR NOT!!!

I now consider myself a 'boki' in 'dikduk' (:-)).
Any questions or comments?
-- 
Eli Posner
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!utcsstat!rao