Re: Jewish names

At 19:47 02.8.2000 -0400, Steg Belsky wrote:

>Hmm.....then Professor Rendsburg would seem to be in the qualitative
>school, although what he maintains in his article is that there were
>actually only the basic 6 semitic vowels in Biblical Hebrew, and that the
>whole variety of actual vowels were allophonic varients of them.
That seems to agree well with the purpose: preserving a correct liturgic
pronunciation. Cf. the Avestan alphabet, which shows vast allophonic
overkill: it even has special letters for the slightly palatalized or
velarized allophones of some sounds occurring before semivowels (e.g. [x
x^j x^w]).  Needless to say extant MSS use those triplets indiscriminately,
or nearly so.

If the manvthras aren't said correctly the Daevas will take the
sacrifice.  Nevertheless modern Parsi declamation seems to be far off the
mark, since several letters have merged in pronunciation (notably {o: a: a:@].

Mihrasp



/BP 8^)>
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  B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se mailto:melrochX@mail.com (delete X)
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