--- John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:
> Paul Bennett scripsit:
>
> > Anyone else got any information to back up either
> /4/ or /G/~/R/ for
> > ancient Hebrew? Steg? Dan? Anyone?
>
> The scholarly consensus, though not unbroken, is
> that [r] (not [4]) was
> the ancient pronunciation of resh, and that the
> prevalence of [R] in
> Israel today reflects the modern Ashkenazic pron. of
> Hebrew, which reflects
> Yiddish and Northern German.
So what do Sephardic and other dialects have for resh?
>
> It's true that resh in some ways resembles the true
> gutturals, but there
> are differences: e.g. it does not take schwa mobile.
> The argument for
> [r] rather than [4] seems to be that resh does not
> geminate; [4] naturally
> geminates as [r] but it would be hard to distinguish
> between [r] and a
> geminated [rr]: a trill is a trill.
>
> Further details at
>
http://www.shamash.org/listarchives/heblang/000726
> (search for the phrase "Resh in modern Hebrew", or
> skip about half-way down).
>
> --
> With techies, I've generally found John
> Cowan
> If your arguments lose the first round
>
http://www.reutershealth.com
> Make it rhyme, make it scan
>
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> Then you generally can
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> Make the same stupid point seem profound!
> --Jonathan Robie