@@abdulmalik767 We have evidence it's the oldest "semitic" language, as for the Nostartic language hypotheses, that's a different conversation. Though DNA does show Arabs being the Basal Eurasians from which the rest split.
As someone who grew up in a Muslim culture, Yemenite Hebrew interests me profoundly. Because to me, it sounds the closest to Arabic both in pronunciation and melody when reciting the holy texts.
Some consider it as closest to original pre-babylonian hebrew. Rabbi Bar-Chayim of Machon Shiloh institute believe every letter had it's own sound except aforementioned ,,begadkefet" and shin which would have double pronounciation with palatalised ,,s" [ ʃ ]/ [ɕ] since there is allready ,,S" (samech) and ,,ʕS" (ʕsaadi) like in arabic. Check out his channel, might be resourceful.
Yemenite jew here, very nice hearing the differences between the ancient pronunciations, my grandparents sounds completely different from the Sanaani pronunciation- but still nice seeing some form of original Yemenite accent ! תודה רבה
@@BiblicalCulture nice! I am half Yemenite Jewish and half Ashkenazi Jewish - sadly I never met my ashkenazi grandfather so I don’t have a clue what his pronunciation was like
I absolutely LOVE this! Only recently I learned of my family's Jewish heritage...I can't learn enough or fast enough! So, thank you for helping me as I learn of who I am and where I came from! I'm so happy I found your channel!
@@daleknight8971 "it is exciting to hear these tzadikim (dont know how to translate it)... RIP, may their voice be heard and resonate to the people of israel until the coming of messiah son of david amen" thats the translate
Guys, HERE is The Savior YaH The Heavenly FATHER HIMSELF was Who they Crucified/Pierced for our sins and “HERE IS THE PROOF” From the Ancient Egyptian Semitic: "Yad He Vav He" is what Moshe (Moses) wrote, when Moses asked YaH His Name (Exodus 3) Ancient Egyptian Semitic Direct Translation Yad - "Behold The Hand" He - "Behold the Breath" Vav - "Behold The NAIL"
What a great video! Thoroughly enjoyed this! Particularly that of the Yemenite Hebrew & Samaritan. Yes I have a bias as my lineage is half ashkenaz and half Yemenite. I grew up speaking with an Ashkenazi accent. It's so wonderful to hear Hebrew in so many different ways.
This is absolutely fascinating! I'm very glad to have access to this kind of content from someone who can actually highlight the differences... Because as a student of Hebrew I always wonder how the prophets and the great people of the past pronounced their words, and I believe that this kinda traces us back to how Hebrew used to be pronounced... thanks a lot for such invaluable content!!
@@BiblicalCulture You missed that the oilam on lithuanian hebrew is ei instead of the modern ashkenazi/hassidish is oy. The former is almost extinct. for example real litvaks would say simches tairah instead of simches toirah which is the shtam way today
I am not jewish for a long time ago I was obsessed with the authentic sound of Hebrew, and did a lot of researches on it. Seeing this video now for me is amazing.
It’s a major pet peeve of mine when people say “Yemenite” when it’s only Sanaani pronunciation. Just because it is the most common pronunciation doesn’t mean it’s the only one.
That’s why I specified exactly where each reader came from, writing “Yemenite (Sanaa)” instead of just “Yemenite.” There are recordings from other places in Yemen too.
SHALOM Ariela, yemenite Jews left Israel 400 befor TS. And I speak fluwenly classic arabic. Jemenites atleast pronouncing Hebrew in a old Semitic way and are yousing ancient words.
How could you say Mizrahi sounds "less changed"? We don't know how did Ancient Hebrew sounded. Also, there were many Ancient Hebrews, since the language kept evolving and there's a huge time fram between the first temple and the destruction of the second. While the early Hebrew might have been influenced by Egyptian and Canaanite languages, the one spoken after the Persian exile had Persian and Aramaic influence. To finish, Ashkenazi and Temani both have some similarities Sephardic doesn't have, like Tav/Sav and kammatz aleph pronounced as "o".
@@לואיסרוסאס-ספיר I don't think I could say it better than the comment above with the ancient Hebrew signature line. The Mizrachim remained thousands of mile closer to Ancient Israel. Plus, although not many, there are people whose families never left Israel, never exiled. Their Hebrew and the Hebrew of those who have been in Israel for many, many generations sound closer to Mizrachi than Ashkenazi. Lastly, even if it's not closer it definitely sounds far more Middle Eastern which to me is a more pleasant and more authentic sound
@@shevetlevi2821 first of all, most Jews were expelled from the land of Israel. Then, many other languages came to influence Hebrew, like Persian, Greek, and Arabic. By the way, Arabic is a Southern Semitic language, while Hebrew is a Levantine one. The Hebrew spoken in Yemen was influenced by local variants of Arabic, as was the Hebrew of other parts of the world. True, it was influenced by a Semitic language, but you cannot say is "pure" as there's no "pure Hebrew", as the language was always influenced by other languages. The Hebrew spoken by Salomon was definitely a different one than the spoken by Hebrews in Sinai and after the Persian exile, and the one spoken in Talmudic times... Languages always evolve
Of course languages evolve. And obviously we were exiled from Israel long ago. But some remained, and some were exiled to not far away. In any case this isn't a linguistics thesis, and you're being pedantic. I'm just saying that RELATIVE to Ashkenazi Hebrew Mizrachi Hebrew sounds closer to the source. I've had many native born Israelis tell me that. And that aside I like the sound better. You okay with that?
In Cantillation, Yemenites omit final syllable stress when the word is conjoined to the next word. This is prescribed by the cantillation system, as can be gleaned from B. Kleiner's study published in 2017 and 2019. Coincidentally, this old Ashkenazi recitation with its shift of emphasis for some words ends up having some of the same rhythm as a Yemenite chant, though the disjunctions are recited as pauses instead of melismas.
@@flat-earther Yemenites follow all of the cantillation signs. You can read Kleiner's 2019 article for the demonstration. But the 2017 article is easier to read. In fact, Yemenite believe that other Jewish traditions ignore the cantillation signs, because they stress syllables that are supposed to conjoin to the next word!
@@BiblicalCulture Really? What makes you say that? That would be fun. I just got back from Israel and noticed that I wasn't the only one with my own pronunciation! (Rusty, with an American accent and occasional errors.) I struggled to understand some people who had clearly been around awhile, and then there are the newer accents of recent immigrants. No one corrected me or acknowledged my tourist status. I think it would be fun if more Hebrew speakers had a distinct pronunciation of the letter ayin. 😊In the 80s I was told that only the Yemenis pronounced it correctly, although I didn't hear it in these particular recordings.
Totally agree with: Mizrachi sounds over the Ashkenazi sounds as they seem much less changed from ancient times - Ashkenaz means Germany, while Mizrach/Egypt has a very close and crucial Biblical connection to the development, so the names define the proximity to the true sound, in my opinion
It's a lot more complex than that. There were different pronunciations throughout - the Tiberian Hebrew for example was different to the Babylonian, and to the Eretz-Yisraeli. And some of these differences manifested themselves several times in history, since. It's not as easy to delineate along Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Mizrachi lines.
You could add a note, the last Ashkenazi reading was not done with the "trup" but the typical Ashkenazi learning sing song still heard today when a Dvar Torah is given. My second comment would be , to add the polish or Hungarian pronunciation.
11:50 what's also unique about the (Spanish &) Portuguese pronunciation is that they differentiate between the Gimmel with and without the dagesh (dot). Without it's similar to a French 'r' or the modern Hebrew 'khav'. With a dagesh it's the same as modern Hebrew. This is similar to some north African countries, some Yemenite and Babylonian (Iraqi). Additionally, they pronounce the Hé with a dagesh as extending the noun of the preceding letter, i.e. 'Shemah' (her name) would be pronounced as 'Shemaha'. This is called in Hebrew grammar the 'Hé mapiq'.
Thanksfor this very interesting and informative video. I just would like to suggest a correction: at 7:17 the "daleth" without dagesh is pronounced as the Arabic equivalent ذ "dhaal", not like ث (tav without dagesh) "thaa".
I liked the Italian recital because the guy reciting it can sing and he sounds melodic which I believe the people of Biblical times were very capable of reciting the scriptures melodically.
Very true. (I study Hebrew Cantillation academically, and early Judaism and Christianity as a hobby.) Gentile tourists would come to Jerusalem during the High Holy Days to listen to Jewish music and watch both dances and prayers. It was a cultural capital drawing on the artistic tastes of an entire Diaspora with EACH year. For many, that would produce the ancient equivalent of our world-class taste in music because of the internet: an international music literacy. Italian cantillation is the only tradition to preserve Hebrew names for the Psalm cantillation signs (i.e. the "dta-'amei eameatth") and also is said to have stubbornly protected their style of chant from adopting the extremely melismatic flourishes of the Roman Christian church like other branches of Judaism did.
Guys, HERE is The Savior YaH The Heavenly FATHER HIMSELF was Who they Crucified/Pierced for our sins and “HERE IS THE PROOF” From the Ancient Egyptian Semitic: "Yad He Vav He" is what Moshe (Moses) wrote, when Moses asked YaH His Name (Exodus 3) Ancient Egyptian Semitic Direct Translation Yad - "Behold The Hand" He - "Behold the Breath" Vav - "Behold The NAIL"
@@joedee1863 RUclips lately auto- removes my comments when I write in links. I don't practice the Italqi tradition, myself, but a rabbinical musicology student recently sent me their Thesis on Italian-Jewish Torah chant to get my opinion. So I expect to know more about it soon.
@@Yamikaiba123 - yes YT is a tyrant and i have experienced it first hand. Any thing you can share with me that enhances my appreciation for the musical content evident in the scriptures would be gratefully received. Thank you.
"Sound recording was an exceptional achievement in 1857. Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) Edison's phonograph was also extraordinary. Not only did it record sounds, it allowed them to be reproduced at will." 👇 Origins of Sound Recording: The Inventors - National Park Service If the Masoretes scribes have already created a Nikkudot system in the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew, it proves that in their time there was a change in the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew words and because of that they thought of having a standard before 920 C.E. If recording had been invented in the 19th Century, there would have been a gap of 900 years from their time that there would have been a greater change in pronunciation in speech. The recording from the 19th - 20th century cannot prove what is the original pronunciation especially if the few people being filmed or voice recorded do not have a background reference to their origin. In comparison the 10th century scribes who recognized what the original pronunciation was more credible than 900 years later.
Hi, linguist here specializing in Hebrew phonetics. The sad thing is that most likely we will never ever be able to know how Hebrew (or any other language) was pronounced in the past. All we have are approximations. While it is nice to think that one community, like that of the Yemenites, preserved the true, pristine, original phonetic quality of the language as it was spoken in the time of the First Temple, the reality is that each Jewish group was heavily influenced buy it's surrounding, and not a single one possesses the true and authentic sound. Or, in reverse, each and every type of pronunciation is equally true and authentic, in their own way, and they are somehow genetically connected to the original source. There is no reason to exalt one pronunciation over the other. Moreover, there are traces of changing pronunciation already recorded in the Bible. While it is a fascinating journey to consider all these traces and nuances, the best advice I can give you is to just follow Hebrew pronunciation of your community, or use modern Hebrew as a reference point. This is the best way to stay sane. This is a rabbit hole and many sort of... never came back. Good luck everybody.
Very well said. I think there are a few moving targets people today are striving for: Hebrew of Bible times, Hebrew of Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew (or Aramaic) of Jesus, Hebrew of the Tiberian Masoretes, Hebrew of individual communities like in this video, Israeli Hebrew, or some mix and match of everything altogether.
The different pronunciations reflect the local languages and countries in which the Jews interacted for many generations. For Jews from middle eastern countries and Iran, one can distinctly single out the accent and pronunciation of the local language and dialects, Yemenite, Babylonian/Iraqi, the Maghreb region, etc. The same goes for the Ashkenazi pronunciation, which was influenced by Yiddish, German, and Slavic languages.
Seems to me that the Shechem and the Baghdad pronunciations are influenced by Arabic. Just like the Jews in the US pronounce the Hebrew with an American accent... Countries and languages have different dialects within a few miles from eachother.... The G and the JJ shifting is like Gog of Magog in Hebrew and Jjojj and Majjojj in Arabic...
incredible to get all of these perspectives. i'm just a beginner in biblical hebrew, but have the aid of ge'ez, amharic, and tigrinya hearing. do you have any guesses as to what could be the original? I would love to hear the djerba island tunisian biblical hebrew hearing. my bet is on them!
Djerba had a private Torah trope for schoolboys that was structured like Sephardi cantillation but sounded like Ashkenazi Torah chant. Might be super old!
You have Ge'ez and Amharic? Are you familiar with either the Ethiopian Jewish liturgy or the Tewahedo Orthodox liturgy? They both seem like very deep branches, to me, musically. I haven't had the privilege of hearing many examples of Ethiopian Psalmody, but one that I did hear in group chant on RUclips had the same melody as a solo Romaniote (Jewish) Psalm from Greece, except that it was sung slower.
@@Yamikaiba123 i wish to learn of the bete israel (eth jewry) more in person one day, i am an ordained minister of the tewahido orthodox and know the liturgy. peruse my channel or just search "misbak" on youtube and you will find our renditions of the meezmor dawid.
GREAT VIDEO. I understand for another video that ilatian dialect is a sephardic variant. I hear in this video that the italian cantor said nang'omi (nang'ami) for na'ami instead of na'ongmi, same use of NG' in the word ra'av, he said like raNG'av. But, remember that he is singing and not reading or speaking, when a cantor sing he change same vowels for the note sometimes.
I am just allergic to the current American pronunciation. I have an actual physical reaction when an American walks next to me on the streets of Be'er Sheva while speaking Hebrew. I have shivers in my spine and I roll my eyes. I guess probably because of the American vowels and American "r". It just sounds like they put zero effort into it and just pronounce it as they would English. Also, not many people in Israel (modern Hebrew speakers) can understand the Yemenite pronunciation. I think it's mostly connected to the speed by which it is pronounced, double consonant pronunciation and changes in the vowel sounds.
In Jewish Day school, in the 2000s, you could always tell who was an Isareli or the child of an Israeli. But 90% of us weren’t, so we didn’t like pronouncing it like “Israeli Hebrew.” The language we were taught was still “modern Hebrew.” We just chose to speak it how we normally talked, which was with a slight Texas accent. If you thought “r” was annoying, well you would be freaking out here lol. Only a few synagogues in the Greater Houston area used the Ashkenazi pronunciation. My synagogue is one of the oldest, and we use modern Hebrew (Sephardic based), even though we are nearly 100% Ashkenazi.
@@petarjovanovic1481 haha. Yeah, whenever I think about our community, I just remember that life is really beautiful, and really diverse. We all sound different, but we all read the same unchanging texts. And thanks for your comment. I didn’t know Israeli and Yemenite Hebrew were that different that israelis could barely get it.
@@Mer1912 This is because you are not exposed to a lot of diverse cultures among the Jews. As a Yemeni Jew, I can tell you that there are Jews who are not Yemenis who many years ago moved to an area of Yemenis in Israel and prayed in their synagogues and over time they got used to the Yemeni pronunciation and today they understand it well.
I learned Hebrew as an adult since my family is mostly not religious and I learned in Israel, namely Arad and Beersheva in the 1990's. I can understand an Israeli leading prayer or as a ba'al korei reading the Torah much better than an American Ashkenazi. I prefer Sephardic pronunciation and with the video I could follow the Bagdad pronunciation best with Yemenite in second place, probably due to my time in Beersheva. It was quite common to hear the vav as wav and it was not uncommon to hear Arabic not only from Bedouin but also the old Mizrachi men. As an American I am constantly aware of my tendency to slip into an Anglo-Saxi pronunciation not good in Israeli ears.
A few points you missed out from some of the recording's. But I want to look specifically at the Ashkenazi one, he says yainkov or more specifically yainkiv as opposed to Yaakov, that extra "n" may seem out of place to americans or Israeli's but it would seem that this is very much from tradition that even tho they lost the "ayin" or Oinyin that the Samaritan's had they still kept the trace of it in some words like Yaakov I'd assume probably because it's a common name, so even tho over the millennia or two they lost the full pronunciation (probably because it was so different to the native countries they are in) they still kept that word due to using it do often. I'm really curious on the 'ches' and 'hei' like did the Germans cause their "ch" to come into the tongue of the Jews or was 'ches' always In Hebrew (or at least for 2500 years) but the other's lost it because it was so hard for them, and so different from their native languages. I've never seen anything on this, but I'd be very interested if there is anything. Anyway I really enjoyed this video, I hope to check out some more from your channel. Thank you very much!
I worked at a business where our customers were from all over the world. I noted that while English speaking people from other countries could communicate, there were differences in our "common" language. Same thing in Hebrew.
09m:18s - I wonder if the pronunciation of "ע" as "ng" in the Italian version may indicate a possible relation between /ŋ/ (voiced velar nasal) and /ʕ/ (voiced pharyngeal fricative) in the era when this kind of pronunciation began.
when i heard the italian version, i had the desire to order a pizza. but i think the Yemenite version is the most authentic accent to the paleo hebrew because of the poetic form.
We, the Jewish people, don't Reay write out the name of the almighty as you just did and under no circumstance do we pronounce it. We usually say HaShem in informal speech, Adonai or Elohim in more formal ones.
The proper pronunciation of tachas/tachat is with the accent on the first syllable. This is seen in printed versions where the cantillation mark is on the first syllable and when it has an etnachta/esnachto or sof pasuk, the patach of the first syllable changes to a kamatz. It's usual in Hebrew for two syllable words when both are vocalized with a patach. It's also the way it's pronounced in modern Hebrew. The fellow from Kovno made other shifts to the penultimate syllable, though, so your point is well taken. It's interesting than he didn't read it with the trop/cantillation. His pronunciation is similar to mine and my father's. Among many Ashkenazim, that accent shift is found during study and often prayer, but for the public reading of the Torah the proper accents are observed. Since he didn't use the cantillation, he was probably not a ba'al korei (one who does the public reading), and, unused to stressing the correct syllable, read with the colloquial accent of study and prayer. Thank you for this.
Just like Jews all over the world eat different food, we have slightly different culture, whether Sephardi, Italkim, Romaniote, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi. *Am Yisroil Chai!*
While you concentrate here on the pronunciation of the words, I found the differences in the way the _trop_ (cantillation) sounds fascinating, too. Imitating the former is easy enough, once you learn the rules. (A quick glance through an _alef beis_ primer can do that.) But learning the _trop_ is quite a bit more involved. (The _Litvak_ skipped the _trop,_ and the Italian wasn't reading _Chumash;_ of course _Rus_ sounds very different.)
I'm reading a thesis on Italqi Torah chant. I heard from a researcher that they don't have tropes but that their Torah recitation is more free (albeit structured) and works more like Psalmody. The reading tradition may be what Torah chant was like before the Tiberian Masorah! But, I think different peoples had their own traditions going back to those times, too. They just adapted them differently with the times.
amsterdam portuguese pronunciation also differs from modern hebrew quite a lot more than described in the video. Along with the differences from modern hebrew already mentioned, ג without dagesh is pronounced like a (guttural) khaf sound, a he mapiq הּ is pronounced by doubling the preceding vowel, tzere and seghol are pronounced like a french é and close attention is payed to pronouncing the shewa na’ and nah
Interesting and informative clip and the recordings are beautiful and priceless. Some notes: 1. While you showed a wide variety of pronunciations of Jews from Islamic countries and accordingly, the pronunciations of Ashkenazic Jewry probably has less of a variety, but it is too bad you didn't include the Galicianer/Chasidic pronunciation - where they pronounce ברוך אתה as "booreekh atu"; i.e. the קמץ as "oo" as in "tooth", the שורוק as an "ee" as in "teeth" and the חולם as an "ay" as in "play". 2. I would call your "American Ashkenazi" accent an "American Modern Orthodox Ashkenazi" accent, since the "American Misnagde Charedi" accent has one noticeable difference, the חולם pronounced as an "oy" - my guess, taken from the German dipthongs "eu" and "äu" and used to distinguish from the "aw" or "oh" of a קמץ. 3. My guess is that the Yemenite Hebrew pronunciation does not include the Modern Hebrew vowel of "eh" since Arabic only has three vowels ("ah", "oo" and "ee") though the Yemenite pronunciation DOES include the צירי. The Yemenite pronunciation also mirrors Arabic in בגד כפת, though the Yemenite pronunciation includes the "p" and "v" sounds in the "ו" and "פ" with a dagesh. Some Yemenites pronounce "ג" without a dagesh as "gh" (the Arabic ﻍ) and the "ג" with a dagesh as "j". The letters of "ד", "כ" and "ת" without a dagesh are "kh", "d" and "th" - as in "thing" (the Arabic د, ﺥ and ﺙ) and the letters of "ד", "כ" and "ת" with a dagesh are "k", "th" - as in "this" and "t" (the Arabic ﺫ, ﻙ and ﺕ). 4. My guess is that Ashkenazic pronunciation changed the ת without a dagesh from "th" to "s" due to the fact that German has no "th" sound. (See second 32 of this clip ruclips.net/video/0MUsVcYhERY/видео.html). 5. The Amsterdam Portuguese pronunciation of "המערה" as "המנארה" is interesting and may have had something to do with the Yiddish pronunciation of יעקב as יענקב and the nickname Yanki? 6. My guess is that Modern Hebrew was built on the fact that there are no similar pronunciations in German, Polish and Russian to the Arabic (ﺡ, ﺙ, ﺫ, ص, ض, ط, ظ, ع, ﻍو,و and ﻕ). As a result, "ו" and "ב" without a dagesh became the same, as did "ת" and "ט" as did "ח" and "כ" without a dagesh, "כ" with a dagesh and "ק", as well as "ג", "ד" and "ת" whether with or without a dagesh.
So re: no. 3 aside from the obvious borrowing of a j from the Arabic jīm used as the gimmel with a dagesh and the qof being pronounced as a gof (in certain yemenite dialects just as the local Arabs would've pronounced it too) it's actually the closest dialect to Tiberian Hebrew outlined in the masoretic texts.
Re: no. 6, no modern Hebrew vowels comes from the pronunciation reform that took place after the Alhambra decree and subsequent Spanish inquisition that forced a load of Sephardi Jews south to north Africa and eastwards to Greece and most importantly ottoman Turkey. It was in ottoman Turkey that their rabbis decided to simplify their vowels to make them all the same length just as the Turks had with Turkish (which we can still hear in modern Turkish)
And modern Hebrew was the combination of those standardised Sephardi vowels with Ashkenazi letters aside from the tav in order to simplify the language for new immigrants from central and eastern Europe, predominantly
Re: no. 4, could be true but German also had a 'th' sound (at least in the early middle ages). It's also a natural consonant progression for a th to become a s or vice versa as we see in Spanish for example
I am yemenite jew and i would like to correct a mistake you had when tou wrote "Hejjetholim". There are 2 mistakes here. First, unlike other jews, yemenite jews pronounce the שוא (the two dots bellow the letter ג) as A not E. So it suppose to be "Hajjatholim" with an A instead E. Second, the חולם (the small dot in the top-left corner of the letter ד), that you interpreted as O, isn't exactly an O. קמץ (kamatz, which is a small T bellow the letter) is exactly an O. But there is a difference in the חולם (holam). חולם is pronounced as something between O and E (I am sure that there is an official sign for this but i dont know it :)). Actually this difference is so well known in the community that there are areas in Yemen that pronounce the חולם as an actual E! For example משה (moses) is "mesha" instead of "mosha" or "mo'sha".
@@BiblicalCulture HaJatho'lim when the o' is the sound between o and e, and the th is like in the word "the" not like in the word "think". Try to listen carefully to the recordings on the website you mentioned and find the difference between חולם and קמץ (it is noticeable). As to your question, my ancestors are from a small town in north yemen called jabal amar (جبل عمر). It is relatively close to the city of Hajjah (حجة). Happy to help :)
@@תובנותמהתואר I'd say that this sound you're trying to describe as between an o and an e is the same o as in the english exclamation: oh! Which is just how ashkenazim would pronounce it too
Bukharian Pronunciation is very similar to Yemenite. Though not exactly. Shva and holem is same as in yemenite. The deferences are with ק, ג, ד and ת. Daled and tav same as modern Hebrew. Gimel is Ghimel without dagesh. Kuf is Quf like in Iraqi Hebrew.
The Yemenite reading here is very influenced by Arabic, which does explain his pronunciation of gimel and qop. His melodic reading is also very reminiscent of how Muslims read the Qur'an.
There are different Yemenite pronuciations. Some pronounce it as Jimmel and Guf, and others, such as the Sharabi dialect, its pronounced Gimmel and Quf, which is like Aramaic as well.
In the Shomroni reading I did hear the ב without the dot it's like v. Also, he has proper ח though it is not as strong as modern Hebrew. I believe is reading is influenced by Arabic. The ה when it is at the beginning of the word sounds like el which is probably an Arabic influence for example instead HaHetzroni he read El Hetzroni
Interesting observations. Some ח‘s do sound like ה but others are completely absent. I didn’t mention it but the ל at the beginning of words is more of an “el” compared to “le”, which as you mention is similar to Arabic.
Shalom Rabbi, Since not all who are attracted to your videos, read the Hebrew Alpha Bet, may I suggest you write or say the meaning - in English - of the words you've picked as examples. Thank You.
You should do another video like this and add the Kavkazi Jews. There is a video of them on RUclips it is a very old recording of mountain Jews. They also recited Hebrew with the Arabic pronunciations like the yemenites. Amazing.
Ohh man, your video referencing that great site is sooo valuable. Even if all souls are familiar with hebrew letters (some rab said), this is great. Thnx you!
Israel was more than just Judah. Much of the northern kingdom of Israel consisted of Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph. Samaritans trace their origins to these tribes. Jews trace their origins to the southern kingdom, which was primarily made up of Judah.
Yes, good point, but Hashem is usually for regular conversation. When reading Torah it is customary to use the more significant Adonai אדני. Others will only use the name Adonai during a synagogue service.
@@eh2542 Het and ayin are pronounced by most eidut hamizrah. Bahdadi, Halabi, AL Massri, Moroccan, they all pronounce it. Israeli Hebrew not so much, so many of them in Israel are sloppy.
What version of Hebrew heard on the recordings is the closest to what paleo Hebrew sounded like? Would someone today be able to understand a person in the court of king Hezekia or perhaps a prophet from northern Israel ?
I love your channel. Sorry about my english, I will give my contribution to the topic: In biblical hebrew, the bet without dagest was not a B or V, but a voiced bilabial fricative (check "voiced bilabial fricative" on wikipedia, they have a sound example). Almost a B, but without touching lips. This changed in some groups to the modern V sound, but in others it became exclusively B (sephardim and samaritans). The Pe without dagesh was not exactly a F, but a P without touching lips. Check "voiceless bilabial fricative" on wikipedia. The Het and Khaf were different. While Het was a "lung" sound, Khaf is the throat-scratcher like modern hebrew Khaf. The ayin was pronounced just like the arabic ayin. Dalet and Taw without dagesh were dh (or a th, like THis) and th (like THing). That is why some groups pronounce the Taw without dagesh as S (Shabos vs Shabat). Because in biblical hebrew it was nor S nor T, but TH. Whenvour first language doesnt have a specific phoneme, we tend to use the most similar one that we have in our language. For example, in Brazil we speak portuguese, we do not have the Th sound, so we use F or S or T instead (fing or ting to say Thing). Thats what happened with all jews around the world in our exile. This is our history. The 1st century jews spoke a language called today Palestinian Aramaic. They had 3 main dialects, with little differences: Judean dialect was the "official" one. It is the one that you see in bar kokhba letters. Samaritan dialect, which was closer to the galilean dialect. And finally the galilean, the most common, but it was a not respected dialect, it was seen as "wrong" because they tended to not pronounce the gutturals (sadi, qof, tet, ayin, het). Their "He" was very weak, almost inexistant. That is why in Galilee they frequently wrote the names like Yeshayahu, Yermiyahu as Yeshayu, Yermiyu. Interestingly, the galilean dialect was the one who became the main dialect (because the romans destroyed the Judea, and Galilea became the center of the jewish intelectual production in Erets Yisrael). That is why many groups do not pronounce the guturals (and because the languages of their exile countries didnt had those sounds, so it started to disappear in their hebrew). The Sadi, Tet, Qof, we dont know how they were pronounced in biblical hebrew. Some think that they were "stops" like in amharic and georgian, and some think that they were the heavy ones like we see in modern arabic. But in tiberian hebrew of year 900, we know that they were already pronounced exactly like arabic (many jews wrote about the similarity of hebrew and arabic pronounciation of the letters) The resh of tiberian hebrew was like the modern hebrew resh. The scholars suggest that this change maybe occurred after the destruction of the temple, and the biblical sound was the flap R like in greek and portuguese and modern neo-aramaic languages.
Thank you Matheus! This is the most serious, well researched comment in my RUclips history. You have given me much to think about and research. #voicedbilabialfricative
That also explains why the New Testament records a dialect difference between Judea and Galilee. For example, in the story of Jesus's trial, Peter is identified as his disciple based partially on his accent.
Good question. The Samaritan pronunciation is highly important for understanding pre-Tiberian Hebrew, e.g. Hebrew in the first century. So are the Jewish pronunciations. But, assuming one wishes to pronounce the vowels and consonants printed in every Bible, which were crystallized ca. 1000 ce, the Yemenite and other pronunciations are more relevant because they follow the Masoretic system. Hope this helps.
You missed that the oilam on lithuanian hebrew is ei instead of the modern ashkenazi/hassidish is oy. The former is almost extinct. for example real litvaks would say simches tairah instead of simches toirah which is the stam way today
Do you guys memorise the Torah or just read it from the paper? The guy reading in the video seems to be following along on a screen, is that Rabbis too? they read from the paper?
Good question. Here everyone was reading from a text with consonants, vowels, and cantillation marks. When reading from a Torah scroll in synagogue, only the consonants are provided, so there is a great deal of memorization.
@@BiblicalCulture Excellent, as an Arab I understood that answer perfectly. Just a minor detail, can/do Rabbis read without the scrolls at all? What I mean is: Where is the reference Torah, in Rabbis hearts or on paper?
@@BiblicalCulture I can only imagine your rich traditions in passing down books I'm really interested in learning more about that. I have so much admiration for your tradition, we are really cousins and for all our history we are allies and we should always be so
I really like the one around 6:30. But he failed to do the Qoof as the old Hebrews likely did His dotted gimmel was a j, when it should be the same gimmel pronounced by modern Israelis. It’s just that the undotted one should be the sound of what modern Israelis now pronounce the resh.
So, I'm trying to learn the language, but there are so many instances but the different pronunciations make it so hard. Even apart from different dialects... just listening to the same person pronounce the same words completely differently (even in the same conjugation). Is tree "ets" or "eyts" or "aiets" or "rayts?" I dunno. Is this letter a "Tav" or a "Tev" or a "tuf?" Is "Good" "Tov" or "Tuv" or "Toiyv." The vowels make such a difference, yet so many just kinda pile them in there. This is difficult.
@@victorsasson1911 hey bro didn't say which one is the most "correct" just said why modern Hebrew has more appeal, and more importantly, in biblical times there are multiple pronunciations, it's even written in the bible, people from the tribe of Ephraim didn't know how to do the 'sh' sound and people from the north, in the galilee region didn't know how to pronounce guttural sounds (just like Ashkenazis) unlike people around the area of Jerusalem (their pronunciation is more similar to various Yemenite ones), some scholars claim the sound of vav (ו) isn't v or w, but both are valid because both existed in the biblical era in different times and places, so fighting over this subject and getting annoyed by it, is just silly
Let's get this out of the way - none of these is "authentic Biblical Hebrew" in any way. There are only closer to the original, and farther. Moreover, we'd never know for sure the exact nature of how it was pronounced. Biblical Hebrew, being spoken from, let's say 3300BC - 300BC, very roughly, itself had many changes during that course of time. What we think of as Biblical, for example BGD KFT lenition (B>v, K>ch), probably wasn't a thing at the times of David, for example, but much later, but it's considered "classical" today nonetheless.
The Babylonian sounds way more similar to modern Hebrew than Samaritan. It needs to be taken into account that Babylonian was the centre of Judaism for a while, in including Medieval times, while Yemen remained pretty isolated.
theres no nasality in romance languages when pronoung the i sound . its just that that vowell has a different pronunciation all together compared to germanic languages . i sounds like ee , in romance languages not eye .
There are different Yemenite pronuciations. Not all pronounce it as Jimmel and Guf, and others, such as the Sharabi dialect, its pronounced Gimmel and Quf. Not all Yemenites pronounce gimmel as a J. Its a common misconception, but overall great video
![State of Play | September 24, 2024 [ENGLISH]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fVs0suPHAX8/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you! I've been learning both biblical hebrew and Aramaic.
just learn Arabic, they're just derivatives of it.
@@rhetoric5173
It may be noted that Arabic is mother of all languages not any other Hebrew.
@@abdulmalik767 We have evidence it's the oldest "semitic" language, as for the Nostartic language hypotheses, that's a different conversation. Though DNA does show Arabs being the Basal Eurasians from which the rest split.
@@rhetoric5173 Hebrew and Aramaic are older than Arabic by like 1,000 years what do you mean "they're just derivatives of it"?
@@Item1948 how are pidgin older ?
As someone who grew up in a Muslim culture, Yemenite Hebrew interests me profoundly. Because to me, it sounds the closest to Arabic both in pronunciation and melody when reciting the holy texts.
Some consider it as closest to original pre-babylonian hebrew. Rabbi Bar-Chayim of Machon Shiloh institute believe every letter had it's own sound except aforementioned ,,begadkefet" and shin which would have double pronounciation with palatalised ,,s" [ ʃ ]/ [ɕ] since there is allready ,,S" (samech) and ,,ʕS" (ʕsaadi) like in arabic. Check out his channel, might be resourceful.
That's pretty interesting, I am American, but I can actually hear what you mean in the recording.
Yeah the intonation or melody sounds like my grandmother reciting the Qur’an
Wtf is a “muslim culture”!?? Islam is a religion not a fucking culture
@@NestaSimbaSautiwhy do you call it Babylonian and not Aramaic or Assyrian?
Yemenite jew here, very nice hearing the differences between the ancient pronunciations, my grandparents sounds completely different from the Sanaani pronunciation- but still nice seeing some form of original Yemenite accent ! תודה רבה
If you check out the site they have recordings of readers from other places in Yemen.
@@BiblicalCulture nice! I am half Yemenite Jewish and half Ashkenazi Jewish - sadly I never met my ashkenazi grandfather so I don’t have a clue what his pronunciation was like
I would love to visit your country and literally drink coffee every single day of my visit. God bless you
What havara do you grandparents have? From Sa'ada? That region at least?
Actually quite a number of Israelis still use this accent and others like it in liturgy and otherwise.
Me: "haha, can you imagine the italian hebrew sounding completely stereotypical?"
(Recording begins)
"Oh..."
I absolutely LOVE this! Only recently I learned of my family's Jewish heritage...I can't learn enough or fast enough! So, thank you for helping me as I learn of who I am and where I came from! I'm so happy I found your channel!
Welcome!
Jew girl?
Just don’t fall for the Zionist trap, that’s some terrorist stuff
מרגש לשמוע את הצדיקים האלה …מנוחתם עדן ,קולם ישמע ויהדהד לעם ישראל עד בוא משיח בן דוד אמן סלה
I understand about half. Something about hear the ritchous and the return of mashiach Ben David ??
@@daleknight8971 "it is exciting to hear these tzadikim (dont know how to translate it)... RIP, may their voice be heard and resonate to the people of israel until the coming of messiah son of david amen" thats the translate
@@Daniel-ln5yh thank you .תודה
אני איתך, נס שיש הקלטות של כול האנשים האלה
Guys, HERE is The Savior
YaH The Heavenly FATHER HIMSELF was Who they Crucified/Pierced for our sins and “HERE IS THE PROOF”
From the Ancient Egyptian Semitic:
"Yad He Vav He" is what Moshe (Moses) wrote, when Moses asked YaH His Name (Exodus 3)
Ancient Egyptian Semitic Direct Translation
Yad - "Behold The Hand"
He - "Behold the Breath"
Vav - "Behold The NAIL"
What a great video! Thoroughly enjoyed this! Particularly that of the Yemenite Hebrew & Samaritan. Yes I have a bias as my lineage is half ashkenaz and half Yemenite. I grew up speaking with an Ashkenazi accent. It's so wonderful to hear Hebrew in so many different ways.
I’m glad you enjoyed!
@@BiblicalCulture podaa punda
@@BiblicalCulture oombu
Zei gezund
This is absolutely fascinating! I'm very glad to have access to this kind of content from someone who can actually highlight the differences... Because as a student of Hebrew I always wonder how the prophets and the great people of the past pronounced their words, and I believe that this kinda traces us back to how Hebrew used to be pronounced... thanks a lot for such invaluable content!!
Thank you Arthur I’m glad you enjoyed
It's funnily remarkable that the italian jew has this beautiful opera voice and own manner of singing
Yah, leave it to the Italians! 😄 Italian and Hebrew are my two favorite modern languages. But my favorite of these recordings is the Yemenite one!
They sound melodic, this is beautiful.
Agreed!
@@BiblicalCulture You missed that the oilam on lithuanian hebrew is ei instead of the modern ashkenazi/hassidish is oy. The former is almost extinct. for example real litvaks would say simches tairah instead of simches toirah which is the shtam way today
These recordings are an absolute TREASURE!!!!
Thank you for this post. This has turned everything I thought I knew about Hebrew pronunciation on its head!
You’re welcome!
Thanks alot this was really lovely and hebrew sounds more than what I imagined and it was a soul touch as they recite ❤️
Glad you enjoyed it!
I am not jewish for a long time ago I was obsessed with the authentic sound of Hebrew, and did a lot of researches on it. Seeing this video now for me is amazing.
The transformation of v into b is a common phenomenon in the history of the Portuguese language
It’s a major pet peeve of mine when people say “Yemenite” when it’s only Sanaani pronunciation. Just because it is the most common pronunciation doesn’t mean it’s the only one.
Would love you to elaborate.
That’s why I specified exactly where each reader came from, writing “Yemenite (Sanaa)” instead of just “Yemenite.” There are recordings from other places in Yemen too.
My rabbi is from Sharab. They pronounce the holam like livaks, long a
SHALOM Ariela, yemenite Jews left Israel 400 befor TS. And I speak fluwenly classic arabic. Jemenites atleast pronouncing Hebrew in a old Semitic way and are yousing ancient words.
There was a huge village of in Yemen that did not live in Sana
This is cool, you can see local influences.
Yemenite Hebrew sounds like an Arabic accent.
Italian Hebrew sounds like opera.
Well Arabic is older than hebrew so, the older forms ought to correspond
@@rhetoric5173 They're similar in age, actually. Hebrew is about 3000 years old, wheras Arabic is about 2800 years old. Not much of a difference.
@@rhetoric5173 no, the first arabic inscriptions are from 300c.e. Hebrew is from 1200b.c.e, it is 1500 years older than arabic.
@@catecurry48 No. Arabic at a minimum twice as old as that, about right for Hebrew though.
@@M4th3u54ndr4d3 lol no. And no.
Fascinating. I've always liked the Mizrachi sounds over the Ashkenazi sounds as they seem much less changed from ancient times.
Well, they stayed in the near eastern region while the Ashkenazim migrated further north into Europe explaining the dramatic changes in pronunciation
How could you say Mizrahi sounds "less changed"? We don't know how did Ancient Hebrew sounded. Also, there were many Ancient Hebrews, since the language kept evolving and there's a huge time fram between the first temple and the destruction of the second. While the early Hebrew might have been influenced by Egyptian and Canaanite languages, the one spoken after the Persian exile had Persian and Aramaic influence.
To finish, Ashkenazi and Temani both have some similarities Sephardic doesn't have, like Tav/Sav and kammatz aleph pronounced as "o".
@@לואיסרוסאס-ספיר
I don't think I could say it better than the comment above with the ancient Hebrew signature line. The Mizrachim remained thousands of mile closer to Ancient Israel. Plus, although not many, there are people whose families never left Israel, never exiled. Their Hebrew and the Hebrew of those who have been in Israel for many, many generations sound closer to Mizrachi than Ashkenazi. Lastly, even if it's not closer it definitely sounds far more Middle Eastern which to me is a more pleasant and more authentic sound
@@shevetlevi2821 first of all, most Jews were expelled from the land of Israel. Then, many other languages came to influence Hebrew, like Persian, Greek, and Arabic. By the way, Arabic is a Southern Semitic language, while Hebrew is a Levantine one. The Hebrew spoken in Yemen was influenced by local variants of Arabic, as was the Hebrew of other parts of the world. True, it was influenced by a Semitic language, but you cannot say is "pure" as there's no "pure Hebrew", as the language was always influenced by other languages. The Hebrew spoken by Salomon was definitely a different one than the spoken by Hebrews in Sinai and after the Persian exile, and the one spoken in Talmudic times... Languages always evolve
Of course languages evolve. And obviously we were exiled from Israel long ago. But some remained, and some were exiled to not far away. In any case this isn't a linguistics thesis, and you're being pedantic. I'm just saying that RELATIVE to Ashkenazi Hebrew Mizrachi Hebrew sounds closer to the source. I've had many native born Israelis tell me that. And that aside I like the sound better. You okay with that?
I have been around the Ashkenazi pronunciation my whole life, that's home!!!
In Cantillation, Yemenites omit final syllable stress when the word is conjoined to the next word. This is prescribed by the cantillation system, as can be gleaned from B. Kleiner's study published in 2017 and 2019. Coincidentally, this old Ashkenazi recitation with its shift of emphasis for some words ends up having some of the same rhythm as a Yemenite chant, though the disjunctions are recited as pauses instead of melismas.
@@flat-earther Yemenites follow all of the cantillation signs. You can read Kleiner's 2019 article for the demonstration. But the 2017 article is easier to read.
In fact, Yemenite believe that other Jewish traditions ignore the cantillation signs, because they stress syllables that are supposed to conjoin to the next word!
I wish the mizrahi pronunciations became more mainstream
I think they are well on their way!
@@BiblicalCulture Really? What makes you say that? That would be fun. I just got back from Israel and noticed that I wasn't the only one with my own pronunciation! (Rusty, with an American accent and occasional errors.) I struggled to understand some people who had clearly been around awhile, and then there are the newer accents of recent immigrants. No one corrected me or acknowledged my tourist status. I think it would be fun if more Hebrew speakers had a distinct pronunciation of the letter ayin. 😊In the 80s I was told that only the Yemenis pronounced it correctly, although I didn't hear it in these particular recordings.
I think the recording from Florence shows a strong influence of Italian, especially the vowels.
Great. I enjoyed it. Was learning biblical Hebrew 7 years ago, but gave up due to time constraints. Look forward to starting again.
Glad to hear SAK. If you’re interested my next class begins January 18th www.biblicalculture.org/hebrew
@@BiblicalCulture Thanks
I have noted the date.
Regsrds
Totally agree with: Mizrachi sounds over the Ashkenazi sounds as they seem much less changed from ancient times - Ashkenaz means Germany, while Mizrach/Egypt has a very close and crucial Biblical connection to the development, so the names define the proximity to the true sound, in my opinion
Mizrach means east, not Egypt. That's mitsraim
Intresting seeing that Persian and especially Yeminite Hebrew is more similar to Ashkenazi pronunciations than other Jews from mizrach countries
eastern sound effected by andalusi- the golden era of judaism in muslim spain///
It's a lot more complex than that. There were different pronunciations throughout - the Tiberian Hebrew for example was different to the Babylonian, and to the Eretz-Yisraeli. And some of these differences manifested themselves several times in history, since. It's not as easy to delineate along Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Mizrachi lines.
Ashkenaz is the region around the river Rhine, not just Germany, it's more specific than that.
Congratulations on this wonderful video. I loved listening to it.
Great to hear Jack!
You could add a note, the last Ashkenazi reading was not done with the "trup" but the typical Ashkenazi learning sing song still heard today when a Dvar Torah is given. My second comment would be , to add the polish or Hungarian pronunciation.
Good points, thanks Avremel.
11:50
what's also unique about the (Spanish &) Portuguese pronunciation is that they differentiate between the Gimmel with and without the dagesh (dot). Without it's similar to a French 'r' or the modern Hebrew 'khav'. With a dagesh it's the same as modern Hebrew. This is similar to some north African countries, some Yemenite and Babylonian (Iraqi).
Additionally, they pronounce the Hé with a dagesh as extending the noun of the preceding letter, i.e. 'Shemah' (her name) would be pronounced as 'Shemaha'. This is called in Hebrew grammar the 'Hé mapiq'.
The most mind blowing thing is that Yemenite Hebrew sounds like ashkenaz and Sephardic combined
Thanksfor this very interesting and informative video. I just would like to suggest a correction: at 7:17 the "daleth" without dagesh is pronounced as the Arabic equivalent ذ "dhaal", not like ث (tav without dagesh) "thaa".
I liked the Italian recital because the guy reciting it can sing and he sounds melodic which I believe the people of Biblical times were very capable of reciting the scriptures melodically.
Very true. (I study Hebrew Cantillation academically, and early Judaism and Christianity as a hobby.) Gentile tourists would come to Jerusalem during the High Holy Days to listen to Jewish music and watch both dances and prayers. It was a cultural capital drawing on the artistic tastes of an entire Diaspora with EACH year. For many, that would produce the ancient equivalent of our world-class taste in music because of the internet: an international music literacy.
Italian cantillation is the only tradition to preserve Hebrew names for the Psalm cantillation signs (i.e. the "dta-'amei eameatth") and also is said to have stubbornly protected their style of chant from adopting the extremely melismatic flourishes of the Roman Christian church like other branches of Judaism did.
Guys, HERE is The Savior
YaH The Heavenly FATHER HIMSELF was Who they Crucified/Pierced for our sins and “HERE IS THE PROOF”
From the Ancient Egyptian Semitic:
"Yad He Vav He" is what Moshe (Moses) wrote, when Moses asked YaH His Name (Exodus 3)
Ancient Egyptian Semitic Direct Translation
Yad - "Behold The Hand"
He - "Behold the Breath"
Vav - "Behold The NAIL"
@@Yamikaiba123 - OK .. If that's the case then
Can we have more please ? 😊
@@joedee1863 RUclips lately auto- removes my comments when I write in links. I don't practice the Italqi tradition, myself, but a rabbinical musicology student recently sent me their Thesis on Italian-Jewish Torah chant to get my opinion. So I expect to know more about it soon.
@@Yamikaiba123 - yes YT is a tyrant and i have experienced it first hand. Any thing you can share with me that enhances my appreciation for the musical content evident in the scriptures would be gratefully received.
Thank you.
"Sound recording was an exceptional achievement in 1857. Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) Edison's phonograph was also extraordinary. Not only did it record sounds, it allowed them to be reproduced at will."
👇
Origins of Sound Recording: The Inventors - National Park Service
If the Masoretes scribes have already created a Nikkudot system in the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew, it proves that in their time there was a change in the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew words and because of that they thought of having a standard before 920 C.E. If recording had been invented in the 19th Century, there would have been a gap of 900 years from their time that there would have been a greater change in pronunciation in speech.
The recording from the 19th - 20th century cannot prove what is the original pronunciation especially if the few people being filmed or voice recorded do not have a background reference to their origin.
In comparison the 10th century scribes who recognized what the original pronunciation was more credible than 900 years later.
Hi, linguist here specializing in Hebrew phonetics. The sad thing is that most likely we will never ever be able to know how Hebrew (or any other language) was pronounced in the past. All we have are approximations. While it is nice to think that one community, like that of the Yemenites, preserved the true, pristine, original phonetic quality of the language as it was spoken in the time of the First Temple, the reality is that each Jewish group was heavily influenced buy it's surrounding, and not a single one possesses the true and authentic sound. Or, in reverse, each and every type of pronunciation is equally true and authentic, in their own way, and they are somehow genetically connected to the original source. There is no reason to exalt one pronunciation over the other. Moreover, there are traces of changing pronunciation already recorded in the Bible. While it is a fascinating journey to consider all these traces and nuances, the best advice I can give you is to just follow Hebrew pronunciation of your community, or use modern Hebrew as a reference point. This is the best way to stay sane. This is a rabbit hole and many sort of... never came back. Good luck everybody.
Very well said. I think there are a few moving targets people today are striving for: Hebrew of Bible times, Hebrew of Dead Sea Scrolls, Hebrew (or Aramaic) of Jesus, Hebrew of the Tiberian Masoretes, Hebrew of individual communities like in this video, Israeli Hebrew, or some mix and match of everything altogether.
The different pronunciations reflect the local languages and countries in which the Jews interacted for many generations. For Jews from middle eastern countries and Iran, one can distinctly single out the accent and pronunciation of the local language and dialects, Yemenite, Babylonian/Iraqi, the Maghreb region, etc. The same goes for the Ashkenazi pronunciation, which was influenced by Yiddish, German, and Slavic languages.
Seems to me that the Shechem and the Baghdad pronunciations are influenced by Arabic. Just like the Jews in the US pronounce the Hebrew with an American accent...
Countries and languages have different dialects within a few miles from eachother....
The G and the JJ shifting is like Gog of Magog in Hebrew and Jjojj and Majjojj in Arabic...
Yes
incredible to get all of these perspectives. i'm just a beginner in biblical hebrew, but have the aid of ge'ez, amharic, and tigrinya hearing. do you have any guesses as to what could be the original? I would love to hear the djerba island tunisian biblical hebrew hearing. my bet is on them!
Djerba had a private Torah trope for schoolboys that was structured like Sephardi cantillation but sounded like Ashkenazi Torah chant.
Might be super old!
You have Ge'ez and Amharic? Are you familiar with either the Ethiopian Jewish liturgy or the Tewahedo Orthodox liturgy? They both seem like very deep branches, to me, musically.
I haven't had the privilege of hearing many examples of Ethiopian Psalmody, but one that I did hear in group chant on RUclips had the same melody as a solo Romaniote (Jewish) Psalm from Greece, except that it was sung slower.
@@Yamikaiba123 i wish to learn of the bete israel (eth jewry) more in person one day, i am an ordained minister of the tewahido orthodox and know the liturgy. peruse my channel or just search "misbak" on youtube and you will find our renditions of the meezmor dawid.
This was very informative and amusing! Thank you very much for your efforts and the valuable content!
GREAT VIDEO. I understand for another video that ilatian dialect is a sephardic variant. I hear in this video that the italian cantor said nang'omi (nang'ami) for na'ami instead of na'ongmi, same use of NG' in the word ra'av, he said like raNG'av. But, remember that he is singing and not reading or speaking, when a cantor sing he change same vowels for the note sometimes.
In some of few of the recordings the pronunciation of צ differs from modern Hebrew as well, sounding more like s or th.
I am just allergic to the current American pronunciation. I have an actual physical reaction when an American walks next to me on the streets of Be'er Sheva while speaking Hebrew. I have shivers in my spine and I roll my eyes. I guess probably because of the American vowels and American "r". It just sounds like they put zero effort into it and just pronounce it as they would English. Also, not many people in Israel (modern Hebrew speakers) can understand the Yemenite pronunciation. I think it's mostly connected to the speed by which it is pronounced, double consonant pronunciation and changes in the vowel sounds.
In Jewish Day school, in the 2000s, you could always tell who was an Isareli or the child of an Israeli. But 90% of us weren’t, so we didn’t like pronouncing it like “Israeli Hebrew.” The language we were taught was still “modern Hebrew.” We just chose to speak it how we normally talked, which was with a slight Texas accent. If you thought “r” was annoying, well you would be freaking out here lol. Only a few synagogues in the Greater Houston area used the Ashkenazi pronunciation. My synagogue is one of the oldest, and we use modern Hebrew (Sephardic based), even though we are nearly 100% Ashkenazi.
@@Mer1912 Texas dialect of Hebrew. The Academy of Hebrew language needs to put that in their database.😅😅😆😆😊
@@petarjovanovic1481 haha. Yeah, whenever I think about our community, I just remember that life is really beautiful, and really diverse. We all sound different, but we all read the same unchanging texts. And thanks for your comment. I didn’t know Israeli and Yemenite Hebrew were that different that israelis could barely get it.
@@Mer1912
This is because you are not exposed to a lot of diverse cultures among the Jews.
As a Yemeni Jew, I can tell you that there are Jews who are not Yemenis who many years ago moved to an area of Yemenis in Israel and prayed in their synagogues and over time they got used to the Yemeni pronunciation and today they understand it well.
I learned Hebrew as an adult since my family is mostly not religious and I learned in Israel, namely Arad and Beersheva in the 1990's. I can understand an Israeli leading prayer or as a ba'al korei reading the Torah much better than an American Ashkenazi. I prefer Sephardic pronunciation and with the video I could follow the Bagdad pronunciation best with Yemenite in second place, probably due to my time in Beersheva. It was quite common to hear the vav as wav and it was not uncommon to hear Arabic not only from Bedouin but also the old Mizrachi men. As an American I am constantly aware of my tendency to slip into an Anglo-Saxi pronunciation not good in Israeli ears.
Very cool. If only there were recordings from 3000 years ago.
This is fascinating! I so want to learn biblical hebrew!!! I recognized the Tohu wa bohu. Rabbi was reciting Genesis 1! Beresheet!
Glad you enjoyed. If you’re interested my next class begins January 18th www.biblicalculture.org/hebrew
A few points you missed out from some of the recording's. But I want to look specifically at the Ashkenazi one, he says yainkov or more specifically yainkiv as opposed to Yaakov, that extra "n" may seem out of place to americans or Israeli's but it would seem that this is very much from tradition that even tho they lost the "ayin" or Oinyin that the Samaritan's had they still kept the trace of it in some words like Yaakov I'd assume probably because it's a common name, so even tho over the millennia or two they lost the full pronunciation (probably because it was so different to the native countries they are in) they still kept that word due to using it do often.
I'm really curious on the 'ches' and 'hei' like did the Germans cause their "ch" to come into the tongue of the Jews or was 'ches' always In Hebrew (or at least for 2500 years) but the other's lost it because it was so hard for them, and so different from their native languages. I've never seen anything on this, but I'd be very interested if there is anything.
Anyway I really enjoyed this video, I hope to check out some more from your channel. Thank you very much!
I worked at a business where our customers were from all over the world. I noted that while English speaking people from other countries could communicate, there were differences in our "common" language. Same thing in Hebrew.
Shabbat Shalom from Jamaica 🇯🇲! Plz teach me. Shabbat Shalom
Such a great piece of work and video. Such a joy to hear these.
Absolutely beautiful.
On a more basic level: very interesting and thank you!
I don't speak Hebrew, but I got a strange feeling when the first 3 spoke it was like listening to Palestinian, Yemeni and Iraqi Arabic!
Wow this is so interesting! I've always wondered does ancient Hebrew have different dialects and sound variations. Thanks for the upload!
09m:18s - I wonder if the pronunciation of "ע" as "ng" in the Italian version may indicate a possible relation between /ŋ/ (voiced velar nasal) and /ʕ/ (voiced pharyngeal fricative) in the era when this kind of pronunciation began.
"it's voiced in the nose if that's possible" oh man, wait until you hear the polish letters ę and ą Wich is all nose, no clue how they do it.
Thanks for sharing this בת המלך, I’ll look out for those
when i heard the italian version, i had the desire to order a pizza. but i think the Yemenite version is the most authentic accent to the paleo hebrew because of the poetic form.
YHWH BLESS THESE PEOPLE
We, the Jewish people, don't Reay write out the name of the almighty as you just did and under no circumstance do we pronounce it. We usually say HaShem in informal speech, Adonai or Elohim in more formal ones.
The proper pronunciation of tachas/tachat is with the accent on the first syllable. This is seen in printed versions where the cantillation mark is on the first syllable and when it has an etnachta/esnachto or sof pasuk, the patach of the first syllable changes to a kamatz. It's usual in Hebrew for two syllable words when both are vocalized with a patach. It's also the way it's pronounced in modern Hebrew. The fellow from Kovno made other shifts to the penultimate syllable, though, so your point is well taken. It's interesting than he didn't read it with the trop/cantillation. His pronunciation is similar to mine and my father's. Among many Ashkenazim, that accent shift is found during study and often prayer, but for the public reading of the Torah the proper accents are observed. Since he didn't use the cantillation, he was probably not a ba'al korei (one who does the public reading), and, unused to stressing the correct syllable, read with the colloquial accent of study and prayer. Thank you for this.
Just like Jews all over the world eat different food, we have slightly different culture, whether Sephardi, Italkim, Romaniote, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi. *Am Yisroil Chai!*
One lineage, different parts of the world 👊🏼. We still live!
Why god El even kicked your ancestoes out from israel LOL
While you concentrate here on the pronunciation of the words, I found the differences in the way the _trop_ (cantillation) sounds fascinating, too. Imitating the former is easy enough, once you learn the rules. (A quick glance through an _alef beis_ primer can do that.) But learning the _trop_ is quite a bit more involved. (The _Litvak_ skipped the _trop,_ and the Italian wasn't reading _Chumash;_ of course _Rus_ sounds very different.)
Agreed, the musical aspect varies just as much the pronunciation.
I'm reading a thesis on Italqi Torah chant. I heard from a researcher that they don't have tropes but that their Torah recitation is more free (albeit structured) and works more like Psalmody. The reading tradition may be what Torah chant was like before the Tiberian Masorah! But, I think different peoples had their own traditions going back to those times, too. They just adapted them differently with the times.
amsterdam portuguese pronunciation also differs from modern hebrew quite a lot more than described in the video. Along with the differences from modern hebrew already mentioned, ג without dagesh is pronounced like a (guttural) khaf sound, a he mapiq הּ is pronounced by doubling the preceding vowel, tzere and seghol are pronounced like a french é and close attention is payed to pronouncing the shewa na’ and nah
Yes. I only focused on a few differences and these are the ones I though most related to the recording.
Interesting and informative clip and the recordings are beautiful and priceless.
Some notes:
1. While you showed a wide variety of pronunciations of Jews from Islamic countries and accordingly, the pronunciations of Ashkenazic Jewry probably has less of a variety, but it is too bad you didn't include the Galicianer/Chasidic pronunciation - where they pronounce ברוך אתה as "booreekh atu"; i.e. the קמץ as "oo" as in "tooth", the שורוק as an "ee" as in "teeth" and the חולם as an "ay" as in "play".
2. I would call your "American Ashkenazi" accent an "American Modern Orthodox Ashkenazi" accent, since the "American Misnagde Charedi" accent has one noticeable difference, the חולם pronounced as an "oy" - my guess, taken from the German dipthongs "eu" and "äu" and used to distinguish from the "aw" or "oh" of a קמץ.
3. My guess is that the Yemenite Hebrew pronunciation does not include the Modern Hebrew vowel of "eh" since Arabic only has three vowels ("ah", "oo" and "ee") though the Yemenite pronunciation DOES include the צירי. The Yemenite pronunciation also mirrors Arabic in בגד כפת, though the Yemenite pronunciation includes the "p" and "v" sounds in the "ו" and "פ" with a dagesh. Some Yemenites pronounce "ג" without a dagesh as "gh" (the Arabic ﻍ) and the "ג" with a dagesh as "j". The letters of "ד", "כ" and "ת" without a dagesh are "kh", "d" and "th" - as in "thing" (the Arabic د, ﺥ and ﺙ) and the letters of "ד", "כ" and "ת" with a dagesh are "k", "th" - as in "this" and "t" (the Arabic ﺫ, ﻙ and ﺕ).
4. My guess is that Ashkenazic pronunciation changed the ת without a dagesh from "th" to "s" due to the fact that German has no "th" sound. (See second 32 of this clip ruclips.net/video/0MUsVcYhERY/видео.html).
5. The Amsterdam Portuguese pronunciation of "המערה" as "המנארה" is interesting and may have had something to do with the Yiddish pronunciation of יעקב as יענקב and the nickname Yanki?
6. My guess is that Modern Hebrew was built on the fact that there are no similar pronunciations in German, Polish and Russian to the Arabic (ﺡ, ﺙ, ﺫ, ص, ض, ط, ظ, ع, ﻍو,و and ﻕ). As a result, "ו" and "ב" without a dagesh became the same, as did "ת" and "ט" as did "ח" and "כ" without a dagesh, "כ" with a dagesh and "ק", as well as "ג", "ד" and "ת" whether with or without a dagesh.
So re: no. 3 aside from the obvious borrowing of a j from the Arabic jīm used as the gimmel with a dagesh and the qof being pronounced as a gof (in certain yemenite dialects just as the local Arabs would've pronounced it too) it's actually the closest dialect to Tiberian Hebrew outlined in the masoretic texts.
Re: no. 6, no modern Hebrew vowels comes from the pronunciation reform that took place after the Alhambra decree and subsequent Spanish inquisition that forced a load of Sephardi Jews south to north Africa and eastwards to Greece and most importantly ottoman Turkey. It was in ottoman Turkey that their rabbis decided to simplify their vowels to make them all the same length just as the Turks had with Turkish (which we can still hear in modern Turkish)
And modern Hebrew was the combination of those standardised Sephardi vowels with Ashkenazi letters aside from the tav in order to simplify the language for new immigrants from central and eastern Europe, predominantly
Re: no. 4, could be true but German also had a 'th' sound (at least in the early middle ages). It's also a natural consonant progression for a th to become a s or vice versa as we see in Spanish for example
Well Arabic is older than hebrew so, the older forms ought to correspond
I am yemenite jew and i would like to correct a mistake you had when tou wrote "Hejjetholim". There are 2 mistakes here. First, unlike other jews, yemenite jews pronounce the שוא (the two dots bellow the letter ג) as A not E. So it suppose to be "Hajjatholim" with an A instead E. Second, the חולם (the small dot in the top-left corner of the letter ד), that you interpreted as O, isn't exactly an O. קמץ (kamatz, which is a small T bellow the letter) is exactly an O. But there is a difference in the חולם (holam). חולם is pronounced as something between O and E (I am sure that there is an official sign for this but i dont know it :)). Actually this difference is so well known in the community that there are areas in Yemen that pronounce the חולם as an actual E! For example משה (moses) is "mesha" instead of "mosha" or "mo'sha".
Thank you יואל, very informative! How would you write out הגדלים in English? Are your ancestors from Sanaa or elsewhere?
@@BiblicalCulture HaJatho'lim when the o' is the sound between o and e, and the th is like in the word "the" not like in the word "think". Try to listen carefully to the recordings on the website you mentioned and find the difference between חולם and קמץ (it is noticeable). As to your question, my ancestors are from a small town in north yemen called jabal amar (جبل عمر). It is relatively close to the city of Hajjah (حجة). Happy to help :)
@@תובנותמהתואר I'd say that this sound you're trying to describe as between an o and an e is the same o as in the english exclamation: oh! Which is just how ashkenazim would pronounce it too
@@תובנותמהתואר and the 'th' is more of a dh or ð than a th (þ/θ) as you rightly point out
Bukharian Pronunciation is very similar to Yemenite. Though not exactly. Shva and holem is same as in yemenite. The deferences are with ק, ג, ד and ת. Daled and tav same as modern Hebrew. Gimel is Ghimel without dagesh. Kuf is Quf like in Iraqi Hebrew.
You should also include the Jewish community of Djerba which is considered ancient and well preserved
Thanks for the tip Zohar!
The Yemenite reading here is very influenced by Arabic, which does explain his pronunciation of gimel and qop. His melodic reading is also very reminiscent of how Muslims read the Qur'an.
Thanks for sharing this 🙏🏻
There are different Yemenite pronuciations. Some pronounce it as Jimmel and Guf, and others, such as the Sharabi dialect, its pronounced Gimmel and Quf, which is like Aramaic as well.
In the Shomroni reading I did hear the ב without the dot it's like v. Also, he has proper ח though it is not as strong as modern Hebrew. I believe is reading is influenced by Arabic. The ה when it is at the beginning of the word sounds like el which is probably an Arabic influence for example instead HaHetzroni he read El Hetzroni
Interesting observations. Some ח‘s do sound like ה but others are completely absent. I didn’t mention it but the ל at the beginning of words is more of an “el” compared to “le”, which as you mention is similar to Arabic.
Shalom Rabbi,
Since not all who are attracted to your videos, read the Hebrew Alpha Bet, may I suggest you write or say the meaning - in English - of the words you've picked as examples. Thank You.
You should do another video like this and add the Kavkazi Jews. There is a video of them on RUclips it is a very old recording of mountain Jews.
They also recited Hebrew with the Arabic pronunciations like the yemenites. Amazing.
Ohh man, your video referencing that great site is sooo valuable. Even if all souls are familiar with hebrew letters (some rab said), this is great. Thnx you!
Wow 😲 super interesting. Thanks 🙏🙏
Glad you enjoyed
Can someone explain to me in greater detail the difference between being Israelite vs Samaritan?
Israel was more than just Judah. Much of the northern kingdom of Israel consisted of Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph. Samaritans trace their origins to these tribes. Jews trace their origins to the southern kingdom, which was primarily made up of Judah.
3:24 don't Jews use HaShem too?
Yes, good point, but Hashem is usually for regular conversation. When reading Torah it is customary to use the more significant Adonai אדני. Others will only use the name Adonai during a synagogue service.
The Portuguese in Amsterdam pronunciation pronounced the ayin like an ng sound which I think is the way that Dutch Jews pronounced it.
This is very fascinating. Thank you for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@BiblicalCulture we will see where Hashem leads.
Reminds me of Aramaic so much!
Very close languages
8:16 Like singing an opera 😃
😃. in some ways even betta tho opera great and beautiful much more depth here even opera would agree
Sounds like he's going to make me a loving pizza or soap me up and give me the best shave I will ever have.
Thank you for sharing this it was very interesting and informative
Glad you enjoyed it
In the Yemeni pronunciation, you didn't talk about the differences in how the letters are pronounced צ,ח,ע,דּ,ד,קּ
Yes, I only picked one or two unique characteristics that stood out to me. There is much more to unpack.
@@BiblicalCulture
Ok
But the most striking thing about a Yemeni This the ח and ע
that he speaks his own spoken language
Does a qof/gof with a dagesh get pronounced differently by a yemenite? I thought the dagesh just meant germination there
@@eh2542 Het and ayin are pronounced by most eidut hamizrah. Bahdadi, Halabi, AL Massri, Moroccan, they all pronounce it. Israeli Hebrew not so much, so many of them in Israel are sloppy.
What version of Hebrew heard on the recordings is the closest to what paleo Hebrew sounded like? Would someone today be able to understand a person in the court of king Hezekia or perhaps a prophet from northern Israel ?
I love your channel.
Sorry about my english, I will give my contribution to the topic:
In biblical hebrew, the bet without dagest was not a B or V, but a voiced bilabial fricative (check "voiced bilabial fricative" on wikipedia, they have a sound example). Almost a B, but without touching lips. This changed in some groups to the modern V sound, but in others it became exclusively B (sephardim and samaritans).
The Pe without dagesh was not exactly a F, but a P without touching lips. Check "voiceless bilabial fricative" on wikipedia.
The Het and Khaf were different. While Het was a "lung" sound, Khaf is the throat-scratcher like modern hebrew Khaf.
The ayin was pronounced just like the arabic ayin.
Dalet and Taw without dagesh were dh (or a th, like THis) and th (like THing). That is why some groups pronounce the Taw without dagesh as S (Shabos vs Shabat). Because in biblical hebrew it was nor S nor T, but TH. Whenvour first language doesnt have a specific phoneme, we tend to use the most similar one that we have in our language. For example, in Brazil we speak portuguese, we do not have the Th sound, so we use F or S or T instead (fing or ting to say Thing). Thats what happened with all jews around the world in our exile. This is our history.
The 1st century jews spoke a language called today Palestinian Aramaic. They had 3 main dialects, with little differences:
Judean dialect was the "official" one. It is the one that you see in bar kokhba letters.
Samaritan dialect, which was closer to the galilean dialect.
And finally the galilean, the most common, but it was a not respected dialect, it was seen as "wrong" because they tended to not pronounce the gutturals (sadi, qof, tet, ayin, het). Their "He" was very weak, almost inexistant. That is why in Galilee they frequently wrote the names like Yeshayahu, Yermiyahu as Yeshayu, Yermiyu.
Interestingly, the galilean dialect was the one who became the main dialect (because the romans destroyed the Judea, and Galilea became the center of the jewish intelectual production in Erets Yisrael). That is why many groups do not pronounce the guturals (and because the languages of their exile countries didnt had those sounds, so it started to disappear in their hebrew).
The Sadi, Tet, Qof, we dont know how they were pronounced in biblical hebrew. Some think that they were "stops" like in amharic and georgian, and some think that they were the heavy ones like we see in modern arabic.
But in tiberian hebrew of year 900, we know that they were already pronounced exactly like arabic (many jews wrote about the similarity of hebrew and arabic pronounciation of the letters)
The resh of tiberian hebrew was like the modern hebrew resh. The scholars suggest that this change maybe occurred after the destruction of the temple, and the biblical sound was the flap R like in greek and portuguese and modern neo-aramaic languages.
Thank you Matheus! This is the most serious, well researched comment in my RUclips history. You have given me much to think about and research. #voicedbilabialfricative
That also explains why the New Testament records a dialect difference between Judea and Galilee. For example, in the story of Jesus's trial, Peter is identified as his disciple based partially on his accent.
Sorry to ask this, but wouldn't Samaritan pronunciation be more authentic than yemenite?
Good question. The Samaritan pronunciation is highly important for understanding pre-Tiberian Hebrew, e.g. Hebrew in the first century. So are the Jewish pronunciations. But, assuming one wishes to pronounce the vowels and consonants printed in every Bible, which were crystallized ca. 1000 ce, the Yemenite and other pronunciations are more relevant because they follow the Masoretic system. Hope this helps.
The Tetragramaton is not pronounced by either Samaritans or Hebrew speakers, they are substituting words one Shema the other Adonoi.
Sounds like the Parsi guy pronounced it tho
@@tzvi7989 Where did you hear that? I couldn't pick it up at all, and to do so would be extremely unconventional.
Beautiful!
The Italian Hebrew sound beautiful.
waw this stuff is interesting
You missed that the oilam on lithuanian hebrew is ei instead of the modern ashkenazi/hassidish is oy. The former is almost extinct. for example real litvaks would say simches tairah instead of simches toirah which is the stam way today
I don't think Yazidi, Persian pronunciation is the same as all over Persia. Nor is Sana'ani, Yemenite the same as Shar'abi, Yemenite.
Correct. If you go to the website you will see recordings from people from different towns that demonstrate this.
Modern Hebrew can sound cloying at times. Wonderful to hear a different way of approaching Hebrew
Extremely interesting and cool video. Thank you deeply for this!
Do you guys memorise the Torah or just read it from the paper? The guy reading in the video seems to be following along on a screen, is that Rabbis too? they read from the paper?
Good question. Here everyone was reading from a text with consonants, vowels, and cantillation marks. When reading from a Torah scroll in synagogue, only the consonants are provided, so there is a great deal of memorization.
@@BiblicalCulture Excellent, as an Arab I understood that answer perfectly. Just a minor detail, can/do Rabbis read without the scrolls at all? What I mean is: Where is the reference Torah, in Rabbis hearts or on paper?
@@BiblicalCulture I can only imagine your rich traditions in passing down books I'm really interested in learning more about that. I have so much admiration for your tradition, we are really cousins and for all our history we are allies and we should always be so
Besides adonai you say hashem too. Referring to when talking about shema at שמע 3:17
Yes, especially when not in synagogue. The Samaritan שמא is the Aramaic equivalent of השם.
Fascinating! Where can I find more recordings of Rabbi Shalom Kohen? Or more information about him?
Fascinating, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed
I really like the one around 6:30.
But he failed to do the Qoof as the old Hebrews likely did
His dotted gimmel was a j, when it should be the same gimmel pronounced by modern Israelis. It’s just that the undotted one should be the sound of what modern Israelis now pronounce the resh.
Hello. Can you please provide links to the cantillations that appear in the video?
The Samaritan pronunciation is of mixed Arabic they assimilated into arabic culture
So, I'm trying to learn the language, but there are so many instances but the different pronunciations make it so hard. Even apart from different dialects... just listening to the same person pronounce the same words completely differently (even in the same conjugation).
Is tree "ets" or "eyts" or "aiets" or "rayts?" I dunno. Is this letter a "Tav" or a "Tev" or a "tuf?" Is "Good" "Tov" or "Tuv" or "Toiyv." The vowels make such a difference, yet so many just kinda pile them in there.
This is difficult.
Yes. That’s why modern Hebrew has so much appeal. Millions of people speaking in the same way.
@@BiblicalCulture Millions of people believed the sun revolved around the earth - and, according to you, that was correct.
@@victorsasson1911 hey bro didn't say which one is the most "correct" just said why modern Hebrew has more appeal, and more importantly, in biblical times there are multiple pronunciations, it's even written in the bible, people from the tribe of Ephraim didn't know how to do the 'sh' sound and people from the north, in the galilee region didn't know how to pronounce guttural sounds (just like Ashkenazis) unlike people around the area of Jerusalem (their pronunciation is more similar to various Yemenite ones), some scholars claim the sound of vav (ו) isn't v or w, but both are valid because both existed in the biblical era in different times and places, so fighting over this subject and getting annoyed by it, is just silly
where can I find a Tanakh with the Hebrew and transliteration like this? referencing minute 12:16
I didn't realize how unique the modern Hasidic pronunciation is. Where did this come from?
(It wasn't shown in the video, but I speak it.)
Do modern-day Mizrahis sound closer to the pre-Israel pronunciation of Hebrew, or has the modern pronunciation prevailed more or less?
Let's get this out of the way - none of these is "authentic Biblical Hebrew" in any way.
There are only closer to the original, and farther. Moreover, we'd never know for sure the exact nature of how it was pronounced.
Biblical Hebrew, being spoken from, let's say 3300BC - 300BC, very roughly, itself had many changes during that course of time.
What we think of as Biblical, for example BGD KFT lenition (B>v, K>ch), probably wasn't a thing at the times of David, for example, but much later, but it's considered "classical" today nonetheless.
“Authentic” meaning people from Yemen reading Yemenite, people from Iran reading Persian, etc. Real people from real places reading the תנ״ך.
@@BiblicalCulture the wording implies that it is 'original' biblical Hebrew, the way the writers of the Tanakh would have spoken themselves
The Babylonian sounds way more similar to modern Hebrew than Samaritan. It needs to be taken into account that Babylonian was the centre of Judaism for a while, in including Medieval times, while Yemen remained pretty isolated.
theres no nasality in romance languages when pronoung the i sound . its just that that vowell has a different pronunciation all together compared to germanic languages . i sounds like ee , in romance languages not eye .
Anybody know the name of the first recording? The introduction one i mean..
I'll be waiting. Please reply if you know.
Do we have testimonies of the Rumeliot way of pronouncing Hebrew. Rumeliots was the name of the Jews of Constantinople.
Could you tell me your thoughts on the Yanuka rav Shlomo Yehuda ty
There are different Yemenite pronuciations. Not all pronounce it as Jimmel and Guf, and others, such as the Sharabi dialect, its pronounced Gimmel and Quf. Not all Yemenites pronounce gimmel as a J. Its a common misconception, but overall great video
Agreed. Thank you.