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Menachem's Writings
On Speaking Hebrew
I have a friend, a professor of medicine, who travels far and wide. He told me of a recent conversation with a Japanese colleague concerning the pronunciation of English words. The old joke about the Japanese (the Chinese too) eating flied lice is indeed true. That's really how they say it. Not only that, says the Japanese doctor, but even when you say fried rice, I hear "flied lice". The "r" sound is foreign to his ear. My friend draws from this that there is physiologic component at play (his field is not physiology). Clearly it is not something inherited in the build of the larynx nor in the shape of the mouth at birth. Second generation Japanese (and other races) born in America sound like any native [white] American from the same geographic area, to the extent that sometimes you hear a voice and, turning around, you are surprised to see the matching face. In contrast to Charles Darwin's belief that "Fuegians and Australian Aboriginals" are somewhere on the evolutionary scale between apes and the English gentleman, all humans, from all over the globe, are in essence, born physiologically identical. While each person may not use all of her physical nor mental capabilities, the ability is always present. So why do the Japanese hear "flied lice"? It is a matter of nurture, not nature. As children learn their native language, their mouth muscles, and subsequently their auditory input, develop certain forms. The brain's firmware is thus reprogrammed. This allows them to produce, and hear, their own special accents, precluding others, disallowing certain sounds from being pronounced accurately -- or from being pronounced at all. In recent times I have been doing a lot of thinking and research re pronunciation, specifically that of Hebrew. The various forms of Hebrew among the scattered of Israel originate from a common source. Even if various dialects of Hebrew were tribe related, there must have been a common source. In this essay, I do not propose to go back further than the latter second Temple period. By then there were two major pronunciations of Hebrew, the Israeli and the Babylonian (perhaps the Yemenite was already slightly different to the Israeli). These groups, in their pronunciation of Hebrew and Aramaic for everyday conversation and in prayer, were differentiated, though not seriously so. Remnants of the original pronunciation remain with certain groups of Jews all around the Diaspora, into our time. The Hebrew alphabet comprises twenty-two consonants. These are sounds produced with a closed or partially closed part of the mouth, e.g. throat, tongue and lips. Additionally there are ten vowels. These sounds are created by the relatively free, unimpeded passage of breath through the larynx and oral cavity. Vowels usually form the prominent and central sound of a syllable. Syllables are the building blocks of words. In addition to Hebrew's twenty-two individual consonant sounds, seven letters have two voices. In written Hebrew these seven are represented by a dot in the centre of the symbol (e.g. beth/veth). In each case, the pronunciation of the dotless form is similar to that of the dotted version, but sounded with a slight opening of the mouth to allow a passage of air. Consonants with the impeded form are called plosive, from exploding as the letter needs to forced though the mouth. The free flowing consonants are called fricative (for example f and th in English). So we have thirty-nine sounds, each represented by thirty-nine distinct written symbols. In addition to these, the letter shin has two possible pronounciations, sh and s. Unfortunately the pronunciation of the sin has been lost to us. Likewise that of the resh with a dot has also been lost. The long and wide diaspora has taken its toll on our language. The Latin [English] alphabet is comprised of only twenty-six letter symbols (consonants and vowels are mixed together) though many more sounds are available to modern speakers. Most European languages indicate additional sounds by a mixture of accents, increasing the base Latin letter number. English is a poor language to read as it uses no symbols besides the twenty-six letters, but it expects readers to know how to read any word, a daunting task, even to mother tongue speakers, considering that today over a million words are available to adherents. And due to many word borrowings over the centuries, there are many exceptions to the pronunciation rules. Hebrew does not use diphthongs, that is single letters representing a double sound, letters created from two individual consonants. Hebrew rarely has two adjacent consonants within one syllable (for example "br" as in bring in English does not exist in Hebrew). In Hebrew a very short vowel, schwa, breaks the double sound like the "e" in roses. (Linguists also use this term to describe this short vowel in English, though the general population of English speakers is unaware of the concept.) Hebrew is comprised of specific atoms of sound. In modern times, both in the Ashkenazi (originating in Israel in the centuries after the destruction of the Temple before moving to Europe with the exiles) and the S'fardi (originating in Babylon) has obscured some of these. For example, daleth in both forms is now pronounced the same way ('d') with or without a dot. Taw (a soft 't') is pronounced differently without a dot by the Ashkenazim ('ss') but not by the S'fardim. Veth (beth without the dot) and vav (correctly pronounced waw) should not be both pronounced in the same way*, though they are by most Jews. Ssadi cannot be sounded as 't' followed by 'z' because that would be two distinct sounds represented by one symbol. Why the differences? Because throughout the diverse diasporas in which our Jews have lived, certain sounds are not used in the vernacular. As a result, our people lost the required physiology for correct [Hebrew] pronunciation. For example, most Continental languages do not have a 'w' sound. So this transformed into 'v' in that part of the world. Not all languages have guttural sounds. These too disappeared in certain regions (khaf and heth are two very differently sounded letters, originating from different parts of the mouth -- throat and palette). As Jews on their many wanderings, settled down in different exiles and learnt new, foreign languages, they lost their ability and the tradition to produce the different sounds. They adapted their prayer language (spoken Hebrew was all but discarded) as best they could ('w' becomes 'v' even though another letter already had this sound, and 'th' became 'ss'). Most American accents, for instance, have lost short vowel sounds and this has followed them into Hebrew. The modified European variation of Hebrew has now been remodified in America. They also have a tendency to combine vowels with consonants. holam is a vowel sound similar to a short 'o' in English. Today, this is often pronounced as "oy" or "ow", clearly no longer a simple vowel, but a diphthong, comprising a vowel followed by a consonant. This is a well known concept to linguists based on laziness, one of the drivers of changing pronunciation of languages. Over time it makes conversation easier. Ironically, many believe that they are praying and learning in the same accent as their antecedents did in Lithuania, continuing an old Jewish tradition. In each community, different sounds were lost, resulting in today's often great variations in Hebrew pronunciation around the Jewish world. Why is it important to pronounce each of our thirty-nine sounds of speech, consonants and vowels, differently? Independently? Correctly? In the fifth chapter of Pirkei Avoth we learn that haShem created the universe with speech. "With ten sayings the world was created". Additionally we acknowledge this spoken creation each time we eat and each morning at the commencement of pray. Our general benediction over food blesses haShem by saying "that everything came into being by his word [singular, one word for each thing]". Similarly we commence our morning prayers with, "Blessed be He who spoke and the world came into existence. Blessed be He who creates. Blessed be He who speaks and makes." There many other similar references throughout the Tanakh and in our sidur. These sources demonstrate that haShem's utterance of a word is what brings the named object into material reality. The sources above are from the revealed Tora (the Talmud). The esoteric Kabala contains many more references to speech-creation concepts. However we do not need to enter into that realm. An understanding of haShem's creative methodology is reachable without delving into these difficult depths. Speech is the ultimate creative tool, providing the ability to create an object from absolute nothingness. It is important to emphasise that this creation occurs via a spoken, not a written, word. It is one thing for a word to be spelt correctly -- it is another to pronounce it in its true, individual form. Pronunciation, not spelling, is paramount. However as each sound has a unique characterisation, and each printable character has a unique sound, we do in fact have a one to one correspondence, we do have a truly phonetic alphabet, when Hebrew is uttered as it should be. So if haShem speaks a word containing a thaleth (as in the English word breathe), it is important that the correct sound be used. An object created with a d sound will be different a different article to that created with a th. Sounds have varying effects on the cosmos at large and on sub-particles at the micro level. Most can only begin to wonder how. How does this effect us? Why is it important? Can we too potentially create? First, emulating haShem is an important concept. If that is how haShem pronounces a word, then we should [attempt to] pronounce it the same way. We wear tefillin because haShem wears tefillin. We are holy because haShem is Holy. Emulation is an important aspect of our relationship with our Creator. Second, we are, after an extremely long exile, returning home. Our diaspora is over (though many of us do not yet seem to understand this). We have to become Eress Yisraeli'im again, the people of our own Land, the people of the Land of Israel. And returning to our native language and to our native pronunciation is important. It is a part of our redemption**. We are a proud people. We do not want to speak our language nor pray to our God in a Hebrew that was (inadvertently) modified by Jews exiled to Germany or Syria and then remodified by these Jews on re-exile to London or New York. More than that however -- yes, we too [can] have the ability to create, to produce something new, from nothing. It is an ability which haShem only bequeathed to speakers of His language. Hebrew is the only language of prophesy, because it is the language spoken by haShem, it is the language of the cosmos. So pronunciation is important. I am not saying that it is easy, that everyone can reach the level of prophesy -- it requires intense training and one must reach a certain spiritual plane -- and I am not saying that just anyone today is capable of creating by the spoken word. But haShem is showing us that creation is achieved by spoken words alone. We should endeavour to use our language correctly, especially in prayer and meditation. As with many esoteric concepts in Judaism, creation via words today has analogies which make understanding these ideas easier for us than they were for previous generations. Today's computer programs are written using a subset of the English language, joined together by a simple grammar. For example, the famous program from Bell Labs, print "Hello World!"; displays the text, "Hello World!" on a printer or on a monitor. Misspelling the command "print", say as "pront" or "frint", will produce a type of "does not compute" error resulting in nothing being printed. Only the correct word is that which creates in this microcosm. The wrong word, no matter how similar it appears to the required word, does not. At the official announcement of the decoding of the human genome, Francis Collins, head of the Genome Project and a religious man, referred, at the White House event, to the human genome sequence as "our own instruction book, previously known only to God". In a similar vein, President Bill Clinton said, "today we are learning the language in which God created life." The program, the sequence, by which all biology is created, is a set of letters, of codes, of words in a language of its own. A misspelling can be disastrous! Creation, within certain of our subsystems, is word based. In fact haShem's language of the entire cosmos is word based. And we are only now discovering this truth, a truth which our rabbis, perhaps going back to our forefather Abraham, knew well millennia before the onset of the twentieth century. Returning to my professor friend ... he researches breast cancer and is very involved in the genetic aspects. He has discovered a number of genes over the years. This has given him naming rights. The language of creation continues ... * The Yemenites continue to pronounce all of these sounds independently, daleth as 'd' with dot, thaleth without (as in breathe). Taw as 't' with a dot, thaw without a dot (as in breath). ** our redemption The early political Zionists also realised this, but due to their "hatred" of traditional Ashkenazi Judaism, they inappropriately decided that the S'faradim must possess the secret to the true, authentic Hebrew. But as a disappointed S'faradi Chief Rabbi found out, it was not really their Hebrew either.
Menachem Kuchar, 1st September, 2009
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