Yemenite Hebrew language

Yemenite Hebrew ( ''ʿĪvrīṯ Tēmŏnīṯ''), also referred to as Temani Hebrew, is the pronunciation system for Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Hebrew has been studied by language scholars, many of whom believe it to retain older phonetic and grammatical features lost elsewhere. Yemenite speakers of Hebrew have garnered considerable praise from language purists because of their use of grammatical features from classical Hebrew. Tunisian rabbi and scholar, Rabbi Meir Mazuz, once said of Yemenites that they are good grammarians.

It is believed by some scholars that its phonology was heavily influenced by spoken Yemeni Arabic. Other scholars and rabbis, including Rabbi Yosef Qafih and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, hold the view that Yemenite Hebrew was not influenced by Yemenite Arabic, as this type of Arabic was also spoken by Yemenite Jews and is distinct from the liturgical Hebrew and the conversational Hebrew of the communities. Among other things, Rabbi Qafih notes that the Yemenite Jews spoke Arabic with a distinct Jewish flavor, inclusive of pronouncing many Arabic words with vowels foreign to the Arabic language, e.g., the Qamats ( he, קָמַץ, rtl=yes) and Tseri ( he, צֵירִי, rtl=yes). He argues that the pronunciation of Yemenite Hebrew was not only uninfluenced by Arabic, but it influenced the pronunciation of Arabic by those Jews, despite the Jewish presence in Yemen for over a millennium.

History

Yemenite Hebrew may have been derived from, or influenced by, the Hebrew of the Geonic era Babylonian Jews: the oldest Yemenite manuscripts use the Babylonian system of vowel symbols, which is believed to antedate the Tiberian vowel system. As late as 937 CE, Qirqisāni wrote: “The biblical readings which are wide-spread in Yemen are in the Babylonian tradition." Indeed, in many respects, such as the assimilation of '' paṯaḥ'' and '' səġūl'', the current Yemenite pronunciation fits the Babylonian notation better than the Tiberian (though the Babylonian notation does not reflect the approximation between ''holam'' and ''sere'' in some Yemenite dialects). This is because in the Babylonian tradition of vocalization there is no distinct symbol for the ''səġūl''. It does not follow, as claimed by some scholars, that the pronunciation of the two communities was identical, any more than the pronunciation of Sephardim and Ashkenazim is the same because both use the Tiberian symbols.

The following chart shows the seven vowel paradigms found in the Babylonian supralinear punctuation, which are reflected to this day by the Yemenite pronunciation of Biblical lections and liturgies, though they now use the Tiberian symbols. For example, there is no separate symbol for the Tiberian ''səġūl'' and the ''pataḥ'' and amongst Yemenites they have the same phonetic sound. In this connection, the Babylonian vowel signs remained in use in Yemen long after the Babylonian Biblical tradition had been abandoned, almost until our own time.

Distinguishing features

The following chart shows the phonetic values of the Hebrew letters in the Yemenite Hebrew pronunciation tradition.

Among the Yemenites, they have preserved the sounds for each of the six double-sounding consonants: ''bəged-kəfet'' (). The following are examples of their peculiar way of pronunciation of these and other letters:
*The phoneme gímel/ğimal () with the dāḡēš/dageš is pronounced in the Yemenite Jewish tradition as the English "j" in the word "Jack". Thus, the verse (Deut. 4:8) is realized as, ''u'mi, ğoi ğaḏol'' () (as in Sanʽani Arabic ğīm /d͡ʒ/ but unlike Taʽizzi-Adeni Arabic /g/).
*''gímel/gimal'' () without ''dāḡēš/dageš'' is pronounced like Arabic ġayn.
*''dāleṯ/dal'' () without ''dāḡēš/dageš'' is pronounced as the "th" in "this". Thus, the word ("one") in ''Shema Yisrael'' is always pronounced ''aḥāḏ'' ().
*The pronunciation of ''tāv/taw'' () without ''dāḡēš/dageš'' as is as the "th" sound in "thick" or "thank" (shared by other Mizrahi Hebrew dialects such as Iraqi). Thus, ''Sabbath day'' is pronounced in Yemenite Hebrew, ''Yom ha-Shabboth'' ().
*''Vāv/Waw'' () is pronounced as the English "w" (as also in Iraqi Hebrew and in Arabic).
*Emphatic and guttural letters have nearly the same sounds and are produced from deep in the throat, as in Arabic.
*The voiceless pharyngeal fricative of ''ḥêṯ/ħet'' () is equivalent to the Arabic character ح , with a slight aspirated sound but never like the "ch" in Bach.
*The phoneme ''ʻáyin/зajin'' () is identical to the Arabic , and is a voiced pharyngeal fricative. (The Sephardic pronunciation of ע, however, is of a weaker nature).
*The Hebrew ''tsadi'' () is not a voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate "ts" among the Yemenites, but rather a deep-sounding "s" (pharyngealized fricative).
*The Hebrew phoneme /q/ () (''qof'') is pronounced by the Yemenites (other than the Jews from Shar'ab) as a voiced /g/, as in "go," (as in Sanʽani Arabic gāf /g/ but unlike unlike Taʽizzi-Adeni Arabic /q/) and is in keeping with their tradition (assuming it to be correct) that a different phonetic sound is given for ''gímel''/''gimal'' (see ''supra'').
*The phoneme ''resh'' (), or what is also known as the Hebrew rhotic consonant /r/, is pronounced in Yemenite Jewish tradition as an alveolar trill, rather than the uvular trill � and is identical to Arabic ' and follows the conventions of old Hebrew.

Vowels

*''Qāmaṣ gāḏôl/Qamac qadol'' is pronounced , as in Ashkenazi Hebrew and Tiberian Hebrew. The Yemenite pronunciation for ''Qamats gadol'' () and ''Qamats qatan'' () is identical (see ''infra''.).
*There is no distinction between the vowels ''paṯaḥ/pataħ'' and ''səḡôl/segol'' all being pronounced , like the Arabic ''fatḥa'' (a feature also found in old Babylonian Hebrew, which used a single symbol for all three).''Siddur Tefillat Kol Pe'', vol. 1 (foreword written by Shalom Yitzhak Halevi), Jerusalem 1960, p. 11 (Hebrew) A ''šəwâ nāʻ/šwa naз'', however, is identical to a חטף פתח and חטף סגול.
*Final ''hê/hej'' with ''mappîq/mefiq'' (a dot in the centre) has an aspirated sound, generally stronger sounding than the regular ''hê/hej''. ''Aleph'' (אַלַף) with a ''dagesh'' (a dot), a rare occurrence, is pronounced with a glottal stop, e.g., the word וַיָּבִיאּוּ i
Genesis 43:26
Conversely, some words in Hebrew which are written with the final ''hê'' ending (without the ''mappîq'') are realized by a secondary glottal stop and so are abruptly cut short, as to hold one's breath.
*A semivocalic sound is heard before ''paṯaḥ gānûḇ/pataħ ganuv'' (''paṯaḥ'' coming between a long vowel and a final guttural): thus ''ruaħ'' (spirit) sounds like ''rúwwaḥ'' and ''siaħ'' (speech) sounds like ''síyyaḥ''. (That is shared with other Mizrahi pronunciations, such as the Syrian.)

Yemenite pronunciation is not uniform, and Morag has distinguished five sub-dialects, the best known being probably Sana'ani, originally spoken by Jews in and around Sana'a. Roughly, the points of difference are as follows:
*In some dialects, ''ḥōlem/ħolam'' (long "o" in modern Hebrew) is pronounced (anywhere from non-rhotic English "er" to German o- umlaut), but in others, it is pronounced like ''ṣêrệ/cerej''. (The last pronunciation is shared with Lithuanian Jews.)
*Some dialects (e.g. Sharab) do not differentiate between ''bêṯ/bet'' with ''dāḡēš/dageš'' and without it. That occurs most of Mizrahi Hebrew.
*Sana'ani Hebrew primarily places stress on the penultimate syllable, as in Ashkenazi Hebrew.

''Qamats Gadol'' and ''Qamats Qatan''

The Yemenites in their reading practices continue the orthographic conventions of the early grammarians, such as Abraham ibn Ezra and Aaron Ben-Asher. One basic rule of grammar states that every word with a long vowel sound, that is, one of either five vowel sounds whose mnemonics are "pītūḥe ḥöthom" (i.e. ''ḥiraq'', ''šūraq'', ''ṣeré'', ''ḥölam'' and ''qamaṣ''), whenever there is written beside one of these long vowel sounds a ''meteg'' (or what is also called a ''ga’ayah'') and is denoted by a small vertical line below the word (such as shown here זָכְרוּ), it indicates that the vowel (in that case, ''qamaṣ'') must be drawn out with a prolonged sound. For example, ōōōōōō, instead of ō, (e.g. ''zoː— kh^ǝ ru''). In the Sephardic tradition, however, the practice is different altogether, and they will also alter the phonetic sound of the long vowel ''qamaṣ'' whenever the vowel appears alongside a ''meteg'' (a small vertical line), giving to it the sound of "a", as in ''cat'', instead of "ōōōōō." Thus, for the verse in (Psalm 35:10), the Sephardic Jews will pronounce the word כָּל as "kal" (e.g. ''kal ʕaṣmotai'', etc.), instead of ''kol ʕaṣmotai'' as pronounced by both Yemenite and Ashkenazi Jewish communities.

The ''meteg'', or ''ga’ayah'', has actually two functions: (1) It extends the sound of the vowel; (2) It makes any šewa that is written immediately after the vowel a mobile ''šewa'', meaning, the ''šewa'' itself takes on the sound of a reduced vowel in Germanic languages, equivalent to , or "a" in the word "about." For example: = ''šoː m^ǝ ru'', = ''ye r^ǝ du'', = ''ye d^ǝ ‘u'', = ''ʔö m^ǝ rim'', = ''šö m^ǝ rim'', = ''sī s^ǝ ra'', = ''šū v^ǝ kha'', and = ''tū v^ǝ kha''.

The ''Qamats qatan'' is realized as the non-extended "o"-sound in the first ''qamats'' (''qamaṣ'') in the word, חָכְמָה ⇒ ''ḥokhma'' (wisdom).

The Yemenite ''qamaṣ'' , represented in the transliterated texts by the diaphoneme , is pronounced as the English "a"-sound in "all" or as in "halt", or "caught," and this phoneme is always the same, whether for a long or short vowel, but the long vowel sound is always prolonged.

''Holam'' and ''sere''

A distinct feature of Yemenite Hebrew is that there is some degree of approximation between the '' ḥōlam'' and the '' ṣêrệ''. To the untrained ear, they may sound as the same phoneme, but Yemenite grammarians will point out the difference. The feature varies by dialect:

*In the standard, provincial pronunciation that is used by most Yemenite Jews, ''holam'' is pronounced as . For example, the word "''shalom''" (), is pronounced ''sholøm'', the having the phonetic sound of something between a non-rhotic English "er" and the German '' ö''. For all practical purposes, the sound is similar to the "i" in ''girl''.
*In some provincial dialects, in particular that of Aden, ''holam'' becomes a long ''e'' and is indeed indistinguishable from ''sere'', and some early manuscripts sometimes confuse or interchange the symbols for the two sounds.

Some see the assimilation of the two vowels as a local variant within the wider Babylonian family, which the Yemenites happened to follow.

Strict application of Mobile Shewā

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and Rabbi Jacob Saphir have praised the Yemenites in their correct pronunciation of Hebrew. They still read the biblical lections and liturgies according to what is prescribed for Hebrew grammar and are meticulous to pronounce the mobile ''šĕwā'' in each of its changing forms. While most other communities also adhere to the rule of mobile '' šĕwā'' whenever two ''šĕwā''s are written one after the other, as in , most have forgotten its other usages.

Aharon Ben-Asher, in his treatise on the proper usage of Hebrew vowels and trope symbols, writes on the ''šĕwā'': "t isthe servant of all the letters in the entire Scriptures, whether at the beginning of the word, or in the middle of the word, or at the end of the word; whether what is pronounced by the tongue or not pronounced, for it has many ways… However, if it is joined with one of four utturalletters, א ח ה ע, its manner f pronunciationwill be like the manner of the vowel of the second letter in that word, such as: (Jud. 1:7) = ''b^öhonoth''; (Prov. 1:22) = ''t^e’ehavu''; (Ps. 10:8) = ''l^eḥeləkhah''; (Ezra 2:2) = ''r^eʻeloyoh''."

On the mobile ''šĕwā'' and its usage amongst Yemenite Jews, Israeli grammarian Shelomo Morag wrote: "The pronunciation of the ''šĕwā'' mobile preceding א, ה, ח, ע, or ר in the Yemenite tradition is realized in accordance with the vowel following the guttural; quantitatively, however, this is an ultra-short vowel. For example, a word such as is pronounced ''w^uḥuṭ''. A ''šĕwā'' preceding a ''yōḏ'' is pronounced as an ultra-short ''ḥīreq'': the word is pronounced ''bⁱyōm''. This is the way the ''šĕwā'' is known to have been pronounced in the Tiberian tradition."

Other examples of words of the mobile ''šĕwā'' in the same word taking the phonetic sound of the vowel assigned to the adjacent guttural letter or of a mobile ''šĕwā'' before the letter ''yod'' (י) taking the phonetic sound of the ''yod'', can be seen in the following:
*(Gen. 48:21) = ''w^eheshiv''
*(Gen. 49:30) = ''bam^oʻoroh''
*(Gen. 50:10) = ''b^eʻevar''
*(Exo. 7:27) = ''wⁱ’im''
*(Exo. 20:23) = ''mizbⁱḥī''
*(Deut. 11:13) = ''w^ohoyoh''
*(Psalm 92:1-3)

(vs. 1) ''lⁱyöm'' -- (vs. 2) ''l^ohödöth'' -- (vs. 3) ''l^ahağīd''

The above rule applies only to when one of the four guttural letters (אחהע), or a ''yod'' (י) or a resh (ר) follows the mobile ''šĕwā'', but it does not apply to the other letters; then, the mobile ''šĕwā'' is always read as a short-sounding ''pataḥ''.

Distinctive pronunciations preserved

Geographically isolated for centuries, the Yemenite Jews constituted a peculiar phenomenon within Diaspora Jewry. In their isolation, they preserved specific traditions of both Hebrew and Aramaic. The traditions, transmitted from generation to generation through the teaching and reciting of the Bible, post-biblical Hebrew literature (primarily the Mishnah), the Aramaic Targums of the Bible, and the Babylonian Talmud, are still alive.''The Traditions of Hebrew and Aramaic of the Jews of Yemen'' (ed. Yosef Tobi), in Article entitled: ''Notes on the Vowel System of Babylonian Aramaic as Preserved in the Yemenite Tradition'', Shelomo Morag, Tel-Aviv, 2001, p. 181. They are manifest in the traditional manner of reading Hebrew that is practised by most members of the community. The Yemenite reading traditions of the Bible are now based on the Tiberian text and vocalization, as proofread by the masorete, Aaron ben Asher, with the one exception that the vowel ''sǝġūl'' is pronounced as a ''pataḥ'', since the ''sǝġūl'' did not exist in the Babylonian orthographic tradition to which the Jews of Yemen had previously been accustomed. In what concerns Biblical orthography, with the one exception of the ''sǝgūl'', the Yemenite Jewish community does not differ from any other Jewish community.

Although the vast majority of post-Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic words are pronounced the same way or nearly the same way by all of Israel's diverse ethnic groups, including the Jews of Yemen, there are still other words whose phonemic system differs greatly from the way it is used in Modern Hebrew, the sense here being the tradition of vocalization or diction of selective Hebrew words found in the Mishnah and Midrashic literature, or of Aramaic words found in the Talmud, and which tradition has been meticulously preserved by the Jews of Yemen. Two of the more recognized Yemenite pronunciations are for the words רבי and גברא, the first pronounced as ''Ribbi'', instead of Rabbi (as in Rabbi Meir), and the second pronounced ''guvra'', instead of ''gavra''. In the first case, archaeologist Benjamin Mazar was the first to discover its linguistic usage in the funerary epigrams of the 3rd and 4th-century CE, during excavations at the catacombs in Beit She'arim (Roman-era Jewish village). Nahman Avigad, speaking of the same, wrote: "Of special interest is the title Rabbi and its Greek transliteration ( gr, ΡΑΒΙ). In the inscriptions of Beth She'arim found in the former seasons ריבי and ביריבי are usual, and only once do we find רבי, which has been regarded as a defective form of ריבי, for in Greek we generally find the form ( gr, ΡΙΒΒΙ). The transliteration ( gr, ΡΑΒΙ) found here shows that the title was pronounced in Palestine in different ways, sometimes ''Rabbi'' (ΡΑΒΒΙ, ΡΑΒΙ), sometimes ''Ribbi'' (ΡΙΒΒΙ, ΡΙΒΙ) and occasionally even ''Rebbi'' (ΒΗΡΕΒΙ)." In the latter case, the Jerusalem Talmud occasionally brings down the word גברא in '' plene scriptum'', גוברייא (pl. for גברא), showing that its pronunciation was the same as that in use by the Yemenites. Some have raised the proposition that the Yemenite linguistic tradition dates back to the Amoraim.

R. Yehudai Gaon, in his ''Halakhot Pesukot'' (Hil. ''Berakhot''), uses '' yod'' as the '' matres lectionis'' to show the vowel '' hiriq'', after the ''qoph'' (ק) in ''Qiryat Shema'' (). The editor of the critical edition, A. Israel, who places its composition in Babylonia, notes that "linguists would take an interest" in Yehudai Gaon's variant spellings of words, where especially the ''matres lectionis'' is used in place of vowels, "represented either by a plene ''alef'' (א), ''waw'' (ו), and ''yod'' (י)." The use of the ''matres lectionis'' in place of the vowel ''hiriq'' in the construct case of the words קִרְיַת שְׁמַע ("recital of Shemaʻ" = קירית שמע) reflects apparently the Babylonian tradition of pronunciation, and, today, the same tradition is mirrored in the Yemenite pronunciation of ''Qiryat shemaʻ''.

The following diagrams show a few of the more conspicuous differences in the Yemenite tradition of vocalization and which Israeli linguist, Shelomo Morag, believes reflects an ancient form of vocalizing the texts and was once known and used by all Hebrew-speakers.

Notes on transliteration: In the Yemenite Jewish tradition, the vowel '' qamaṣ'' , represents . The Hebrew character ''Tau'' (), without a dot of accentuation, represents . The Hebrew character ''Gimal'' (), with a dot of accentuation, represents . The Hebrew word גנאי (in the above middle column, and meaning 'a thing detestable'), is written in Yemenite Jewish tradition with a vowel '' qamaṣ'' beneath the , but since it is followed by the letters אי it represents . The vowel ''ḥolam'' in the Yemenite dialect is transcribed here with , and represents a front rounded vowel. Another peculiarity with the Yemenite dialect is that the vast majority of Yemenite Jews (excluding the Jews of Sharab in Yemen) will replace , used here in transliteration of texts, with the phonetic sound of .

In the Yemenite tradition, the plural endings on the words זָכִיּוֹת (''merits''), מַלְכִיּוֹת (''kingdoms''), גָּלִיּוֹת (''exiles''), טעִיּוֹת (''errors''), טרפִיּוֹת (''defective animals'') and עֵדִיּוֹת (''testimonies''), all differ from the way they are vocalized in Modern Hebrew. In Modern Hebrew, these words are marked with a ''shuraq'', as follows: זָכֻיּוֹת - מַלְכֻיּוֹת - גָּלֻיּוֹת - טעֻיּוֹת - טרפֻיּוֹת - עֵדֻיּוֹת. Although the word (''kingdoms'') in Daniel 8:22 is vocalized ''malkhuyoth'', as it is in Modern Hebrew, Shelomo Morag thinks that the Yemenite tradition reflects a phonological phenomenon known as dissimilation, whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar. Others explain the discrepancy as being in accordance with a general rule of practice, prevalent in the 2nd century CE, where the Hebrew in rabbinic literature was distinguished from that of Biblical Hebrew, and put into an entire class and category of its own, with its own rules of vocalization (see ''infra'').

The Hebrew noun חֲתִיכָּה (''ḥăṯīkkah''), in the upper left column, is a word meaning "slice/piece" (in the absolute state), or חֲתִיכַּת בשר ("piece of meat") in the construct state. The noun is of the same metre as קְלִיפָּה (''qǝlipah''), a word meaning "peel," or the "rind" of a fruit. Both the '' kaph'' and '' pe'' in these nouns are with a ''dagesh''. However, the same roots applied to different meters, serving as gerunds, as in "slicing/cutting" eatand "peeling" n apple the words would respectively be חֲתִיכָה (''ḥăṯīḫah'') and קליפָה (''qǝlīfah''), without a ''dagesh'' in the Hebrew characters '' Kaph'' and '' Pe'' (i.e. ''rafe'' letters), such as when the verb is used with the preposition "after": e.g. "after peeling the apple" = אחרי קליפת התפוח, or "after cutting the meat" = אחרי חתיכת הבשר.

In the Talmud (''Ḥullin'' 137b; ''Avodah Zarah'' 58b), the Sages of Israel had a practice to read words derived from the Scriptures in their own given way, while the same words derived from the Talmud or in other exegetical literature (known as the Midrash) in a different way: "When Isse the son of Hinei went up here he found Rabbi Yoḥanan teaching certain Mishnahto the creations, saying, ''raḥelim'' (i.e. רחלים = the Hebrew word for "ewes"), etc. He said to him, 'Teach it y its Mishnaic name = רחלות ''raḥeloth''!' He replied, ' hat I say isas it is written n the Scriptures Ewes (''raḥelim''), two-hundred.' (Gen. 32:15) He answered him, 'The language of the Torah is by itself, and the language employed by the Sages is by itself!'" (לשון תורה לעצמה, לשון חכמים לעצמן).

This passage from the Talmud is often quoted by grammarians of Yemenite origin to explain certain "discrepancies" found in vocalization of words where a comparable source can be found in the Hebrew Bible, such as the Yemenite tradition in rabbinic literature to say (''maʻbīr''), rather than (''maʻăvīr'') – although the latter rendering appears in Scripture (Deuteronomy 18:10), or to say (''zīʻah''), with ''ḥīraq'',Yosef Amar Halevi, ''Talmud Bavli Menuqad'', vol. 4, Jerusalem 1980, s.v. ''Pesaḥim'' 24b, et al. rather than, (''zeʻah''), with ''ṣerê'', although it too appears in Scripture (Genesis 3:19), or to say (''birkhath ha-mazon'') (= '' kaph'' rafe), rather than as the word "blessing" in the construct state which appears in the Scriptures (Genesis 28:4, et al.), e.g. ''birkath Avraham'' (ברכת אברהם), with ''kaph'' dagesh. Others, however, say that these anomalies reflect a tradition that antedates the Tiberian Masoretic texts.

Along these same lines, the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible

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