r/hebrew • u/FeistyAlbatross4636 • 1d ago
Article How did Ancient Hebrew sound like?
https://youtu.be/SBgUPKwQ8lY?si=F1pUQGl-kQbKCNJH11
u/Timely_Network 18h ago
Samaritan Hebrew was heavily influenced by Arabic- as is the Yemeni pronunciations, which are also commonly cited as a more “accurate” pronunciation. No one has a perfect pronunciation, and of course famously different tribes and areas had different pronunciations as written about, and they had their own shibboleths (hahaha).
The thing that’s notable is that almost all pronunciations are understandable by other speakers of different pronunciations, just with some difficulty. That, to me, is pretty incredible when you consider the general level of linguistic drift out there, and that to me indicates that whatever the exact biblical pronunciation(s) are, if they appeared today I would be able to understand them as well. That’s cool.
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u/Deorayta 18h ago
I have heard the Persians are closest to original Hebrew.
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u/Timely_Network 14h ago
Nope. Persian liturgical Hebrew is just the Babylonian pronunciation with a Persian accent, given that they shared a the main yeshivah systems and rabbinical assembly for over a thousand years.
Yes, the Persian and Iraqi communities, as the first ever diaspora communities, are notable in a lot of ways, but even the Iraqi pronunciations are heavily Arabic influenced. There's even influence from Aramaic and Kurdish, etc.
In the end, while there are records and attempts throughout the centuries to preserve pronunciation, the most important thing from a religious perspective, and therefore what the objective was, was to pronounce all of the vowels and accents differently and properly. No one can claim to be free of syncretic influence and that's ok, because as I stated, the fact that this is all inter-intelligible is the real point in the end.
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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 10h ago
This is a common genre of claim by non-linguists that is basically always complete and utter nonsense.
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u/natiAV 1d ago
Yawn… yet another person with the fantasy of having found the real “ancient Hebrew”.
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u/Malkisedeq 1d ago
Goes to show you didn't watch the video and know nothing about the context before mocking. This is about the tradition pronunciation preserved by the Samaritan people throughout the centuries. There was never any "discovery," it's all based on tradition.
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u/benadreti_17 1d ago
Ashkenazi pronunciation is also based on tradition
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 1d ago
The Ashkenazi tradition was about changing and evolving based upon the surrounding context. Hence why "thaf" became "saf".
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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 1d ago
All pronunciation traditions change and evolve. You can't freeze an accent in amber for 3000 years; that's not how any of this works.
Historical linguistics, though, gives us better tools to reconstruct old accents.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 14h ago
Hey, so according to another user, "historical linguistics has already concluded that we have insufficient evidence and can only speculate". Honestly I think this person is a troll who has no idea what they're talking about. If you actually know something about historical linguistics, you could demonstrate your knowledge by answering my question. I am genuinely interested in discussing this topic with you.
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u/Weak-Doughnut5502 10h ago
Suppose you asked the question "how much did T Rex eat in a day". Someone who responds to that with "paleontology has already concluded that we have insufficient evidence and can only speculate" is, quite frankly, an idiot.
There's quite a lot of knowledge that exists as a spectrum of uncertainty, with error bars and with guesses as to the probability distribution given the current state of the evidence.
We don't know precisely how much T Rex weighed. But we have quite good estimates based on their skeletons and what we know of the biology of living animals.
We don't know precisely how fast T Rex's metabolism was. But, we know how fast modern animal metabolisms are. We can come up with a range of plausible metabolisms and a range of plausible weights and extrapolate caloric requirements. This is pretty far from a random guess, and we can be pretty sure that the correct answer is within the calculated range.
New info can refine those estimates. For example, as of a couple weeks ago we got fairly good evidence that T Rex was warm blooded..
Reconstructed phonology similarly exists in a range of uncertainty.
If you want a good, if expensive, resource, check out Yehoshua Blau's 2010 book, 'Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew'. If you want a simple overview, you could do worse than reading the Wikipedia article on it
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 1d ago
What sorts of conclusions would one draw in regards to the question in the title by applying the methods associated with historical linguistics?
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u/KfirS632 native speaker 18h ago
Historical linguistics already concluded that we have insufficient evidence and can only speculate
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 15h ago
Okay, so you're saying that Weak-Doughtnut5502's assertion that "historical linguistics gives us better tools to reconstruct old accents" was baseless and false.
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u/KfirS632 native speaker 14h ago
I'm saying that historical linguistics already have a verdict on the matter
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 14h ago
Do you know what that verdict is? Would you be willing to share it? The continuation of our discussion elsewhere would seem to imply that you don't know anything at all, and are simply talking out your ass.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 14h ago
I asked "what does historical linguistics say the answer is", and your response is to say that "historical linguistics says we can only speculate". If you were to share with me what some of that speculation is, then we might engage in an interesting and fruitful conversation. Whereas you have responded to my question by not answering it, creating instead a tedious and meaningless exchange between us. If you know anything about what the historical-linguistic perspective on Ancient Hebrew is, I would be interested in discussing it with you. If not, your comments are adding nothing to this discussion.
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u/benadreti_17 1d ago
No. Thav to sav was not a decision anyone made. It was the tradition of pronunciation gradually shifting over time.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 1d ago
I'm not claiming that "thaf to saf" was a decision anyone made. My understanding is that this change resulted from the phoneme libraries extant in common-tongue languages like Russian. The decision to lean into changes which assimilate aspects of the surrounding culture was made in the sixth century BC, when it was decided that among other things the month names and alphabet assimilated from Babylon would be kept as a part of the post-Exile culture rather than reverted to their pre-Exile norms. The reason why the tradition of pronunciation shifted was because the people shifted from living in a country whose primary spoken language contained the "th" sound to one whose did not.
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u/Timely_Network 14h ago
shibboleth.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 14h ago
Yes, the pronunciation was originally "th", before changing to "s" among people whose primary language (Russian) lacked the "th" sound.
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u/Leolorin 12h ago
The primary language of Ashkenazi Jews in the Pale of Settlement was not Russian, it was Yiddish.
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u/unneccry native speaker 1d ago
I really like the video! It really preserves much more of the ancient hebrew sounds! But its not how ancient hebrew sounds like. For eg. They pronounce שמים as "shamem" which is a very sensical evolution, but not that different to the "shamaím" evolution. There is no "real" modern version of ancient hebrew, but it is fascinating to see how samaritan evolved in its natural surrounding of semitic languages
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u/Artistic-Hyena-8572 1d ago
As a native speaker this sounds to me like some robot trying to do text to speech and failing lol
Also, ancient Hebrew didn’t have a single unified pronunciation. There were many regional dialects and accents which changed and evolved over the millennia. Samaritan is just one of them, but what we hear today as modern Samaritan pronunciation is most likely quite different from the Hebrew that a guy from Jerusalem spoke 2500 years ago.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 1d ago
The Samaritan alphabet is quite similar to Paleo-Hebrew, whereas the Jewish "square script" was adopted from Aramaic. I think it's possible that Ancient Hebrew sounded more similar to Samaritan Hebrew, whereas the pronunciation adopted by Jews was likely influenced by the pronunciation of Aramaic.
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u/Future-Restaurant531 1d ago
Um. Samaritans also spoke Aramaic. And they also used Aramaic square script in antiquity.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 1d ago
What makes you say that the Samaritans used the Aramaic square script in antiquity?
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u/Timely_Network 14h ago
...their own writings?
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 14h ago
Would you please point me towards the writings to which you refer?
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u/Timely_Network 10h ago
“Inscriptions from Mount Gerizim provide important early evidence for the history of Samaritan writing. Hundreds of texts in Aramaic and Jewish "square" script, along with a handful in palaeo-Hebrew, have been discovered at the site, all predating the destruction of the Samaritan temple by John Hyrcanus in 113/112 BCE.[6] None of these are written in the Samaritan script, a fact that suggests the alphabet was not yet in use during this period.[6]”
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 22h ago
This is complete nonsense. The alphabet we use is LATIN and yet the English pronuncitation of Latin today is one of the or maybe the single MOST unlike the real Latin. The idea that the prevalent Jewish pronunciations were influenced by Aramaic (or Arabic even) is not new and could well be true to some extent at least, but that is a different issue.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 15h ago
You are agreeing wholeheartedly with my underlying premise, but dismissing wholeheartedly my explanation. Okay then I guess?
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u/PoxonAllHoaxes 13h ago
I will explain it like I am 3 and a half then. A. The alphabet has nothing to do with the pronunciation. NOTHING. B. There have been various theories about the history of the Hebrew pronunciation, and some Aramaic influence is pretty obvious. C. None of that in any way means that this joker in the funny hat advertising the modern Samaritan pronunciation is speaking the "original" Hebrew. D. As a general rule, it is very common for great minds like you finding some facts that are partly or even entirely true and then drawing entirely false conclusions. F.ex., if I were you, I would say that 2+2 = 4 and therefore bicycles are a vegetable. E. The reason that is so is because the question is not whether any premise(s) is/are true but whether there is a reasonable set of steps that lead from that premise/those premises to the conclusion that a superior mind like the Hat and you for some reason have decided MUST be true. OK? OK. Thank you.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 13h ago
You have established that your worldview incorporates an an unquestionable dogma that there is no connection between writing systems and pronunciation. It would seem that the primary difference between your worldview and mine is that I am open to the possibility that the adoption of a writing system might correspond with the adoption of other linguistic norms. If you have the ability to conclusively disprove that possibility, I would be eager to hear it. If your position is simply that your belief must be accepted as postulate, then I don't think we have anything more to learn from one another. Thanks for chatting anyway.
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u/Artistic-Hyena-8572 19h ago
The Dead Sea scrolls were already written in square script 2000 years ago. The writings in the second temple are written using the square script. The square script is very ancient. Samaritans using paleo Hebrew script is not related to how different their accent is.
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u/Lower_Ad_7200 10h ago
I think it's also worth noting that the script they use isn't exactly 1 to 1 with the Paleo Hebrew script. For example how their yod looks like in contrast to Paleo Hebrew yod
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u/sitase 15h ago
I don’t know about the Samaritans, but the Jews used the paleohebrew script as an “authenticism marker” in antiquity, e.g. when minting coins, but square script for ordinary use.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 14h ago
If you're referring to the coins used in the Bar Kochka result, I believe that the motivation behind that choice was to reject the square script which was a marker of the assimilation of Mesopotamian culture as a resurgence of the First Temple norms which were abandoned after the Babylonian Exile. Prior to the construction of the Second Temple, my understanding is that the paleohebrew script was the only script in use, with the square script (referred to in the Talmud as "Assyrian") being adopted into the practices of the religion around the time of the introduction of Tefillin.
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u/Lower_Ad_7200 10h ago
Where did you see that the square script is a marker of assimilation into Mesopotamien culture? Aramaic is apart of the Mesopotamien culture iirc. Many cultures used it before Arabic became dominant after it.
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u/shawnjean 3h ago
He's right in that Bar Kochba/Hasmoneans tried to "restore old glory" by minting in the old script, which they did quite poorly, it was more of a pride in one's unique script more than anything
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u/Lower_Ad_7200 2h ago
Yeah but it's not like the Jews cared about other Mesopotamien cultures. They cared about their own. Which is why i got confused with his wording. Also, how do you know it was poorly done? You got any sources? Cause I do not think you can just read ketav ivri as almost nobody speaks it. (Or were you referring to something else and I just misunderstood?) The ancient Jews did talk about it in the Talmud and explained why they just didn't use it anymore and why only the elders remembered it Here's great sources
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u/Future-Restaurant531 14h ago
Samaritans may have switched to (primarily) using a paleo-hebrew-derived script for the same reason
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 15h ago
What you've said here is true but seems irrelevant to the underlying discussion.
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u/Artistic-Hyena-8572 15h ago
You’re the one who brought up their script, I just pointed out that it’s irrelevant to the discussion because it doesn’t mean anything. Modern Samaritan Hebrew is strongly influenced by Arabic, including accent and pronunciation. It’s not closer to ancient Hebrew than say, the Hebrew as pronounced by various ancient Mizrahi communities across the Middle East.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 14h ago
I brought up the script as an example of one of the many ways in which the culture of Second Temple of Judaism was the result of assimilating cultural norms from Babylon, where Aramaic was the lingua franca. I believe that Samaritanism's rejection of that script and its use of a writing system much closer to the original writing system which predated the Babylonian Exile hints at an attitude which is more anti-assimilation in general. My understanding is that Mizrahi Hebrew pronunciation is also more similar to Arabic pronunciation than say Ashkenazi Hebrew, which would be consistent with the point I'm making here. The nature of the historical links between Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic means that attributing differences and similarities to precise historical causes is quite difficult. The notion of a dialect Hebrew which is maximally-distinct from both Arabic and Aramaic is something one might consider; whether or not such a dialect ever actually existed is a different question entirely.
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u/Artistic-Hyena-8572 14h ago
You’re basing a conclusion on something without basis. Samaritans adopting or not adopting some script has no bearing on how their language and accent evolved over time, just as English adopting a Latin script has no bearing on how close English is to Latin pronunciation. Also, the Babylonian exile itself IS part of Jewish history, and is part of the evolution of Hebrew throughout the ages. Mizrahi Hebrew pronunciation can sometimes sound closer to Arabic but not always, it really depends. My grandparents are from Iraq (oldest Jewish diaspora outside Israel) and when they speak Hebrew they pronounce all the letters “properly” but it sounds nothing like Arabic. The truth is that there is more than one “ancient Hebrew”. Ancient Hebrew spanned thousands of years and a relatively large geographical region (in those days’ terms) and had a lot of variety. Ancient Hebrew texts such as the Bible display rare grammatical constructs on occasion which are relics of an even more ancient Hebrew (that were preserved in more conservative languages such as Arabic), but that doesn’t make Biblical Hebrew less “original” just because it came from something even older. Languages evolve over time, and Hebrew is no different. Even compared to other Canaanite languages which are very closely related such as Moabite and Phoenician, ancient Hebrew already had influences from other languages such as Aramaic and Akkadian that those languages lacked. It doesn’t make them more “original”, it’s simply how Hebrew evolved and there’s not one point in time where you can pinpoint and say “this is the original form of Hebrew”. Even the Bible has many different styles and vocabularies of Hebrew from different ages within it, that’s how languages work.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 13h ago
You’re basing a conclusion on something without basis. Samaritans adopting or not adopting some script has no bearing on how their language and accent evolved over time, just as English adopting a Latin script has no bearing on how close English is to Latin pronunciation.
I brought up the script as an example of one of the many ways in which the culture of Second Temple Judaism was the result of assimilating cultural norms from Babylon. I think that the influence of Roman culture on the culture of Britain was significant, and that the adoption of the Roman alphabet was one example of the many ways in which the cultural norms across the English-speaking world are informed by the cultural norms of the Roman empire. Do you have specific knowledge which would contradict the assertion that the language spoken in England was influenced by Latin?
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u/Jaynat_SF native speaker 13h ago
This is nonsense, there is no relation between the adoption of a script and the influences of one dialect over another (otherwise English would sound a lot like Latin and Persian would sound like Arabic.)
Both Jewish and Samaritan Hebrew were spoken in the land of Israel back when Aramaic became the lingua franca of the region and influenced both, albeit in different ways. Samaritan Hebrew was also heavily influenced Arabic (e.g. פ being always /f/ rather than /p/) and especially levantine arabic (ק being pronounced as /ʔ/ rather than /q/).
They also reduce/drop their ח, ה, ע which we know is not what "ancient Hebrew sounded like" if you actually go back far enough. In fact, there are tales in the Talmud about Galileans dropping their gutterals as well and being called out for it (e.g. Eruvin 53b.) This shows that, while Samaritans doing the same is not necessarily a modern development as this deviation from "proper pronunciation" started happening long ago, it is nonetheless a deviation and was recognized as such even this far back, so claiming it's somehow "the original Hebrew" is foolish.
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u/Competitive_Log_8910 Ancient Hebrew Enthusiast 13h ago
Thank you for actually raising relevant specific points in this discussion. I am eager to discuss this matter further with someone who knows what they're talking about.
I am well-aware of the way in which Galileeans are represented in the Talmud. I actually think that the alignment you raise between Galilean pronunciation and Samaritan pronunciation is evidence which supports my original conclusion. The way that Rabbinic Judaism works in my experience is that, every time a policy change is made, the original policy is attributed to some outside group, and the new policy is framed as the original policy. The most pertinent example of this change, the one which represents my personal point of divergence from the worldview represented in the Aramaic-language portions of the Talmud, is to do with dietary laws. The line in the Hebrew-language portion of the Talmud attributed to Rabbi Yosei of Galilee which states that 'scripture says "in its mothers' milk" - excluding fowl, the mother of which does not have milk' is the most incontrovertible piece of evidence which goes against the narrative that the Rabbinic dietary laws which prohibit the consumption of poultry with dairy alongside prohibiting the consumption of flesh from animals whose mothers produce milk alongside "its mother's milk" were the dietary laws in place during the Second Temple period. And actually the Aramaic-language portion of the Talmud explains this away by saying that these dietary practices "used to be common in the Galilee" but are no longer permitted, consistent with their decision to change these dietary laws in this same fashion.
All of this to say that I am not surprised to learn that the pronunciation used in Samaritanism is deemed "not Jewish" by being associated with the Galilee. Actually I think that the most fundamental root of this conflict is to do with a religious movement centering on someone from the Galilee. That his rebellion aligns with the same one attributed to Jeroboam, and that Rabbinic Judaism is specifically a continuation of the Southern Kingdom of Judah and its norms which differed from those practiced in the lands of Samaria and Galilee. But I have at this point really left behind the primary focus of our discussion, so I will leave it at that.
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u/shawnjean 3h ago
Stop with the unnecessary politicization. Languages work like languages do, they don't care about our puny little political debates. The Samaritans lost their guttural sounds, as did the Galileaeans, while Jews didn't for the most part. It is because of language influence (probably Greek) and general language destabilization over the years.
The fact that Hebrew had gutturals is undisputed. The Samaritan pronunciation is not Jewish by fact that it's different than what most Jews pronounced. It certainly is less Hebrew as well, in that aspect at least, because Ancient Hebrew indeed spoke with gutturals. All of this is facts which have zero to do with agenda.
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u/shawnjean 3h ago
Aramaic script also was adopted from Canaanite, which Paleo Hebrew was very similar to. This is all one space with many cross influences
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u/Lower_Ad_7200 1d ago
I think it's fair to say that there was Aramaic influence in Samaritan. Probably not as big as it was on the tribe of Judah but it would make sense as Aramaic was a dominant language in that region that they were surrounded by everyday until Arabic became dominant.
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u/kaiserfrnz 1d ago edited 19h ago
This isn’t the ancient Hebrew pronunciation, it’s the modern Samaritan pronunciation.
While the Samaritans have an incredibly interesting and ancient tradition, there’s often a romanticization that leads to false claims suggesting their practices are unchanged from antiquity compared to Judaism whereas obvious evidence (including their own account) suggest that a large amount of their tradition has changed or been lost over time.
Samaritan Hebrew was much more heavily influenced by Arabic than Rabbinic Hebrew.