User talk:Ελίας

Proto-Indo-European

Hello. It seems you are copying content from the PIE root pages and moving them to the derivative pages. For example, you created *bʰódeti based on the information in *bʰed-. It is a bad idea. The exact structure of many of these derivatives is uncertain. Because of this and because they have only a few descendants it is more economical to treat them at the root page. Next, you are leaving the references out. Finally, you are not acknowledging the users who worked on these derivatives at the root page. Vahag (talk) 09:52, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you that there should be a policy on words derived from roots, and that I have left the references out. For these reasons, I will cease creating new pages.

However, I do not understand why acknowledging the users who worked on these derivatives is needed, and if so, how they may be credited. Is there a page covering this topic? Ελίας (talk) 17:14, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

See w:Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. We are of course Wiktionary, not Wikipedia, but the same principles apply. Vahag (talk) 17:51, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Biblical Hebrew pronunciation of כל

In a recent edit, you changed the pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew כָּל from /kol/ to /kaːl/. May I ask your reasons for doing so? I don't think that word ever had an /a/ type vowel? – Pinnerup (talk) 16:24, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Tiberian /ɔ/ is never derived from Biblical /o/, althouɡh this could be a marɡinal case. But since it is pronounced /a/ in sephardi tradition and an akkadian coɡnate "kalum" exists, I think it is clear that this word oriɡinally had two pronunciations. Ελίας (talk) 16:34, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Well that's just wrong. Biblical Hebrew /u~o/ commonly becomes Tiberian short /ɔ/ (qamats qaton; Sephardi /o/) in unstressed closed syllables. What you're talking about is Tiberian long /ɔː/ (qamats gadol; Sephardi /a/) which mostly comes from Biblical Hebrew /aː/ but still sometimes comes from Biblical Hebrew /u~o/. You can clearly see that in words like חֹפֶשׁ /ˈħoːfɛʃ/ "freedom" and its adjective חָפְשִׁי /ħɔfˈʃiː/ from Biblical /ˈħopʃ/ and /ħopˈʃiː/ respectively. As for examples of qamats gadol from Biblical Hebrew /u~o/ then you have words like שֹׁרֶשׁ‎ /ˈʃoː‎rɛʃ/ "root" pl. שׇׁרָשִׁים‎ /ʃɔːrɔːˈʃiːm/ "roots" from Biblical /ˈʃorʃ/ and /ʃoraˈʃiːm/ respectively, these are /a/ in most Sephardi varieties but have been "corrected" to /o/ in Modern Israeli Hebrew. So yes כָּל is /kol/ not /kaːl/, something especially obvious from comparing it to Aramaic /kol/~/kul/ and Arabic /kull/, Akkadian is the exception in Semitic for this word. The reason there are two readings for this word is because one (כֹּל /koːl/) is the stressed reading when the word is independent and the other (כָּל־ /kɔl-/) is the unstressed reading when the word is prefixing another word, this is a regular sound change in Hebrew. Terra-Rywko (talk) 06:49, 26 October 2024 (UTC) (Edit @07:00 for extra clarification)

I realize that you're right now. Sorry, I had weird ideas about sound changes in hebrew. Now I realize this is the most likely option. Ελίας (talk) 19:13, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

IPA for reconstructions

This is a practice generally avoided. 1) Pagenames are already phonemic transcriptions 2) IPA is more specific than those transcriptions, and we aren't always aware of their general IPA value. Please do not add this for most reconstructed languages. Vininn126 (talk) 20:16, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

What are you referencing? Ελίας (talk) 22:08, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

You added many IPA pronunciations to Proto-Slavic pages. Vininn126 (talk) 22:21, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I see, I'll stop adding them then. Ελίας (talk) 22:24, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Vininn126 (talk) 22:30, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Biblical and Tiberian Hebrew IPA for exclusively Modern Hebrew phrases

This is not necessary for completeness' sake or similar and should be avoided, as it is ahistorical and at best confusing to readers. (One wouldn't expect a Biblical or Tiberian pronunciation at a word like טרנזיסטור either, for example.) Re: אין מה לחפש, מדינת ישראל, כתב נח בשבע שגיאות, על החיים ועל המוות. — Mnemosientje (t · c) 21:35, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

IPA and Biblical Hebrew

I think it would be best to avoid specifying Biblical Hebrew in IPA as much as possible especially phonetic transcriptions like [χaːˈβɪːɾ] as 1) Biblical Hebrew covers most of the history of written Hebrew over hundreds of years and so one pronunciation could be accurate for one time but not another, and 2) Some of the phonemes are controversial like "Were the emphatics ṭ ṣ q ejective [tʼ (t)sʼ kʼ] or pharyngealized [tˤ (t)sˤ kˤ~q] or something in between?" (even if I personally think they were definitely pharyngealized, I can't assert that) and like "Was ṣ an affricates [t͡sˤ] or a fricative [sˤ]?" it's definitely a fricative in Tiberian and Babylonian but that's over 900 years after Biblical Hebrew and over 500 years after the death of Hebrew as a primary spoken language. And please don't add even less certain periods like Proto-Hebrew just to have it both ways while asserting /sˤ/ for Biblical. I don't necessarily agree but the mainstream scholarship does in fact favour /t͡sˤ/ or /t͡sʼ/ in Biblical. If you really want to show how /p b t d k g/ were allophonically lenited in Late Biblical Hebrew*, at least do not lengthen short stressed vowels as that process likely doesn't happen until after the Biblical Hebrew period. And that's not getting into whether a phonemically distinct /χ/ coexisted with a lenited [β~v] allophone of /b/ or that /aː/ might have already had a more back allophone of [ɑː] or [ɔː] or something in between.

*transcriptions of Medieval Samaritan Hebrew in Arabic suggest that /k g/ weren't lenited in that variety which could extend back to Late Biblical Hebrew, this mirrors early lenition of aspirated and voiced stops in Koine Greek which didn't affect all six stops in all varieties until much later in the Byzantine period.

Also for phonemic/phonetic transcription ⟨.ˈ⟩ is super redundant, ⟨ˈ⟩ is already a syllable breaker so the standard practice is to only mark ⟨ˈ⟩, e.g. /ja.ʕăˈqoːv/ not /ja.ʕă.ˈqoːv/. There's also specifying [ɾ] instead of [r] which is not common unless that's common notation in the field or the language has a phonemic difference, both of which don't apply to a dead language where it's difficult to know which was used at all.

As for Tiberian Hebrew, more recent scholarship on its phonology strongly shows that vowel length phonemically exists as /ɛ̆ ă ɔ̆/ are distinct from /ɛ a ɔː/ in open unstressed syllables, and /i u ɔ/ are distinct from /iː uː ɔː/ in closed unstressed syllables like in יִירְאוּ /jiːrˈʔuː/ "they fear" vs יִרְאוּ /jirˈʔuː/ "they see". So something like מְדִינָה should be /mðiːˈnɔː/ not /mði.ˈnɔ/. Terra-Rywko (talk) 09:01, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

I'll keep your advice in mind for the transcriptions, although I don't remember using /ɾ/ in any of my edits.

Also, this interpretation of vowel length in Tiberian Hebrew is interesting. The matres lectionis may have indicated vowel lenɡth, but what about the other vowels? Did /ɛ/ and /o/ also have lenɡthened variants? I do not subscribe to this interpretation because no tradition seems to preserve it, and the ML could be relics from Biblical Hebrew. I would like to learn more about this, are there any books or studies which support lenɡthened vowels in Tiberian Hebrew?

Ελίας (talk) 10:59, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

I found [ɾ] in the [χaːˈβɪːɾ] though it seems it predated your edit.

Pre-Tiberian Hebrew did have a distinction between /ɛ/ and /ɛː/ but in Tiberian (at least according to Suchard 2018 analysis) they merged into /ɛ/, pronounced [ɛ] in unstressed closed syllables and [ɛː] otherwise, which is how Tiberian /a/ also works ([a] in unstressed closed syllables and [aː] otherwise), on the otherhand /eː/ and /oː/ are always long and pattern with /iː uː ɔː/. This basically makes it so Tiberian distinguished long /iː uː eː oː ɔː/, short /i u ɛ ɔ a/, and "ultra-short" /ɛ̆ ɔ̆ ă/. In Biblical spelling the length isn't reliably indicated but post-Biblical Rabbinic spelling is careful to use אִי for /iː/ vs אִ for /i/ and אוּ for /uː/ vs אֻ for /u/ strictly in unstressed closed syllables, while /ɔː/ vs /ɔ/ doesn't have any spelling clues but at easy to figure out from checking the Sephardi equivalent, /a/ for /ɔː/ and /o/ for /ɔ/.

And yes, other traditions that coexisted with Tiberian and the ones that came after it lose much of these distinctions but they are still partially preserved in one way or another, for example while Tiberian is comfortable allowing unstressed /CV­̄C/ syllables, others were not but the compensated by having shva naʕ (vocallic shva) as phonemic, so a tradition like Babylonian-Yemenite will have /jirəˈʔu/ [jiːræˈʔuː] and /jirˈʔu/ [jirˈʔuː] instead of Tiberian /jiːrˈʔuː/ [jiːʀˈʔuː] and /jirˈʔuː/ [jiʀˈʔuː], and While Ashkenazi doesn't distinguish /i u ɔ/ and /iː uː ɔː/ it does keep /ɛ ɔ/ separate from /eː oː/ by shifting the latter to diphthongs (Central-Eastern Ashkenazi /ej oj/). For more check this blog. Terra-Rywko (talk) 02:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

I understand now. This means Tiberian Hebrew had a five-vowel system with three possible lengths, but with seven different allophonic qualities. This is very similar to Latin. Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me.

As for your original request, פֿינצטערניש added the original [narrow] phonetic transcription(not trying to divert you from my mistake, I just think you should know).

I also don't know if Biblical hebrew had /t͡s/ instead of /s/, the only evidence that may work is egyptian borrowings, and they seem divided. I think the /t͡s/ > /s/ > /ʃ/ shift happened quite early and in fact may separate Proto-Hebrew from Biblical Hebrew.

This is my interpretation of the timeline of the Hebrew language: Proto-Hebrew(-1200 to -1000?): after canaanite shift, affricates still present. Biblical Hebrew(-1000 to -200?): loss of africates, 3 short vowels, 5 long vowels. Late Hebrew(-200 to 200?): Begadkefat appears, complete overhaul of the vowel system, very similar to Tiberian Hebrew, Samaritan Hebrew splits early off(after loss of uvular fricatives).

Ελίας (talk) 18:10, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Just to be clear I wasn't trying to accuse you anything, just giving some pointers cuz I felt bad editing Hebrew pages and noticing you in the history. Also sorry for the long post, I guess I had a lot to say.

For the Tiberian length system it's a bit complicated:

- /iː uː eː oː ɔː/ are always phonetically long ([iː uː eː oː ɔː]) regardless of stress or syllable shape.

- /i u ɛ ɔ a/ are phonetically short ([i u ɛ ɔ a]) in unstressed closed syllables and otherwise phonetically long ([iː uː ɛː ɔː aː]), but longer versions of /i u ɔ/ exist phonemically so only /ɛ a/ are actually used outside of unstressed closed syllables.

- /ɛ̆ ɔ̆ ă/ are phonetically short ([ɛ ɔ a]) but only exist in unstressed open syllables where both categories above are long.

- Phonetically long vowels ([iː uː eː oː ɛː ɔː aː]) can actually be slightly less long ([iˑ uˑ eˑ oˑ ɛˑ ɔˑ aˑ]) when in an unstressed open syllable immediately before the stressed syllable and word-finally especially when unstressed, they can also be extra-long ([iːi uːu eːe oːo ɛːɛ ɔːɔ aːa]) in closed syllables stressed or not, but when the coda is /ħ/, /ʕ/, or /h/ the high vowels /iː uː eː oː/ break into [iːa uːa eːa oːa]~[iːja uːwa eːja oːwa]~[ijja uwwa ejja owwa]~[iɟɟa uwwa eɟɟa owwa]. These variations in length are only optionally marked, though [iːa uːa eːa oːa] are almost always marked.

The Reason Suchard does this analysis is because of how these sounds pattern with each other, how the niqqud work, and how post-Tiberian traditions corresponds to Tiberian. For example while you can reanalyze this system into long /iː uː eː oː ɛː ɔː aː/ and short /i u ɛ ɔ a/, but you only actually get one less phoneme (12 vowels, vs Suchard's 13) while making it follow the orthography specifically created for it less AND makes translating to other traditions harder as Yemenite /ɔ/ comes from Tiberian /ɔː/ and /ɔ/ in the Suchard analysis but /ɔ̆/ stays distinct. It's also the case that /ɛ̆ ɔ̆ ă/ are a special group as they largely underlying epenthetic, but are less easy to predict than other epenthetics and have sometimes led to minimal pairs, like as seen in the Bible יַעַקֹב /jaʕˈqoːv/ [jaʕˈqoːv] "He follows"/"He will follow" (Jer. 9:3) as opposed to the more common proper name יַעֲקֹב /ja.ʕăˈqoːv/ [jaː.ʕaˈqoːv] "Jacob". There are some examples of /ɔ̆/ being underlying a short //o// like the word for illness //ħolj// is חֳלִי /ħɔ̆ˈliː/ in context but חֹלִי /ˈħoː.liː/ in pausa and similar things and there are similar examples for /ɛ̆/ but only in Tiberian Aramaic (Jewish traditions rarely distinguish between the phonology used for their Hebrew and Aramaic).

But this analysis isn't objective, Khan 2020 has a more underlying analysis that relies more on morphological knowledge and doesn't assign stress as it's more strictly about Hebrew within the Bible which frequently switches stress for non-phonological reasons.

As for how Hebrew is divided chronologically, I think this is a better way to think about it:

- Proto-Hebrew (Reconstructed, before anything identifiably Hebrew is written, around 2000 BC)

- Archaic Biblical Hebrew (Anything identifiably Hebrew starting around the 1000s BC to around 900 BC)

- Classical Biblical Hebrew (The Neo-Assyrian Period, around 800-600 BC)

- Transitional Biblical Hebrew (The Babylonian and Early Persian Periods, around 600-500 BC)

- Late Biblical Hebrew (The Persian and Hellenistic Periods, around 500-150 BC)

- Proto-Mishnaic Hebrew (around 50 BC-150 AD)

- Mishnaic/Tannaitic Hebrew (150-220 AD)

- Amoraic Hebrew (220-500 AD)

- Medieval Hebrew (500 to around 1770 AD)

- Maskilic Hebrew (around 1770 to 1890 AD)

- Modern Hebrew (around 1890 AD to the present)

Comments:

- Hebrew as a spoken language died between 140 and 400 AD.

- Date of loss of affricates is very debated.

- Date of Begadkefat is difficult to pin down, it can't be earlier than 700 BC When Aramaic lost the distinct between /θ ð/ and /t d/, nor earlier than 200 BC when Hebrew supposedly lost the distinction between /χ ʁ/ and /ħ ʕ/ but it can't be younger than 800 AD and realistically should have started spreading as an allophonic phenomenon between 100 BC and 100 AD, correlating with Koine Greeks lenition of /pʰ b tʰ d kʰ g/, but it didn't necessarily affect all speakers and even affected speaker didn't necessarily lenite all sounds as later Samaritan evidence shows that /p b t d/ were lenited to /f v θ ð/ but /k g/ were not lenited in Medieval Samaritan Hebrew and Aramaic, this kind of thing is also seen in Koine Greek between 300 BC and 100 AD where some regions lenited /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ but not /b d g/ and vice versa. When the phonemicization of /p b t d k g/ vs /f v θ ð χ ʁ/ happened is hard to be sure of, it was definitely distinct by Tiberian times (800-1200 AD) but there are no minimal pairs within Biblical text.

- The Vowel System is more complex that you think, it's hard to tell when different vowels became phonemic but at least as early as the Hellenistic period (323-30 BC) as attested by the Septuagint (285-247) and even up to the Mishnaic period (150-220 AD) the vowel system was something like: 6 long vowels (/iː uː eː oː ɛː aː/) and 4 short vowels (/i~e u~o ɛ a/). Terra-Rywko (talk) 07:06, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I understand the allophones, and I usually don't transcribe them, but I still had a question to ask you: Does Tiberian Hebrew contrast schwa na' or was it a later rule? And how was it pronounced? As you saw I accept the second option, because I transcribed מְדִינָה as /mðiˈnɔ/. Did Suchard explain this? Ελίας (talk) 11:35, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

shva na' in Tiberian is underlyingly zero (/∅/) but is predictable from the rules of syllable structure, so מְדִינָה is /mðiːˈnɔː/ [maðiːˈnɔː]. The rules for how to pronounce shva na' are as follows:

- [i] if before /j/.

- [V] if before /HV/ where /H/ is any laryngeal (/ħ ʕ h ʔ/) and /V/ is any vowel.

- [a~ɑ] otherwise

examples to explain:

- מְדִינָה /mðiːˈnɔː/ [maðiːˈnɔː] ‘state, country’

- בְּעֶרְכְּךָ /bʕɛrkˈχɔː/ [bɛʕɛʀkaˈχɔː] ‘by your evaluation’

- וְהָיָה /vhɔːˈjɔː/ [vɔhɔːˈjɔː] ‘and it became’

- בְּאֵר /ˈbʔeːr/ [beˈʔeːʀ] ‘well’

- מְאוֹד /ˈmʔoːð/ [moˈʔoːð] ‘very’

- מְחִיר /ˈmħiːr/ [miˈħiːʀ] ‘price’

- וְחִכֵּךְ /vħikˈkeːχ/ [viħikˈkeːχ] ‘and your palate’

- מְעוּכָה /mʕuːˈχɔː/ [muʕuːˈχɔː] ‘pressed’

- בְיוֹם /ˈbjoːm/ [biˈjoːm] ‘on the day’

- תְּדַמְּיוּן /tðammˈjuːn/ [taðammiˈjuːn] ‘you liken’

comparison to Yemenite which is a tradition with phonemic shva na' but has the same rules as Tiberian:

- מְדִינָה /məðiˈnɔ/ [mæðiːˈnɔː] ‘state, country’

- בְּעֶרְכְּךָ /bəʕarkəˈχɔ/ [bæʕærkæˈχɔː] ‘by your evaluation’

- וְהָיָה /wəhɔˈjɔ/ [wɔhɔːˈjɔː] ‘and it became’

- בְּאֵר /bəˈʔer/ [beˈʔeːr] ‘well’

- מְאוֹד /məˈʔøð/ [møˈʔøːð] ‘very’

- מְחִיר /məˈħir/ [miˈħiːr] ‘price’

- וְחִכֵּךְ /wəħikˈkeχ/ [wiħikˈkeːχ] ‘and your palate’

- מְעוּכָה /məʕuˈχɔ/ [muʕuːˈχɔː] ‘pressed’

- בְיוֹם /bəˈjøm/ [biˈjøːm] ‘on the day’

- תְּדַמְּיוּן /təðamməˈjun/ [tæðæmmiˈjuːn] ‘you liken’ Terra-Rywko (talk) 07:52, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Okay, we agree on that. But why do you transcribe ו as /v/ instead of /w/? I also saw you transcribe ישוע as /jeːˈʃuːʕ/, And even though I agree that the /a/ at the end is not phonemic, but if we went all the way with this we could also transcribe segolates like חרב as /ħɛrv/, making hebrew stress always ultimate(except for inflectional suffixes). Go even further, and you can reinterpret the begadkefat letters as allophones if shwa na' is phonemic, so you end up with /ħɛrəb/. And guess what, we get the Mishnaic-ish form of the word.

See what I'm getting at? I know the /a/ at the end of ישוע is not phonemic, but I think we should transcribe tiberian hebrew the way people perceived it at the time. Ελίας (talk) 11:04, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

- The reason I transcribe ו as /v/ is because that's how it was pronounced in Tiberian, Tiberian writers frequently said that their ו sounded the same as their ב and called [w] the "Iraqi/Babylonian ו", though there is a writer Mishaʾel ben ʿUzziʾel who said that this isn't the case for ו at the start of a stressed syllable after an /uː/, so פֻּוָה [Puvah/Puah, a Biblical name, one of the sons of Issachar] should be [puːˈwɔː] not [puːˈvɔː] and שִׁקֻּוַי ‘my drinks’ should be [ʃiqquːˈwaːj] not [ʃiqquːˈvaːj]. But other writers like David ben Abraham al-Fāsī either didn't mention such a thing or disagreed, and Karaite transcriptions into the Arabic regularly writes ו with the Arabic equivalent of ב in such contexts suggesting that it was [v] in that context too at least for most reciters.

- As for /jeːˈʃuːʕ/, the reason I transcribe it like this is because it is fully predictable and it messes with the rule that all syllables should start with a consonant, while other things you mentions are usually but not always predictable on a phonological level. For example Hebrew does allow word-final consonant clusters, they didn't all become segholates, a regular example is past tense 2nd person feminine singular verbs like קָטַלְתְּ /qɔːˈtˤalt/ ‘you.fsg killed’, another is the short jussive forms most common in wayyiqṭol verbs like וַיִּשְׁבְּ /vajˈjiʃb/ ‘and he captured’ and וַיֵּבְךְּ /vajˈjeːvk/ ‘and he cried’. You also get irregular loans like נֵרְדְּ /ˈneːrd/ ‘lavender’ and קֹשְׁטְ /ˈqoːʃtˤ/ ‘truth’. As for begadkefat letters they are no longer allophonic in Tiberian Hebrew the status of bgdkpt after a closed syllable is not phonologically predictable anymore due to dropping of vowels, so מֶלֶךְ /ˈmɛlɛχ/ ‘king’ as the plural construct מַלְכֵי־ /malχeː-/ ‘kings of’ but the feminine מַלְכָּה /malˈkɔː/ ‘queen’. There's also ħaṭap̄ vowels which should be completely predictable in most instances so אֱלֹהִים could be analyzed as /ʔloːˈhiːm/ [ʔɛloːˈhiːm] but the issue is that the rules are a bit complicated for אֲ vs אֱ and there are times where it is unpredictable like the afformentioned יַעַקֹב /jaʕˈqoːv/ [jaʕˈqoːv] ‘He follows’/‘He will follow’ (Jer. 9:3) as opposed to the more common proper name יַעֲקֹב /ja.ʕăˈqoːv/ [jaː.ʕaˈqoːv] ‘Jacob’. Terra-Rywko (talk) 17:53, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

If the ו sounded similar to /v/, wouldn't it make more sense for it to be /ʋ/? I think Tiberian Hebrew was not meant as an exact representation of the Masoretes' speech. As you said, Hebrew was already a dead language, so there were no native speakers. So even if the Masoretes did in fact pronounce בֿ and ו the same, they probably perceived them as distinct phonemes. In the same way we don't transcribe Classical Arabic according to the Old Hijazi accent (/quˈraːn instead of qur.ʔaːn/) we shouldn't take the Masoretes' speech or "accent" as the exact way they intended hebrew to pronounced. Ελίας (talk) 19:03, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

it would not make more sense for it to be /ʋ/, the Masoretes (5th to 10th century) were alive during the period Tiberian Hebrew is based on (9th to 12th century), and the writers I mentioned were people that spoke Tiberian Aramaic and Arabic natively, and books specifically teaching other Jews how to pronounce Tiberian Hebrew like Hidāyat Al-Qāri', as I said before Jewish traditions rarely distinguish between the phonology used for their Hebrew and Aramaic, as in the phonology of Tiberian Hebrew is the phonology of Tiberian Aramaic. As the shift from /w/ to /v/ was a shift shared with Latin and Greek and there is /v/ not /ʋ/, Hebrew traditions that have vav pronounce it as /v/ and even ones that have waw usually still have veth as /v/ like Yemenite or /b/ like much of Mizrahi and Sephardi traditions. /v/ also patterns with all the other voiced fricatives (/ð z ʁ ʕ/) and did not pattern with /j/, shva na' before vav was [a] not [u] and in Tiberian geminated /jj/ was fortified to [ɟɟ] but /vv/ was unaffected. Tiberian /v/ whether from vav or veth was written in Arabic transcriptions with the letter bā, fā, or wāw, and being written with fā could indicate a fricative pronunciation. In Samaritan vav even became /b/ in all cases expect when geminated /ww/ and the conjunctive /w-/ "and".

At the end of the day the difference between voiced fricatives and approximants is rather low as many phoneticists have noted, languages almost never distinguish a fricative and approximant of the same voicing and place of articulation without something secondary to increase the difference. But /v/ fits most of the evidence and /ʋ/ only fits a compulsive need to make things more conservative than they need to be and present a very gradual change over time despite the known tendency for sound changes to happen abruptly and not necessarily gradually. Terra-Rywko (talk) 00:45, 22 December 2024 (UTC)