Does pay sound like phay?
The gemara in Brachos 15b says that one must pause between words that could get slurred together. It gives seven examples. Five of them are where one word starts with the same sound that the previous word ended with but two are the same letter - one with a dagesh and one without. Those two are: "hakanaF Psil" and "eiseV B'sadcha." F and P don't sound alike and those are the same sounds that phay and pay make. Why are these listed as examples? At that time did they pronounce a phay the same whether it had a dageish or not (like we pronounce dalet the same either way)? Or is there some other explanation?
posted by David @ 9:46 PM
5 Comments:
My chavrusa and I discussed this question. He thought perhaps there were indeed those who did not pronounce these differently, like we (Ashkenazim) do not distinguish between gimel and dalet whether or not they have a dagesh. [Yemenites apparently do.]
I took a simpler approach, which is that the pronunciation depends upon where they are found in a word, so we say v'salmud Torah k'neged kulam rather than v'talmud.
The two sounds of beis/veis, kaf/khaf, pey/fey, and taf/saf, are made in the same part of the mouth -- and to a person who isn't used to thinking of "B" & "V" or "F" and "P" they are really interchangeable. "Fsil" and "V'sadcha" are "legitimate" pronunciations of these words, certainly no more wrong than replacing a kamatz with a patach.
So if one were rushing along, he could well say "hakanafsil" and/or "eisev'sadcha."
Just my thought on the subject...
I saw this morning that the Meiri asks this question. One answer is just that maybe they pronounced it differently then. The other answer is similar to what you said (if I understood the Meiri correctly) that those sounds could still be slurred together. I don't really buy that though. P and F aren't said the same way. I could understand B and P but not so much P and F.
Hi.
As to your last comment, b/p is a voiced/unvoiced difference. p/f should be just a plosive/fricative difference, but the way we pronounce it today, there is also a manner of articulation - bilabial vs labiodental - difference.
As a response to your post, I dealt with this is some detail on parshablog, also mentioning that the Rif has a girsa of the gemara with additional examples involving vav.
You can check it out here
Sepharadim do not, but in most Sephardic Siddurim, there are markings to tell you to separate between "Hakanaf" and "Petil".
Depending on which country you are from, there are variations in general pronounciation. In Egypt, for example, the Egyptians do not pronounce a "P". They pronounce it like a "B". I know this doesn't help here, but it sheds light on how there could be differences.
Excuse the Batala break, but the joke goes like this:
Mubarak came back from a visit to the US, and demanded that his name be put on every door in Egypt.
When his advisors asked him why, he replied, "On every door in the US, it says PUSH".
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