Six Degrees of the Shma: Deuteronomy 6:4-6 in Six Historical Pronunciations of Biblical Hebrew

This has been sitting on my queue for a long, LONG time. Thanks to Ben Kantor's recent book on the relationships between the early reading traditions, I was able to lay to rest some of my uncertainties, though not all. I dithered and vacillated about how much of the Shma to do and in what format. Anyway, at this point I think I'd better just post it once and for all, or I'll be tinkering with it forevermore.
What you have here is a theoretical pre-exilic version, a reading based on the dialect of the Secunda, a reading based on Saint Jerome's transcriptions, a reading meant to illustrate what a "Masoretic-type" vocalization might have been like (complete with pausal forms and the long pronoun clitics), followed by readings in reconstructions of Babylonian and Tiberian Hebrew. The reconstructions based on rewinding sound-changes in the relative chronology of Biblical Hebrew, rather than directly attested material, are transcribed in a broad Semiticist notation. The ones based on documented dialects are given in IPA.
For the reconstructions of Jerome's and the Secunda's dialect I'm indebted to Benjamin Kantor, though I have changed a thing or two (notably, I don't think /r/ was dorsal in this period). For the relative chronology of Biblical Hebrew sound changes (which is how two of these readings were arrived at), I'm grateful to Benjamin Suchard and his excellent dissertation.
Most of these recordings are chanted/cantillated one way or another, in part because otherwise it didn't seem like including both the Secunda dialect and Jerome's dialect was justified (his dialect is different from that of the Secunda, though the differences aren't super apparent from the passage given here), and in part because I think it's kind of an important point that the phonology of Biblical Hebrew reading traditions was, after a certain point at least, not primarily associated with a normal speaking voice. It's difficult to even make sense of the structure of Tiberian Hebrew unless you envision it chanted. The reading in the theoretical late 2nd Temple para-Masoretic dialect is a very simple chant of my own concoction, and with the reading in Jerome's dialect I was likewise having fun. The Babylonian one is basically bastardized Shaami, and the Tiberian version is bastardized Temani. (I realize it would make way more sense for these two to be reversed, but I liked how my Tiberian one came out so much that I didn't want to part with it.) The greatest uncertainty lies in what Hebrew was like (and indeed whether this passage even looked the same) in the pre-exilic period.
Note: this recording has me pronouncing the actual Tetragrammaton out loud. If you'd rather not hear that, skip the first of these readings. I don't pronounce it in the post-exilic renderings.
Incidentally, if you have not known the pain of trying to get Babylonian vocalization to properly render in a video editor, count yourself lucky. How is it 2024 and we still don't have proper unicode support for Babylonian Hebrew vowels?
If you like this video and want to help me make more things like it, check out my Patreon here: / azforeman

[@hectorlarios8689]

Beautiful. I was especially intrigued by the Secunda and Jerome's pronunciation! Thanks as always, Alex.

[@a.z.foreman74]

You're most welcome

[@iberius9937]

טוב מאוד! 👏

[@user-jh4uc1ti4t]

Thanks once again for the amazing trip back in time. I've tried learning some of these pronunciations, but it's a struggle. For example, trying to say לשחק in pre-exilic Hebrew!

[@chirantankakati8021]

Amazing. Can we have a video on Hurrian from your side?

[@Yan_Alkovic]

4-5th century is my favourite

[@drunklittlesheep]

1:19 Sounds very similar to a pedantic modern Ashkenazi chazzan

[@adamyitzhak9907]

I was thinking the same

[@crustymcgee6580]

Wow it sounds so much like Arabic

[@toilet5170]

Is it just me or does ancient hebrew sound even more beautiful with less chaf and vet

[@drunklittlesheep]

Blasphemy

[@gunterhabich47]

I must say I am not a fan of bhagavad-kapat either. Just imagine you shiver with cold and you freeze like teṯeṯeṯeṯeṯeṯe instead of tetetetetetete, people would consider one a freak, so no thanks.

[@ismaelamaro7728]

More Latin poetry please!

[@HenryLeslieGraham]

great work. typo in the first slide though. i think you mean to type "Judahite", not [sic] "Jududahite"

[@a.z.foreman74]

D'oh

[@mika849]

Do ancient Hebrew's phonologies make Hebrew understandable to Arabic speakers?

[@bezbezzebbyson788]

Not that much it's a bit more understandable but still overall hard to get

[@firstaidsack]

Great work! Very interesting. I have my doubts about the earliest pronunciation, though. How come it is the one that a Westerner will have the least trouble pronouncing?

[@a.z.foreman74]

I don't think Westerners have an easy time pronouncing ejectives, and very few of them have an easy time pronouncing lateral fricatives.

[@firstaidsack]

@@a.z.foreman74 I'm not an expert in phonetics, so these words don't tell me much. I was just going off your pronunciation, and for the most part, it seemed like the earliest one was the easiest one for me to imitate, while for the later ones I had to do much more "mouth gymnastics".

[@wordart_guian]

Maybe you think that because it's not sung

[@MV-hu3dw]

Waiting for Jews to see this and decide they ought to RETVRN to using your reconstructed Second Temple phonology here for prayer.

[@TheOrthodoxPunjabi]

great pronunciation, cringe cantillation

[@iberius9937]

I respectfully disagree. However, is there a reason why you find his cantillation cringe? Is it the melismatic singing? That's a very Eastern Roman and now Middle Eastern vocal style that can sound unfamiliar or undesirable to some westerners, so I understand. He does, however, sing in tune and sounds pretty authentic, almost Yemenite or Mizraic.

[@optimystic5839]

Hey, Amazing work. I have a theory that pre-exilic Hebrew at least by 1000BC never had θ and δ sounds, and instead was replaced with ś and z. This means Dalet was always a d sound and Taw was always a t sound. As we know, BegadKefat phenomenon came towards the end of the millenia through Aramaic influences. Also q was either an ejective k sound or velarised.

[@servantofaeie1569]

Is pronouncing ⟨ś⟩ as [ʂ] instead of [ɬ] deliberate or a mistake?

[@a.z.foreman74]

I am actually pronouncing [ɬ] there but listening, I can see how it would sound like [ʂ].

[@servantofaeie1569]

​@@a.z.foreman74Slowing the video down so I can hear it better, it still sounds a little off from how a Welshman would say it. I think maybe you are velarizing it [ɬˠ]?

[@a.z.foreman74]

It's quite possible. I've said the word ישראל a lot with a velarized/emphatic /r/ when doing Tiberian Hebrew recordings, and may have instinctively raised the back of my tongue there, with spread to the adjacent consonant. (Also my native Russian /r/ before back vowels is postalveolar with some tongue root involvement.) Here's what I sound like when reading Welsh: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKPMn6aZq7ljmck It does sound "darker" in the Hebrew recording. Sounds like a depressed F2. You're probably right.

[@servantofaeie1569]

@@a.z.foreman74 That's exactly what I was thinking, the R is definitely velarized too. You are Russian? I thought you were English!

[@Glossologia]

@@servantofaeie1569 He's American, but is bilingual in Russian (though his Russian ancestor left Russia in the 1890's so his Russian has some archaisms).