Tav was originally pronounced “Thav”. With the spread of the Diaspora into Eastern Europe from Spain, the “Thav” gradually became a “Sav”.
Neither Ashkenasi nor Israeli/ Sephardic pronounciation of Tav is the same as it was in the ancient days.
Actually, there were Jews pronouncing “taf~saf” even in Israel in the Talmudic period, which seems to be where the pronunciation started. There are Greek/Roman words ending in “-s” in Israeli Talmudic texts which are sometimes written with a samekh at the end, and sometimes with a saf.
You know, they say the closest one to Biblical Hebrew is the Temani dialect, but I could never find a sufficient teacher/guidebook/chart that didn’t compare the sounds to letters in a foriegn alphabet e.g.Arabic. Anyone wanna help?
Tav was originally pronounced “Thav”. With the spread of the Diaspora into Eastern Europe from Spain, the “Thav” gradually became a “Sav”.
Neither Ashkenasi nor Israeli/ Sephardic pronounciation of Tav is the same as it was in the ancient days.
Actually, there were Jews pronouncing “taf~saf” even in Israel in the Talmudic period, which seems to be where the pronunciation started. There are Greek/Roman words ending in “-s” in Israeli Talmudic texts which are sometimes written with a samekh at the end, and sometimes with a saf.
You know, they say the closest one to Biblical Hebrew is the Temani dialect, but I could never find a sufficient teacher/guidebook/chart that didn’t compare the sounds to letters in a foriegn alphabet e.g.Arabic. Anyone wanna help?
Reb Nachman, go to http://www.chayas.com and select link to “hebrew / pronunciation”