Yemenite Hebrew
Pronunciation system for Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Yemenite Hebrew (Hebrew: עִבְרִית תֵּימָנִית ʿĪvrīṯ Tēmŏnīṯ), also referred to as Temani Hebrew, is the pronunciation system for Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Hebrew has been studied by language scholars, many of whom believe it to retain older phonetic and grammatical features lost elsewhere. [1] Yemenite speakers of Hebrew have garnered considerable praise from language purists because of their use of grammatical features from classical Hebrew. Tunisian rabbi and scholar, Rabbi Meir Mazuz, once said of Yemenites that they are good grammarians.[2]
It is believed by some scholars that its phonology was heavily influenced by spoken Yemeni Arabic.[citation needed] Other scholars and rabbis, including Rabbi Yosef Qafih and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, hold the view that Yemenite Hebrew was not influenced by Yemenite Arabic, as this type of Arabic was also spoken by Yemenite Jews and is distinct from the liturgical Hebrew and the conversational Hebrew of the communities.[3] Among other things, Rabbi Qafih notes that the Yemenite Jews spoke Arabic with a distinct Jewish flavor, inclusive of pronouncing many Arabic words with vowels foreign to the Arabic language, e.g., the Qamats (Hebrew: קָמַץ) and Tseri (Hebrew: צֵירִי).[4] He argues that the pronunciation of Yemenite Hebrew was not only uninfluenced by Arabic, but it influenced the pronunciation of Arabic by those Jews, despite the Jewish presence in Yemen for over a millennium.