Contents of this weekly column are (mostly) based on the sefer:
EIM LAMIKRA HASHALEIM, by R' Nissan Sharoni, Ashdod, a guide to correct
pronunciation of Hebrew, specifically in davening and Torah reading. Vayikra 19:18 contains the popular partial pasuk - Love thy neighbor... First word of the phrase is v’a (with a secondary accent on the ALEF-KAMATZ) hav-TA, with the main accent on the TA, the last syllable. The word is pronounced MILRA. Not MIL’EIL, as would be the word a’HAV-ta, you loved. Past tense. The VAV at the beginning of the word switches tense to the future, and you will (or shall) love. The tense-switch of the VAV is accompanied by a switch of the accent to the last syllable. This is so for most words of this type, but not all of them. There are eight such words in K’doshim that need to be properly accented on the last syllable. Accented MIL’EIL means the VAV is only conjunctive (AND) and does not flip tense from past to future. Thus, the meaning of the word changes and the error (of the Baal Kri’a should be corrected). Same phrase. Your fellow. REI-A’CHA. The AYIN has a CHATAF-PATACH under it. This is an AYIN’s equivalent to a SH’VA. CXHATAF-vowels do not get accented. The word is to be pronounced MILRA. rei-a’CHA. However, if the word rei-a’CHA carries the Torah note (TROP) of ETNACHTA or SOF PASUK, in other words, if the word has a strong stop on it, then the CHATAF-PATCH of the AYIN changes to a SEGOL, and the AYIN-SEGOL draws the accent. The word becomes MIL’EIL. rei-E-cha. Go back a few p’sukim to 19:16, ...LO TAAMOD AL DAM REI-E-CHA. There are name examples of each form of the word. But remember that the vowel changes and so does the syllable to be accented. Now look in 19:15. Don’t pervert justice... V’LO TEH-DAR P’NEI GADOL, don’t show special respect for a great person (who stands before you as one party to a court case). TEH-DAR. Not the easiest word to pronounce correctly. The HEI has a SH’VA. The SH’VA is NACH. It closes the first syllable of the word. TEH. And the HEI is heard. (Should be heard.) The HEI with a vowel is not silent. It is as if it has a MAPIK (dot) in it (as we find in some words when the HEI is the last letter). The word is neither TE-DAR (as if the HEI was silent) nor TEHEDAR, as if the SH’VA were NA. Remember, when a HEI within a word has no vowel under it, then it is as silent as the HEI (without a MAPIK) is at the end of a word. The NASI of SHEVET MENASHE (as listed in the first chapter of Bamidbar) is GAMLIEL ben P’DATZUR (the HEI after the DALET is unvoweled and therefore totally silent). Not P’DAH-TZUR. Now go to 19:36. Scales of Justice... The word for scales of is mo-Z’NEI. The accent is MILRA and the SH’VA under the ZAYIN is NA, meaning it does not join the MO in its syllable, but rather is joined to the NEI syllable that follows it. However, because the word that follows it in the same phrase is TZE-dek, itself a MIL’EIL word, then the accent of the previous word (often) migrates back (NASOG ACHOR) to become MIL’EIL also. So mo-Z’NEI becomes MO-z’nei in the phrase MO-z’nei TZE-dek. It gets a little more complicated. If the word were MIL’EIL in the first place, then the MO syllable would have pulled the ZAYIN to it, changing the SH’VA under the ZAYIN from NA to NACH. The word would have been MOZ-nei. But since the word is only MIL’EIL because of NASOG ACHOR, then the MO does NOT pull the ZAYIN and the ZAYIN’s SH’VA remains NA and the ZAYIN remains with the second (last) syllable. MO-z’nei TZE-dek... Notice in the same pasuk how the word TZE-dek is responsible for ei-FAT becoming EI-fat. As to av-nei TZE-dek, av-nei lost its accent to TZE-dek. [The Parshat K'doshim Homepage]
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