Quick Review: V'ACHALTA V'SAVATA U'VEIRACHTA Three second-person future verbs, each "flipped" from past tense by the VAV HA-HIPUCH. The first and third also have the accent pushed to last syllable, v'a-chal-TA, not v'a-CHAL-ta. This is the norm. v'sa-VA-ta is an exception because when the word is at an ETNACHTA (or SOF PASUK) the accent remains in its usual MIL-EIL (next to the last syllable) position, even those it is now in the future/command tense. The other exceptions to the accent-shifting rule are verbs whose roots have an ALEF or HEI as their third letter. KARATA, you read, is pronounced ka-RA-ta. And you will read, v'ka-RA- ta - the accent stays back because the root of the word is KUF-REISH-ALEF. Again, the rule: When a VAV flips the tense of a verb from past to future, the accent goes from MIL-EIL to MILRA. Exceptions: LAMED-ALEF and LAMED-HEI verbs. And when the word is at an ETNACHTA or SOF PASUK. These particular three words are more difficult than most to get right, because the first and the third follow the rule and the middle one is an exception. Furthermore, those of us who have grown up singing those words in Birkat HaMazon have become accustom to mutilating the accenting of the words, starting with ka-a-KA-tuv (wrong - should be ka-ka- TUV), v'a-CHAL-ta (wrong again), v'sa-VA-ta (right this time), u'vei-RACH-ta (wrong again)... BTW (by the way), at the end of the pasuk we find ASHER NATAN-LACH, (the Land) which He has given you. Although the word NATAN on it own is accented MILRA, na-TAN, when it is followed by a one-syllable word in the same phrase (and in this case, the LACH is connected to it by a MAKAF - the upper hyphen), the accent regresses to make the word-pair NA-tan-LACH. Since we are quoting this pasuk in our acknowledgment and thanks to G-d for food, for Eretz Yisrael, for Torah and Mitzvot, it seems that we should make the effort to pronounce and accent the words correctly. [The Parshat Eikev Homepage]
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