Talk:Shva

Liquid at the end of consonant clusters

That the final letter of the consonant cluster in those examples is a liquid is probably a coincidence, e.g. התקטנטן /hitktanten/, התכחלחל /hitkχalχel/, השתפנפן /hiʃtɸanɸen/. Generally these forms have no standardized form and little research exists in the field (although התקטנטן, for one, appears in a literary publication from 1939). Dan ☺ 20:17, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Shva-Na-Naḥ, or Shva what?

So, how many different ways can we transliterate the second (distinguishing) part of the terms for

1. the resting Shva (naḥ / נָח‎)
   and
2. the mobile Shva (naʿ / נָע‎)

?

And can we please make up our minds? Are we trying to confuse the reader who's not already familiar with Hebrew terminology, transliteration, and pilpul?

We have here four different English transliterations for two Hebrew words (six if you count ' vs ‘ and the accidental nacḥ), and that's ignoring capitalization. I don't know what to prefer, so I'm deferring this to WikiProject Israel with a comment on the Talk page, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Israel § Shva needs lots of cleanup.

Section by section, we have:

Introduction

naḥ / naʿ / na' (Somebody ignored, forgot, or didn't know about the difference between the straight ASCII apostrophe and the opening curly single quote.)

the resting Shva (naḥ / נָח‎), such as in the words שִׁמְעִי‎ (II Sam. 16:5) and כַּרְמִי‎ (Josh. 7:1); the mobile Shva (naʿ / נָע‎), such as the Shva which appears at the beginning of words, which renders the vowel a mobile vowel, as in the Hebrew word "floating" (meraḥef / מְרַחֵף‎), or as in לְפָנָי‎ (lefanai) or שְׁמַע‎ (shemaʿ) (Deut. 6:4)

Nach / Na

e.g. the (first) Shva Nach in the word סִפְרֵי תורה‎ (trans. "books of the Law") while it is correctly pronounced in Modern Hebrew /sifrei torah/, the "פ" (or "f"-sound) being mute, the Shva Na, or mobile Shva in זְמַן‎ ("time") in Modern Hebrew is often pronounced as a mute Shva (/zman/).

Nach / na' (Here we mix the first two pairs and again use a straight ASCII apostrophe.)

transliterating modern Hebrew Shva Nach with ə or ' is misleading, since it is never actually pronounced [ə] – the vowel [ə] does not exist in modern Hebrew – moreover, the vowel [ə] is probably not characteristic of earlier pronunciations either (see Tiberian vocalization → Mobile Shwa = Shwa na').

Pronunciation in modern Hebrew

nacḥ / na (with a blunderous mixing of "naḥ" and "nach")

In Modern Hebrew, shva is either pronounced /e/ or is mute (Ø), regardless of its traditional classification as shva nacḥ (שְׁוָא נָח‎) or shva na

Shva Na

In most cases, traditional Hebrew grammar considers shva na, or the mobile shva, to be an entity that supersedes a vowel that exists in the basic form of a word but not after this word underwent inflection or declension. Additionally, any shva marked under an initial letter is classified shva na.

Shva Naḥ

Traditional Hebrew grammar defines shva naḥ, or shva quiescens, as indicating the absence of a vowel.

(The rest of the story)

It's shva na / נָע all the way, no mention of shva naḥ / נָח.

References

Shva Ga’ya function discrepancy

The last sentence of the “Shva Ga’ya” section states that this “strict application” of Shva Ga’ya is found in Yemenite Hebrew. However, Yemenite Hebrew applies the rule to any Shva before a gutteral letter, regardless of whether the Shva is written with a Ga’ya or not. Eiteher this sentence or the page of Yemenite Hebrew must be disproven and edited. QwertyCTRL. (talk) 01:52, 11 March 2024 (UTC)