Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!news.mathworks.com!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!swrinde!pipex!news.sprintlink.net!EU.net!sun4nl!knowar!harmsen.knoware.nl!rharmsen
From: rharmsen@knoware.nl (Ruud Harmsen)
Subject: Re: Hebrew/Aramaic pronunciation
Sender: news@knoware.nl (News Account)
Message-ID: <rharmsen.428.000A6657@knoware.nl>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 1995 15:23:54 GMT
Lines: 13
References:  <D6uvv9.96B@freenet.carleton.ca>
Nntp-Posting-Host: harmsen.knoware.nl
Organization: none
X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev A]

In article <D6uvv9.96B@freenet.carleton.ca> ac355@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (David Solly) writes:
>        Our church is doing a reenactment of the Seder Supper for Maundy
>Thursday and I got elected to take part in the ceremony because I know my
>way around Modern Hebrew.  I have discovered, however, that my part -- the
>four questions -- is in Aramaic not Hebrew.  The text is written in Hebrew
>characters with Hebrew vowel signs (nikudim) but I have no idea if the
>letters have the same values as they do in Modern Hebrew.

Perhaps if you take the Arabic equivalents of the letters, and pronounce the 
sounds as they are in modern Arabic, it'll be in the right direction. (But 
that's only a wild guess, I know very little about it). That's because modern 
Hebrew no longer distinguishes some sounds that Arabic (and Hebrew 
dialects and old Hebrew?) do.
