Talk:Biblical Hebrew

The IPA symbol for Zayin was changed from z to z̄ in July 2023 by an anonymous user.

I know Ancient Hebrew could have been a pitch-accent language but should not such symbols be applied to vowels instead of consonants?

z̄ is wikilinked to Pitch-accent language but that article never explains its sound.

The articles for Proto-Canaanite alphabet and Paleo-Hebrew alphabet also say that its sound is /z/.

Every source I have checked assigns /z/ to Biblical Hebrew's zayin.

Can anyone check this, please?

This is the specific edition: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Biblical_Hebrew&oldid=1166168586

George Rodney Maruri Game (talk) 00:20, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

/ś/ is not IPA

In a paragraph within the section on phonology detailing the /ɬ/ phoneme, "/ś/" is mentioned more than once, as [ɬ] the realization of /ś/.

What is /ś/??? I highly doubt it would refer to pitch. My guess is that someone was referring to a romanization during that section and incorrectly included slashes to represent it. I'm pretty sure this is an error, but I want to post this to verify it is, as I'm not a linguist. My further guess would be that it is referring to the /ʃ/ phoneme, but this is already mentioned with the long s symbol in the same paragraph. SpaiceyWarrior (talk) 00:36, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Should certainly be made clearer in the article, but my guess is it corresponds to the notation at Proto-Semitic language § Consonants. I don't think using slashes is a problem exactly, given the notation is likewise phonemic in nature. Remsense 🌈 论 00:44, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't see that section, my apologies. My understanding is that slashes are exclusively reserved for phonemic IPA transcriptions, while romanizations don't use them. In this case, it would maybe be more appropriate to use an asterisk to indicate it's a reconstructed phoneme, but regardless, it's not IPA, so I don't believe slashes should be used. SpaiceyWarrior (talk) 15:15, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

I think you're right, yeah. Remsense 🌈 论 15:17, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Word סכין

The word סכין which is quoted as beginning with an /s/ is actuelly שַׂכִּין, with an /ś/ (see Proverbs 23/2). The spelling סכין only appears in post-Biblical Hebrew when the distinction between these sounds no longer existed. If someone has an other example, he should replace it

Article review

It has been a while since this article has been reviewed, so I took a look and noticed lots of uncited statements, including entire paragraphs. Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 01:04, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

Biblical Hebrew

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Issues remain unaddressed, no ongoing effort to fix them. TompaDompa (talk) 03:07, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Uncited statements, including entire paragraphs. Z1720 (talk) 20:44, 2 January 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.