# Tsere pronunciation



## SirAutismo

Hello everyone! I have a question about the correct pronunciation of Tsere. In my book that I am working with to learn Biblical Hebrew it states that the Tsere sounds like _ay _as in _hay_ ( /*eɪ*/ ). However on other websites I see that it is stated that Tsere is pronounced as  /*e*/ . So what is the correct pronunciation?

Thanks in advance for your answers!


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## slus

/eɪ/ is the Ashkenazi pronounciation
/e/ is the modern Israeli one


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## SirAutismo

slus said:


> /eɪ/ is the Ashkenazi pronounciation
> /e/ is the modern Israeli one



Thank you very much!


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## Drink

/e/ is also the Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Yemenite pronunciation.

In Tiberian Hebrew it was probably /e:/.


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## Ali Smith

But in some words almost all Israelis pronounce צירי as /eɪ/ rather than as /e/. I can think of two examples: שינה _sheina_ (sleep) and תשע teisha (nine). In the latter the stress is on the first syllable.

In fact, I believe the name of the niqqud itself, צירי, is also usually pronounced _tseire_.


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## mj99

It varies from person to person (I think)


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## Ali Smith

slus said:


> /eɪ/ is the Ashkenazi pronounciation
> /e/ is the modern Israeli one



What about in the name of the nikkud itself? Do you pronounce צירי‎ as tseirei or tsere?


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## Drink

Not sure why it should be different than in any other word.


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## Ali Smith

slus said:


> /eɪ/ is the Ashkenazi pronounciation
> /e/ is the modern Israeli one


However, I believe that when בית is used in the construct state, e.g. בֵּית סֵפֶר, hardly anyone pronounces it the Ashkenazi way, i.e. everyone says "bet sefer" and no one says "beyt sefer".


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## Drink

That's because the Ashkenazi way is _not_ the modern Israeli way.


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## Ali Smith

Thanks, drink. What about in "my eyes"? I always hear people say _eynay_, never _enay_. For example, ירושלים מוצאת חן בעיניי.


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## JAN SHAR

I should add that אֵיךְ (how) is always pronounced ekh, never eikh.


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## Drink

You should never say "always", because you haven't studied the speech of every demographic and ruled out everything else.

In fact, there are certainly those pronounce איך as eikh, and there are certainly those who pronounce עיניי as enay.


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## Abaye

If you ask me as a modern speaker - both beyt and bet sound good (preference to bet), both `eynay and `enay sound good (preference to `eynay), both teysha` and tesha` sound good (equally), eykh sounds a little weird as if an old man is speaking. I guess you'd get similar answers from many others. I see no rule here (and yet I'm not saying there isn't).


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## Philip Skalla

Ali Smith said:


> But in some words almost all Israelis pronounce צירי as /eɪ/ rather than as /e/. I can think of two examples: שינה _sheina_ (sleep) and תשע teisha (nine). In the latter the stress is on the first syllable.
> 
> In fact, I believe the name of the niqqud itself, צירי, is also usually pronounced _tseire_.


I have also noticed that Israelis pronounce 'nine' as teisha' rather than as 'tesha'.
I think it is just a rare case of Israelis realising that it does not make sense to have short vowels everywhere.
I personally shudder inside when I hear 'Elohenu' or 'Efo'.
Curiously, in the song 'Eyfo at ahuva,' Yehoram Gaon says both 'Eyfo' and 'Efo' and both Geula Gil and Chava Alberstein said 'neirot' instead of 'nerot'.
It would take a few more pages to elaborate, but there is no doubt that originally the sound represented by the tseirei was a long 'e' or 'ei' diphthong.
The evidence for this comes from rules of grammar, transcriptions in the Septuagint, and clues in the Bible itself about ancient pronunciation of certain words.


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## Philip Skalla

Abaye said:


> If you ask me as a modern speaker - both beyt and bet sound good (preference to bet), both `eynay and `enay sound good (preference to `eynay), both teysha` and tesha` sound good (equally), eykh sounds a little weird as if an old man is speaking. I guess you'd get similar answers from many others. I see no rule here (and yet I'm not saying there isn't).


I prefer 'beyt' and evidently so too do the Arabs, who also say 'Beyroot'.
It is quite obvious that since 'beyt' is the construct of 'bayit', which was presumably 'bayt' originally, it couldn't have been 'bet' in the first place.


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## Abaye

What do you mean by "prefer"? In my message above "prefer" means "sounds more natural to the native speaker's ears".
Consequently, Arab preferences in regard to Arabic is irrelevant to Hebrew, and so is the far historical development.
Notice the youth chat-spelling (and pronunciation): בצפר for בית ספר. No י = "y" is there, it's just "betsefer" for "beyt sefer".


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## Philip Skalla

Abaye said:


> What do you mean by "prefer"? In my message above "prefer" means "sounds more natural to the native speaker's ears".
> Consequently, Arab preferences in regard to Arabic is irrelevant to Hebrew, and so is the far historical development.
> Notice the youth chat-spelling (and pronunciation): בצפר for בית ספר. No י = "y" is there, it's just "betsefer" for "beyt sefer".


By 'prefer', I mean it sounds better and more natural, and makes sense grammatically.
There is a reason for there being a 'yod' in words like 'beyt' and 'ein' (the latter with either aleph or ayin).
They are the constructs of bayit, ayin, and 'ayin.
The fact that Ashkenazzim and Arabs both say 'beyt' rather than 'bet' is surely significant, just as it is beyond mere coincidence that in German Ashkenazzi dialect, Torah is pronounced Tow-roh, and the Arabic is Tow-rah/rat.


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