# How many syllables in shloshim?



## breyman

How many syllables are in the word shloshim (שלושים , 30), i.e., is it two or three? Which i _think_ is the same thing as asking if it is a shva na or shva nakh.

Thanks


----------



## RaLo18

A _shva_ in the first letter of a word is always _na_, so _shlosim_ has 3 syllables. However, it is pronounced with 2 (_shlo _and _sh__im_).


----------



## ahshav

As RaLo18 implied - there is a difference in *modern *Hebrew between syllables as they are pronounced to syllables in the grammatical sense (which influences niqqud, for example).


----------



## breyman

So in Modern Hebrew it would be two?


----------



## ahshav

As it is pronounced today? Yes, only two - shlo-shim


----------



## hadronic

FYI, even in Biblical Hebrew, that word counts for 2 syllables EVEN with pronounced shva na3.
Shva or Hateph semi-syllables are always considered as part of the next (full) syllable. So words like גבול is as monosyllabic as גוף, and this can be seen in some specific grammatical rules that applט to monosyllabic terms only, like the dagesh added to those monosyllabics after a closely connected word ending with ה + qamatz .


----------



## shlomo

שלום

The rule I was taught to count syllables in Hebrew is simply to count the number of vowels (shewa and hatafim are not vowels) in the word. Then :

*Number of vowels = number of syllables*, et voilà !

Shloshim has two vowels hence two syllables


----------



## hadronic

It depends whether you're talking about Modern or Biblical Hebrew.
In MH, words like ערבים aravim has 3 syllables, whereas it would count as 2 in BH  (there's a khataf under the ע ).


----------



## shlomo

שלום

I was talking about modern Hebrew, the only one I know 

For me at first sight ערבים would have two syllables (ער/בים - ara/vim), so I am a bit puzzled now


----------



## hadronic

If you're talking about khatafim, so you're definetely talking about BH... 
Shva or khatafim doesn't "really" exist in Modern Hebrew, at least as "ultra short" "semi-vowels". Nowadays, there are realized as fully pronounced vowels. 
There's NO difference between patakh, qamatz and khataf-patakh.


----------



## shlomo

You are right : nowadays _hatafim_ are pronounced exactly like the vowel they are made of (_hataf patah_ : [a], _hataf segol_ : [e], _hataf qamats_ : [o]). But even if they belong to the past (BH), _hatafim_ and _shewa_ are still absolutely mandatory to explain Modern Hebrew pronunciation, grammar and conjugation.

For instance, without _shewa na_ and _hataf patah_, how can one explain the present conjugation of לאהוב (ohev - ohévet - oh*a*vim - oh*a*vot) ?

Without _shewa nah,_ how can one explain the behavior and pronunciation of בג״ד כפ״ת letters ?

A _hataf_ is no more than a _shewa na_ colored by a vowel to help the pronunciation of guttural letters. Even if in MH it is pronounced as a full vowel, from a grammatical point of view it remains what it is : a _shewa na_. As all _shewa_ it cannot be considered as a vowel when counting the number of syllables in a word (even if modern pronunciation would erroneously lead to a different conclusion).

That is why a word like ערבים with _hataf patah_ under guttural ע has, even in Modern Hebrew, only two syllables : _ara_ and _vim_.


PS : there is something about hatafim and syllable counting in Wikipedia at the following URL : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shva

I do not know if I am authorized to quote Wikipedia or not. Here is the paragraph : 



> As with a shva na, standard syllabification determines that letters pointed with a "fleeting vowel" diacritic be considered part of the subsequent syllable, even if in modern Hebrew pronunciation this diacritic represents a full-fledged syllable, thus e.g. the phonologically trisyllabic word "הֶעֱמִיד" ("he placed upright"), pronounced /he.eˈmid/, should standardly be syllabified into only two syllables, "הֶ—עֱמִיד" ("he—ĕmíd").


----------



## hadronic

I'm not telling the opposite. Of course, khatafim are needed to understand the _morphology_. But here we're talking about _phonology_, on a synchronic point of view.

As you can speak French, let's take a similar example in that language : it would be as if you were telling me " _gros _("big") ends with a consonant, otherwise, how would you explain forms like _grosse, grossir, _etc... ?". Actually, if for the morphology it's helpful to know that _gros _ends with a consonant, it's actually not the case at all when pronounced, the final _s_ having to remain silent.

French, and Hebrew on a far larger extent, are one of those languages where insights into the past are helpful to understand the modern morphology, specifically BECAUSE the modern phonology forgot everything of the historical underlying rules.


----------

