Roel you Son of a Ditch

I even know one couple (Patrick and Mallory Owens) who intentionally raised their daughter as a native Latin speaker.

Yes yes it was. I should say that there are actually lot of people who are able to converse in Latin. There are even conventions where we go to meet each other. It’s not *quite* as weird as people made it out to be. He’s far from the only person in the church I’ve interacted with in Latin.

I knew which Jamie this was before I even checked your bio

Another specimen of me reading in a reconstruction of a form of Iron Age Hebrew pronunciation in all its ejective glory: the beginning of Genesis 29.

Specifically, they say it was done w/ the 1st half-verse as a call-response, then w/ the rest as responsory w/ Hellelujah. This isn't common today but both Talmuds attest this & the Rambam endorses it. The actual user-base of the Tiberian reading tradition probably chanted hallel psalms like this

The Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 38b and also Tractate Sofrim believed to be composed in Palestine) and Jerusalem Talmud (Shabbat 16) inform us on the specifics of communal chanting of hallel psalms in the early synagogue.

And here's Psalm 117 performed with responsory which is probably how it was done in synagogues in Palestine/the Land of Israel in this period.

For another specimen of reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, here's me reading psalm 120 from the Aleppo Codex.

For another specimen of reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, here's me reading psalm 120 from the Aleppo Codex.

OTOH here's a shot at how the passage might have sounded like in the Iron Age

I make some assumptions here (incl. that the passage existed in this form then). There's uncertainty re: some major sound changes' chronology

Heads up: don't listen if you don't like hearing the tetragrammaton pronounced

Those melodies btw are filched from modern reading traditions. It is a certainty that these pronunciations of Hebrew were normally chanted (though the actual melodic contours cannot be reconstructed) and many things about them only even make sense in a melodic delivery.

If you're wondering about the labiodental vav & uvular resh, yes, those do seem to have been features of Tiberian reading

The Babylonian reading though had alveolar resh & labiovelar vav. Here's the same passage in a (very tentative) reconstruction of Old Babylonian pronunciation from the period...