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So I started studying Jacobson’s Chanting the Hebrew Bible on Shabbos afternoon to properly learn the te’amim instead of just memorizing the notes and motifs. This system is really interesting and way more algorithmic than I expected, speaking as a computer programmer. You are taking the verses, and traversing them like a recursive binary tree, splitting each sentence into clauses and by their parts of speech and then assigning which vocalization applies to which words based on that, looping until each unit has only one or two words in it. By this method, the marks and thus the melody are almost completely predictable until you get to the fourth loop and thus some of the obscure marks, where the rules fray slightly. I just wanted to chant haftarah with better comprehension. The fact that the Masoretic system is so rigidly coherent and algorithmic was just a pleasant surprise. Of course I’m a dork who liked diagramming sentences in English class too . . . submitted by /u/mleslie00 |
Source: Reditt
