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Who knows twenty-nine?

Please cite/link your sources, if possible. After about one business day, I will:

  • Upvote all interesting answers.

  • Accept the best answer.

  • Go on to the next number.

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Isaac Moses
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  • prev: https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/1309/shemona-veesrim-mi-yodeya – Kfir Jul 06 '20 at 18:39
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4 Answers4

5

29 days in a short month.

Jeremy
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29 are the consonantal phonemes represented (supposed to be, anyway) by the letters of the alef-beis.

(There are 22 letters; six of them, בג"ד כפ"ת, have plosive and fricative forms, and one, ש, has two different sibilant sounds.)

Though no one I've ever heard of pronounces all 29 of them as distinct sounds.

Alex
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  • Not even the Teimanim? – Isaac Moses May 03 '10 at 16:05
  • I don't know whether they pronounce Samech and Sin differently. – Alex May 03 '10 at 17:25
  • ויאמרו לו אמר-נא שבלת ויאמר סבלת how do we read Judges 12:6, was there ever supposed to be a different pronunciation between samech and sin? – Shalom May 03 '10 at 17:43
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    On the contrary, that verse seems to support the idea that Sin and Samech are supposed to have different sounds. Otherwise it could have just said, אמר-נא שִׁבלת ויאמר שִׂבלת. The point would be that the Ephraimites mispronounced /sh/ as /s/, not as whatever phoneme Sin was supposed to represent. – Alex May 03 '10 at 20:48
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    Also, consider the minimal pairs חרשׂ "earthenware" and חרס "sun" (poetic), or סרים "turning away" (pl.) and שׂרים "princes, noblemen"; those seem to indicate pretty clearly that there was supposed to be a difference in pronunciation. – Alex May 03 '10 at 20:48
  • What about ט vs תּ? – Chanoch May 03 '10 at 21:01
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    Teimani and Syrian Jews do pronounce those differently - ט is more palatalized. (It's likely, though I don't know for certain, that most Jews from Muslim lands do, since there is a parallel difference in Arabic.) And of course another minimal pair demonstrates that they should have different sounds: שבטך "your staff, your tribe" vs. שבתּך "your sitting." – Alex May 03 '10 at 21:29
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    The hypothesized 3rd sound in the שׂ/ש/ס triplet is the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_lateral_fricative). The reason I am not identifying it with a specific letter is that the hypothesis goes that it shifted over time from being the sound written as ש to the sound written as שׂ, and the שבלת story is actually an interesting data point for that diachronic orthography. – WAF May 04 '10 at 02:42
  • There are only two Google search results for "diachronic orthography." – Isaac Moses May 04 '10 at 18:58
  • Iy"H soon to be 3. – WAF May 04 '10 at 21:50
  • Actually, the Reish also has a plosive and fricative form, we just have no tradition among any group of Klal Yisrael what that would be. So the total is 30 and not 29! – Yahu May 05 '10 at 20:55
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    According to Sefer Yetzirah, yes. (Although it's not necessarily plosive vs. fricative; it might be approximant vs. trill, guttural vs. non-guttural, etc.) But most sources speak only of the six letters בג"ד כפ"ת in this connection (and indeed, reish with dagesh is pretty rare in Tanach, so it's not necessarily a different phoneme, just as alef with dagesh - as in last week's parshah - is not). – Alex May 06 '10 at 05:06
  • Kabbalistic sources indicate that the Reish at the beginning of a word has a DAGESH. The beged carpas biRosh Milah principle is true except when following a word ending with Alef, Yud, Vav, or Hei. The Kabbalistic reason given is that the dagesh implies Din and those 4 letters, based on the names of Hashem that they are associated with, are conduits of Hesed, which softens the Dinim. Hence the Dagesh becomes rafeh. – Yahu May 10 '10 at 06:01
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29 tefachim is the midpoint of the height of the Altar in the Beis Hamikdash. This was marked with a red line around the Altar. (Rambam, Hil. Beis Habechirah 2:6-8)

The significance of this demarcation was that the blood of certain offerings had to be applied to the upper half of the Altar, and of others to the lower half.

Alex
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29 (and a variable piece) are the days of the Synodic month, which leads to Jeremy's point.

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Isaac Moses
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