Re: Arabic Questions
| From: | Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, September 26, 2004, 4:43 |
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David Peterson wrote:
> The distinction between "aywa" and "na'am" is the same distinction (about)
> between "yeah" and "yes".
>
> As for how to pronounce ayn, maybe this will help:
>
> The "ee" in "meet" [i] is to the "y" in "yellow" [j],
> as the "oo" in "boot" [u] is to the "w" in "white" [w],
> as the "a" in "father" [A] is to the letter "'ayn".
A good explanation, I think. I take it 'ayn is "backward glottal stop" in
the IPA?? As I recall from phonetics class, it was hard to hear, and I think
we confused it with "voiced glottal fric. (h-hook)" which the instructor
said was approx. a "voiced h" as in _aha_ or casual _uh-huh_ 'yes'.
Is there any friction or is it smooth? It occurs to me that in a language
with contrastive initial /?/::/0/, it might be the onset of /0/-initial
words?? Since IIRC you're familiar with both Arabic and Hawaiian, am I more
or less right?
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