Re: Adding New Words

Re: Adding New Words

On 30 May, Thomas Leigh wrote:

>My one quibble with Modern Hebrew is that horrible, extra-scrapey [G] for
>/r/,
>when a nice alveolar tap would have made the language gorgeous.
MEA CULPA! I'm responsible for some of that! Sorry! ;-)
As a speech-language-pathologist, over the years I have treated
many, many kids who had problems pronouncing /r/, including
quite a few who, when they came to me, had no form of /r/
whatsoever.
    Now the alveolar /r/  _is_  alive and well in modern Hebrew,
but it has the reputation of being "highbrow" Hebrew.
Thus, it is spoken by a small minority of (albeit prestigious) speakers.
    The "horrible, extra-scrapey [G]" is considered "vulgar"
and is thus merrily embraced by the masses! :-)
    Decisions! Decisions! What to teach? Unless there
are good reasons to the contrary, I have tended, over the years,
to teach the kids the [G] form. (And anyhow, all the grammar books
classify /r/ as a _gutteral_ sound! IIRC, that also includes
the grammars written _before_ the rise of modern Hebrew!
It's quite possible that the alveolar form acquired its prestige from
the European Hebrew speakers that Thomas referred to in his post.)
    Anyhow, FWIW, I just wanted to say
that I, personally, don't find gutteral /r/ all that scrapey in fluent
everyday speech. Just like the alveolar version,
it tends to be produced very quickly and easily, with little effort.
    Now, there is a tradition of clowning where part of the
humor is exaggeration of speech patterns; and they just
_love_ to make the /r/ in a very extra-scrapey, extremely
irritating way!  :-)
    But then again, maybe, as a therapist,
I'm too involved with "growing the trees" and am unable
to see the whole forest. ;-)

Dan Sulani
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likehsna    rtem  zuv  tikuhnuh  auag  inuvuz  vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.