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Re: Obscenities

From:Dan Sulani <dnsulani@...>
Date:Wednesday, August 30, 2000, 19:43
On 30 Aug, Matthew Kehrt wrote:
>Hmmmm... > >Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't the Hebrew /x/ different from the german >/x/? It seems rougher to me.
I'm also a little puzzled by your question, Matthew. If you're asking how the German [x] differs from the Hebrew [x], they obviously don't, both being voiceless velar fricatives. What I _think_ you may be referring to (and please correct me if I am wrong), is comparing the German "ch" against the Hebrew "chaf (without dagesh)". For example: AFAIK, words in Hebrew with "chaf" (or "hhet" for those who don't maintain the difference) are _always_ [x], or an unvoiced _velar_ fricative. In German, however, the _written_ "ch" is sometimes pronounced as [x] (as in "doch" or "noch") and sometimes as a voiceless _palatal_ fricative ("c cedilla", unicode U+00E7, if I'm not mistaken), such as the words "ich" or "nicht". If you are referring to the sound of a palatal fricative versus a velar fricative, I think that I might agree that the velar seems a bit "rougher". (In fact, the typical way an Israeli shows (verbal) disgust, is to produce a long voiceless velar fricative. I get [x:] a lot from my kids every time I play music that proves I'm on the other side of the generation gap! As in: " [x:]!! You really like that garbage?" :-) ) Dan Sulani -------------------------------------------------------------------- likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a. A word is an awesome thing.