Re: Hebrew, etc. [was: Multi-lingos

On Tue, 22 Aug 2000 10:04:26 -0400 callanish <callanish@...>
writes:
> You mentioned something that really interested me, about some
> speakers of
> Hebrew preserving older pronunciation distinctions (like het vs.
> chaf). that
> are lost in general Israeli speech. I'd really like to hear more
> about that,
> if you can tell me. Is it any particular group(s) of people that
> keep this
> distinction? Are there any other older pronunciations that are also
> kept
> (e.g. what about tet vs. tav, or vav pronounced /w/)? Do you know
> the reasons
> why these distinctions were preserved among certain people but not
> others?
> Thomas
-

Since you sent it to the list and not just to Dan, i'll help out a bit in
case he won't get his email for a while.

The pharyngeals hhet /H/ and `ayin /3/ are preserved primarily by
Mizrahhiyim, Jews from the Middle-East (who are commonly lumped together
with the Sefaradim from Iberia and it's diaspora), who also generally
preserve the emphatic ttet, tzadi, and quf (with a non-affricated ssadi).
I don't know first-hand of any subculture that pronounces vav as /w/ - a
good proof that the shift from /w/ to /v/ is very ancient is (at least
early CE) that in the Jerusalem Talmud there are 'mispellings' or
'alternate spellings' of words that alternate between bet and vav; also,
Syrians, who come from an Arabic (which has /w/) environment, pronounce
vav /v/.  From what i can remember from the _Encyclopedia Judaica_
article on "Pronounciations of Hebrew" (an amazing resource for this
stuff!) the only groups that pronounce vav as /w/ (either always or
allophonically) also use a /w/ (or a continuum of /w/ /B/ /b/) for
instances of bet.
The reasons behind different subcultures preserving different sounds and
shifting different sounds are usually based in their linguistic
environment - Iberians and Middle-Easterners/North Africans, who come
from relatively vowel-poor areas (5 for Spanish, 3/6 for Arabic), merge
vowels like /e/ tzeireh and /E/ segol, /O/ qamatz and /a/ patahh, etc.
Northern and Eastern Europeans, whose linguistic environments lack
emphatic and pharyngeal consonants, merged those with their non-emphatic
and velar/glottal counterparts.
About his hhet/khaf example, when i was in Israel i met a girl who
*insisted*, forcefully, that no one is allowed to call her anything
besides /Hofit/, with a pharyngeal hhet.  No /xofit/, no /hofit/.  Only
/Hofit/.
Although Ashkenazim (North/East European) tend to preserve more vowel
distinctions, the actual quality of the vowels are very varied across
Greater Ashkenaz, for instance the word /bOr@ku/, which in Israeli Modern
Standard is /barxu/, is pronounced /bOrxu/ by North-Eastern Ashkenazim
and /burxi/ by Galitzianer (South-Eastern?) Ashkenazim.
According the the EJ article, the Yemenite Accent, which is commonly
considered the "most authentic" pronounciation, is actually 5 different
pronounciations used by different regions in Yemen!
And then of course, there's the "Steghian Accent" as someone called it
here, which sounds Ashkenazic to most Sefardim, and Sefardic to most
Ashkenazim, and only Judaic Studies professors from Cornell can figure
out what's really going on :-) .


-Stephen (Steg)
 "[qol m@vas'ser m@vas'ser v@?o'mer] -
  [ke@l m@'vas@r m@'vas@r v@'ejm@r]!"