Re: Rafe (was RE: Yiddish spelling)

On Tue, 25 Jan 2000 16:56:35 -0600 raccoon@ELKNET.NET writes:
> Ok, I've held my tongue long enough. What's rafe?
>
> Eric Christopherson
> raccoon@elknet.net
.

It's a Hebrew script diacritic that looks just like a macron on top of
the letter, but in handwriting commonly comes out more like a raised,
45-degree angled apostraphe.  It's used to mark softened consonants and
non-Hebrew consonants.  For instance, the letter _pei_ /p/ can be [p] or
[f] depending on place in the word.  Usually in Hebrew a _dagesh_, a dot
inside the character, would be used to specify the [p], but in Yiddish
and Ladino a _rafeh_ is used to specify the [f].  It has other uses in
Modern Hebrew and Ladino usage, also, to mark non-Hebrew consonants such
as /dZ/ (gimel), /Z/ (zayin in Israel, shin in Ladino), /tS/ or Arabic
/d<A>/ (tsadi), /G/ (`ayin).  From what i've seen, besides the Israeli
usage for /dZ/, /tS/ and Arabic sounds, rafeh is used most commonly in
vocalized texts in order not to mark a soft consonant but to mark a _shva
na`_, /@/, which is indistinguishable from the vowelless sign (they look
like {:}) if you don't know complicated grammatical rules.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "...meanwhile the song plays!"