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Re: About Hebrew pronunciation

From:Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
Date:Monday, May 31, 2004, 16:03
On May 30, 2004, at 11:05 PM, Emily Zilch wrote:
> My own study and use of Hebrew is somewhat ConLang... I don't pronounce > the singleton consonants as fricatives (i.e. p > f, b > v, t > T etc.), > I do pronounce doubled consonants as such and (perhaps influenced by > Syriac) I pronounce the vowels as such:
Since we're speaking about non-Spoken Hebrew, I might as well throw in my own semi-neo-Classical pronunciation. This is how i pray and chant religious texts, as opposed to how i speak. When i speak Modern Hebrew, my accent is some kind of American-Syrian-Israeli inconstant mix. The Syrian part is just environmental from NYC, i'm just a 'dub' (=Ashkenazi) as the Syrians themselves would say. BGDKPT: /b/ [b B] (bilabial fricative) /g/ [g G] /d/ [d D] /k/ [k x] /p/ [p P] (bilabial fricative) /t/ [t s] (because i still have Ashkenazic pride ;) ) And the doubled ones doubled.
> "short" a : & (normalised as [æ] = the a-e digraph for those who can't > see it)
/a/~/A/, like in my NYC accent in English
> "long" a : A: (normalised as [a])
/O/~/O:/
> "short" e, i : E (normalised as [e])
|segol| ('short E'): /E/ |hhiriq hhaseir| ('short I'): /I/~/i/
> "long" i : i: (normalised as [i])
/i/~/i:/
> "long" e : e: (normalised with macron in handwritten notes or as [ee] > on computer)
/e/~/e:/~/ej/ (sometimes i try and specifically not produce a /j/ offglide when there's no following |yud| in the orthography)
> "short" o, u : O (normalised as [o])
'short O' |qomatz qatan|: /O/~/o/ 'short U' |qubutz|: /U/~/u/
> "long" u : u: (normalised as [u])
/u/~/u:/
> "long" o : /o:/ (normalised with macron in handwritten notes or as [oo] > in a row on computer)
/o/~/o:/~/ow/
> initial w, y with schwa > /u:/, /i:/ respectively
/v@/, /j@/ I.e. i pronounce |shva na`| (schwa mobile) as /@/~/1/, like my English schwa.
> initial alep with schwa > /e/, as in eloohim
initial |alef| with |shva|? no such thing! :-O that's a |hhataf-segol|! I pronounce |hhataf| 'ultrashort' vowels the same as their 'full' counterparts.
> other schwas: ignored & unwritten (i.e. oH, uH for words like "Noah"): > inserted as phonologically necessary (as with Syriac)
Are you talking about |patahh ganuv| here? Why would you leave them out? They're so much fun! ;)
> - I pronounce the emphatic consonants as such;
What kind of emphaticness? I prefer ejective/glottalized! (except for |tzadi|, that's pretty hard for me, whether as /s>/ or /ts)>/)
> - 'Second' shin remains a voiceless lateral, its original form
Cool! I periodically attempt that, but it sounds weird ;) .
> - r is a NON-uvular flap/trill (i.e. not the Modern Hebrew form)
Not all Modern Israeli speakers use uvular, some of them use alveolar/dental (which i also prefer). -Stephen (Steg) "jealousy, selfishness, and being a self-hating human can cause early death." ~ [4ibbi: j@hoSua3] (rough translation)

Replies

Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
Emily Zilch <emily0@...>About Hebrew Emphatics