Re: My Conlanging History (was: Re: Tolkein?)

On Thursday, December 18, 2003, at 07:44  AM, Caleb Hines wrote:
> Yes. 'waw'/'vav' and 'yud'/'yod' for starters. Also 'aleph' and 'ain'
> (which also fall into the category of gutteral sounds). And the fact
> that
> OT Hebrew was originally written with no vowels. Not to mention the
> fact
> that, IIRC, aren't there like 3 different letters for 's', two
> different
> letters for 't', and two different letters for 'h'? OTOH, I thought it
> was
> pretty cool how a letter could have two related sounds by
> adding/removing a
> dot to it (although at the time, I didn't know what was phonologically
> taking place).
> Back then it all seemed very confusing. I do intend to eventually
> re-visit it, though, now that I have a more linguistic-oriented
> outlook.
> Thanks,
> ~Caleb
Hrrrm... your Biblical Hebrew teacher should have pointed out exactly
what each sound is reconstructed as being during the time of the
Masoretes who standardized the diacritics, even if they were teaching
you using some other pronunciation, like Modern Israeli.

the 'three letters for S' are:
|samekh| = /s/
|sin| = voiceless alveolar lateral fricative
|tzadi| = emphatic (glottalized? pharyngealized? velarized?) /ts/ or /s/
Modern Israeli pronunciation: first two /s/, |tzadi| /ts/

'two t's:
|tav| = /t/
|tet| = emphatic /t/
MI: both /t/

'two h's:
|hei| = /h/
|hhet| = voiceless pharyngeal fricative
MI: |hei| sometimes dropped, |hhet| sometimes /x/ depending on speaker

|aleph| = glottal stop
|`ayin| = voiced pharyngeal fricative/approximant
MI: both generally silent, sometimes |`ayin| pronounced as above


-Stephen (Steg), who wants to make a semitic conlang eventually
  "namárië, nai hiruvalye valinor"