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Re: That pesky H again (was: varia)

From:Ed Heil <edheil@...>
Date:Friday, February 4, 2000, 23:52
raccoon@ELKNET.NET wrote:
> Ah... interesting. I've been wondering, when ( is written over the second > vowel of a diphthong, such as in e(i-, is the [h] pronounced before the > first vowel, or the second? (i.e. [hei] or [he:] vs. [ehi])
The first. It's simply an arbitrary convention to place diacritic marks which affect diphthongs as a whole (like the '(' which puts an [h] before the diphthong as a whole) over the second element of the diphthong.
> Also, I find the idea of suprasegmental aspiration interesting. But is
there
> really such a thing as an aspirated vowel? I've had an idea to make final > vowel+h become an aspirated vowel, which would then aspirate the previous > consonant but lose aspiration on the vowel: > > H > tah -> ta: -> tha:
Maybe, but in Greek, putting a '(' over a vowel simply indicates a preceding [h], which Ray suggests probably had less than fully phonemic status. But when you transliterated such things into Latin, it was clear enough -- you threw an 'h' on the beginning on the word, as in 'Hymen.' In both Latin and Greek, these [h]'s of course disappeared quickly, so that you can find no trace of them in, say, Italian or Modern Greek. That happens to [h] all the time. ---------------------------------------------------------------- .................... edheil@postmark.net ....................... "In the labyrinth of the alphabet the truth is hidden. It is one thing repeated many times." -- AOS ----------------------------------------------------------------