Re: The status of the glottal stop in Hebrew

Dan Sulani wrote:

>     AFAIK, glottal stop, in modern Israeli Hebrew, is represented
> in orthography by the letter "aleph". When aleph is found in word-initial
> position, IME, the glottal stop is usually pronounced.
>     But I'm not so sure that an English speaker would notice the
> difference, given that (IIRC) English words which are perceived by
> naive native speakers as beginning with a vowel,  usually actually begin
> with a glottal stop! (There are probably dialects to the contrary,
> but I can't, offhand,  think of any.)
I understand at least some dialects which use [?] for /t/ in some
positions tend to avoid [?] word-initially. My dialect (which doesn't
glottal-stopify /t/) only uses the glottal stop phrase-initially, though
many of my peers---especially female ones---use it before many
vowel-initial words in formal speech (it's often but not exclusively
used to avoid linking r before words). It's never used within a word.


> Dan Sulani
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.
>
> A word is an awesome thing.
Yet not nearly as awesome a thing as a world. I always see your sig and
think 'It'd be much better if it were "A world is an awesome thing"'.
Worlds are quite awesome.

--
Tristan.                 |       To be nobody-but-yourself in a world
kesuari at yahoo!.com.au |  which is doing its best to, night and day,
                          |                 to make you everybody else---
                          |          means to fight the hardest battle
                          |            which any human being can fight;
                          |                    and never stop fighting.
                          |      --- E. E. Cummings, "A Miscellany"

Reply