Old Hebrew Emphatics Question

Since Dan is back now, i'll repost this old message to see if he can help
with it.

~~~~~~~~~~(old message below)~~~~~~~~~~

On Mon, 18 Nov 2002 15:40:21 +0000 =?iso-8859-1?q?bnathyuw?=
<bnathyuw@...> writes:
> is there any difference in the pronunciation of
> emphatics in modern hebrew ? i don't trust the
> evidence of the uk jewish friends i've asked as they
> tend to be phone deaf and unable to speak more than a
> few words
> bn
-

It seems to depend on what the speaker's native language (or the native
language of their semi-recent ancestors) is.  Speakers of languages
without anything resembling emphatics usually don't distinguish them;
speakers of languages with pharyngealized, velarized, or glottalized
consonants use those.  The Israelis i've heard don't seem to distinguish
the emphatics, though, even Israelis that use the pharyngeal consonants
/H/ and /3/ (hhet and `ayin).

But i'm sure Dan Sulani would know better than i would.  Is he back from
nomail yet?


-Stephen (Steg)
 "keil mevasser mevasser vi'eimer."

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