From: "Danny Wier" <dawier@...>
> Both "a"-sounds are close to [A], because vowels next to /q/ in Arabic are
> backed, at least in Iraqi Arabic. Qatar is pronounced like Kotter for the
> same reasons.
I forgot to mention that in Farsi, long A has a rounded quality, so it
sounds like [Q]. The same sound in Uzbek and Tajik are written as "o" using
both Cyrillic and Latin orthographies.
> Vowels next to emphatic consonants lower or back in quality, which helps
to
> distinguish them from non-emphatics. In Modern Aramaic, if there's one
> emphatic in the word, the whole word becomes emphatic!
This also happens in Maltese, right?