Re: OT: baloney and cheese

From: "Sarah Marie Parker-Allen" <lloannna@...>

> Question: here (and in most of the places I've lived) there's a difference
> between the "a" sound in Iran and Iraq.  The first sounds like the a in
> "all" and the second like the a in "back" (which is why it's not really
hard
> for me now to remember the differences between them; it's not like they
> really sound very much alike).  I was just thinking that if the two sounds
> were really the same, it'd be even harder to tell the difference in
everyday
> speech.
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.

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!

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