Re: OT: Slightly OT: French as a second language

On 21 Nov, David Peterson wrote:

> In a message dated 11/21/2001 2:34:35 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> dnsulani@ZAHAV.NET.IL writes:
>
>
> >     3. And let's not forget the spelling, a topic of extreme youthful
> > anguish often heard in our home. ;-)  Hebrew is spelled a lot more like
it
> > is pronounced
> > than English is.
> >         Typical rant in our home: "Why are there 50 million ways to
spell
> >         (and they pronounce /i/)? If it sounds like (pronounced /i/), it
> > should be
>
> What about all those word final /h/'s that don't get pronounced?  That
> doesn't make any sense at all.

Not to mention all the word _initial_  /h/'s that don't get pronounced in
Israeli Hebrew! Or the final "alephs", or final " 'ayin"s that most people
here don't pronounce! It probably _does_ make sense, using to the
pronounciation that existed at the time the spelling (of which dialect?)
was codified.
    It's just that the pronounciation has changed since then, but the
spelling hasn't.
(I once had the torture --- uh, excuse me, I meant pleasure ;-) --- of
trying to
go through a very difficult book on Hebrew grammar, and I finally
threw it away when the author concluded that, although it may seem
complicated
when read in a book, the reader should just listen to how he speaks the
language
and the reasons for everything will become crystal clear.) Now, I've studied
a
bit of linguistics and I know about how phonemes affect each other in the
stream of speech. But nobody (that I've ever heard) speaks Hebrew today
exactly the way it is written, taking care to assign a different and unique
sound to
each and every separate written symbol (let alone use the exact same
pronounciation as spoken by the ancients --- and is there  any agreement yet
by scholars as to the exact value of _every_  allophone of every
ancient phoneme? IIRC, the debate is still underway!) So much for
intuitively
understanding the phonology based upon one's pronounciation!
    Still, in my kids' opinion, even with all the unpronounced "heh"s and
"aleph"s
and " 'ayin"s, among other things, Hebrew is still written closer to the way
it is pronounced than is English. And with that, I think I'd have to agree.

Dan Sulani
----------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.

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