Hi, I know some of you know some Hebrew so I’ll pose this question. What is the correct pronunciation of the gutturals? Specifically Chet, Ayin, and Alef. I’m learning on my own and my textbook says to leave Alef and Ayin silent and pronounce Chet like Kaf without the Daghesh Lene ( i.e. like Greek χ). That was fine at first but now I want to use the correct pronunciation as I think it will help me understand the changes in the weak verbs a little more and it’s just frustrating using a “fake” pronunciation. Different books say different things, but I’ve been using the pronunciation I learned from “How Biblical Languages Work” which is written by a linguist and Hebrew scholar. They say Alef is a glottal stop, but I’m not sure what that is so I still leave that silent. Chet they say is an unvoiced pharyngeal fricative, which I think I’m pronouncing correctly (it sounds like a rough χ[face=Arial][/face]). Ayin they say is a voiced pharyngeal fricative, which sounds like a strange g or similar to a velar nasal like γγ in Greek, but produced further back in the throat (I think). One other thing, Gesenius says that Resh is pronounced like a Scottish or German R which I believe is a uvular trill. Is that correct? I would like to know if these are the correct pronounciations and some guidance on how exactly to pronounce them since I’m not familiar with pharyngeal or glottal sounds. Any help would be greatly appreciated! 
You could try listen to the audio clips here:
http://www.travelang.com/languages/
Click “Ivrit, Israel” among the flag icons under “2. SELECT THE LANGUAGE YOU WANT TO LEARN:”
and select one of the options under “Select a category of words and phrases:” and click on the “submit” button there
I think that’s Modern Hebrew which is pronounced differently from Classical Hebrew.
THe link minshey sent you to is Modern Hebrew, which is different than Biblical.
Here’s the scheme I use:
Aleph: glottal stop
Bet/Bhet (“vet”): b with dagest, b+h without dagesh (asperiation, but not fricitivization)
gimel/ghimel: g and g+h
dalet/dhalet: d and d+h
hey: h
vav: w
zayin: either z or zd. I’ve heard both. I usually go with /z/ becuase nowhere else does Hebrew do double consonants
chet: rough h, like the modern Greek chi
tet: retroflex t (like in hindi) (purely my conjecture, totally unsupported by anything)
yud: as modern
kaf/khaf - k and k+h
lamed as modern
mem as modern
nun as modern
samech: like modern tzadi
ayin: glottal stop, or a glottal /g/ sound (the voiced equivalent of quf) - hence hebrew "aza = gaza
pey/phey: p and p+h
tzadee- ch like in church
quf- /q/ like in arabic
resh- as modern hebrew, or french “r”
shin- as modern
sin- as modern
tav- t and t+h
I pronounce all the vowels as modern hebrew, except qametz, which I pronounce like “aw.”
tet, samech and tzadi are interesting. I generally pronounce ayin like a modern greek gamma (the gh version, not the y version) and aleph as a glottal stop (like 'ayin in arabic) to differentiate them.
The big things to notice is that vav is a /w/ sound - this explains the loss of it as a consonant in ayin’'vav verbs. Also, notice that initial /w/ went to /y/ (vav to yud) very early in Hebrew. No word in biblical hebrew starts with a vav, unless its the conjunction.
Although, I often just use modern hebrew pronounciation, to keep my sanity.
Is there anywhere online you can hear a Classical Pronunciation including the text so that you can follow along? I’ve only ever used Modern Hebrew pronunciation for everything Hebrew, as it’s difficult enought trying to master that. I would think that the Classical Pronunciation would be different depending on if you’re looking at Early or Late Biblical times. Is that true?
-Jonathan.
The easiest way to learn to pronounce these correctly is actually to learn Arabic, which retains a number of the more ancient Semitic sounds. Chet for instance, in Modern Hebrew, has been in my opinion incorrectly reduced to the same sound as Khaf. Khaf is like the ‘ch’ in the German “Bach,” if perhaps a bit more fricative. Chet, however, is a different sound entirely in the ancient language; it’s like a forced, hard ‘h’ sound, a lot like a snake hissing (in fact, in Arabic, this letter’s equivalent is used as the onomatopoeia for the sound a snake makes). It’s virtually impossible to describe via the internet without a frame of common reference, and almost as hard to teach in person. It is a lovely sound, however, in my opinion.
I’m learning on my own and my textbook says to leave Alef and Ayin silent and pronounce Chet like Kaf without the Daghesh Lene ( i.e. like Greek χ).That was fine at first but now I want to use the correct pronunciation as I think it will help me understand the changes in the weak verbs a little more and it’s just frustrating using a “fake” pronunciation. Different books say different things, but I’ve been using the pronunciation I learned from “How Biblical Languages Work” which is written by a linguist and Hebrew scholar. They say Alef is a glottal stop, but I’m not sure what that is so I still leave that silent.
The irony is that a glottal stop and silence are, in English terminology, more or less the same thing. Webster describes a “glottal stop” as “the interruption of the breath stream during speech by closure of the glottis,” which doesn’t really tell you anything, so I’ll try to elaborate. All words that start with vowels (in virtually any language I can think of) don’t actually begin with that vowel; they begin with a glottal stop; that is, before uttering the sound of the vowel, the throat catches (the closure of the glottis) in order for the throat to build up a bit of breath before the vocal cords begin to vibrate and produce the vowel sound. Without a glottal stop, a word begining with a vowel would sound as if it were preceded by a very light, almost inaudible, breathy ‘h’ sound, and speech would actually feel a bit less efficient. It’s also the sound that divides the vowels in a vocalization of reprimand, such as “ah-ah-ah! you didn’t say the magic word!” And this amazing subtlety of speech was actually picked up upon by the Phoenicians when they organized their alphabet, and the Semites have had the advantage of this linguistic knowledge ever since.
Chet they say is an unvoiced pharyngeal fricative, which I think I’m pronouncing correctly (it sounds like a rough χ[face=Arial][/face]).
The sound of χ[face=Arial][/face] and Khaf and the like are actual velar fricatives, vibrations of air occurring at the back of the mouth, above the base of the tongue and at the velum, or soft palate. This image is useful:
http://khoomei.com/pics/pharynx.jpg
You see that the pharynx, however, where Heh and Chet both are created, is behind the uvula; that’s where you need to make your fricativization. It’s not easy, but it gets fun after a while.
Ayin they say is a voiced pharyngeal fricative, which sounds like a strange g or similar to a velar nasal like γγ in Greek, but produced further back in the throat (I think).
Ayin actually resembles Alef, in that it has the traits of a glottal stop, except that it is voiced and forced in a very particular way (it also, coincidentally, is formed quite low in the pharynx); ultimately its fricative nature is less important than its position and its strength. Cf. Arabic ayin.
One other thing, Gesenius says that Resh is pronounced like a Scottish or German R which I believe is a uvular trill. Is that correct?
What? If Gesenius says that any sound can simultaneously be “like a Scottish or German R,” not even that phrase is correct; a Scottish and German ‘r’ are completely different things. The Scottish ‘r’ is a lingual trill, virtually identical to the Italian or Spanish ‘r’. A German ‘r’, however, is indeed a “uvular trill,” a girgling sound made at the back of the throat. As for Resh, it used to be like an Italian trill, which is in fact the way most ‘r’ sounds are the world over, but unfortunately Yiddish picked up lots of bad habits from the Germans, including the German ‘r’. The sound in ancient Hebrew that resembles the German ‘r’, however, the uvular trill, is in fact Ghimmel, the aspirated, fricativized version of “Gimmel,” and the counterpart to “Khaf.”
All this is quite difficult to relate and to grasp, so take your time with it; I highly recommend comparative study of Arabic phonetics; it opens up a lot of doors philologically.
The irony is that a glottal stop and silence are, in English terminology, more or less the same thing. Webster describes a “glottal stop” as “the interruption of the breath stream during speech by closure of the glottis,” which doesn’t really tell you anything, so I’ll try to elaborate. All words that start with vowels (in virtually any language I can think of) don’t actually begin with that vowel; they begin with a glottal stop; that is, before uttering the sound of the vowel, the throat catches (the closure of the glottis) in order for the throat to build up a bit of breath before the vocal cords begin to vibrate and produce the vowel sound. Without a glottal stop, a word begining with a vowel would sound as if it were preceded by a very light, almost inaudible, breathy ‘h’ sound, and speech would actually feel a bit less efficient. It’s also the sound that divides the vowels in a vocalization of reprimand, such as “ah-ah-ah! you didn’t say the magic word!” And this amazing subtlety of speech was actually picked up upon by the Phoenicians when they organized their alphabet, and the Semites have had the advantage of this linguistic knowledge ever since.
Eh? In my dialect of English we used glottal stops all the time ( or should tha? be we use glo??al stops all the time? ). If you’re starting a word with a vowel, it’s definitely a different sound to the one I use if you want to replace ‘t’ in the middle or at the end of a word. So I’m afraid I have to disagree with you there.
What? If Gesenius says that any sound can simultaneously be “like a Scottish or German R,” not even that phrase is correct; a Scottish and German ‘r’ are completely different things. The Scottish ‘r’ is a lingual trill, virtually identical to the Italian or Spanish ‘r’. A German ‘r’, however, is indeed a “uvular trill,” a girgling sound made at the back of the throat.
I don’t have a reference for this at the moment, but I’m sure that the uvular trill originated in the Ile de France and gradually spread throughout Europe (and can today be heard in North-West Italy). I believe certain parts of southern Germany still roll their Rs in the traditional way. Depending on when Gesenius wrote his work, he could well have been correct when he said the Germans trill their Rs.
Hardly my area of expertise, Lucus, so I will be interested to hear of any corrections you have for me.
I’m afraid that they are indeed the same sound produced in the same place, my Romfordian friend. However, I am familiar with the dialect, and it is a much stronger sound, that which replaces the ‘t’, as you mention, a glottal stop with more force. The one in front of initial vowels is very hard to notice though, if you’re not accustomed to recognizing it.
I don’t have a reference for this at the moment, but I’m sure that the uvular trill originated in the Ile de France and gradually spread throughout Europe (and can today be heard in North-West Italy). I believe certain parts of southern Germany still roll their Rs in the traditional way. Depending on when Gesenius wrote his work, he could well have been correct when he said the Germans trill their Rs.
Ah really, l’Ile de France? Naturally the modern German ‘r’ sound is officially taught as the uvular trill, and I was aware that certain dialects of German (including in the south) do maintain the “traditional” trilled ‘r’. Indeed, I was not specific in noting that Old High German had a trilled ‘r’, for this very sound was passed down to low Germans and the Anglo-Saxons who invaded Brittain; truly, the French ‘r’ combined with the Germanic trilled ‘r’ is what has rendered our very particular English ‘r’. However, I was not aware that the uvularly trilled ‘r’ was of French origin;my assumption previously had been that the Franks possessed the girgled German ‘r’ and passed it onto the French — how interesting!
In fact the change from trilled to uvular “r” is arguably the only sound change that German speakers are aware of having occurred within their own lifetimes. Pre-WW2 actors use the former pronunciation, post-WW2 actors the latter. It wasn’t until 1957 that the Deutsche Bühnenaussprache, the written norm for stage pronunciation, reluctantly accepted the change.
Rhotics (r-sounds) among the world’s languages seem to be a very bizarre set in general, characterized by much diversity and little easily describable unity. They can be articulated in many ways: dental/alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex, uvular. As far as their manner of articulation, they include: trills, fricatives, approximants, taps/flaps, and vowels. I wish that I knew more about this and if anyone has reference, please let me know.
The “uvular r” in German is best characterized as a “voiced uvular approximant” (with modifications due to phonological context) for which there is no simple IPA symbol, but it can be written as an upside-down capital “R” (= uvular ‘r’) with a tiny “T” beneath it (= fricative lowered to an approximate).
There are other pronunciations of the ‘r’ phoneme in Germany, including a retroflex, but these are much less common.
If you happen to be near your sources, I’d love to see some documentation on this. I hear the French /r/ as a voiced velar fricative (moving back to the topic at hand), like a Heb. gimel without daghesh, or the Arabic ghain, but often with noticeable rounding of the lips that is most apparent to me when speakers of French speak English. I wonder how I’d indicate that in IPA; the stylized gamma with a superscript “w”?
I suppose you get to a uvular trill from a voiced velar fricative, but it seems a little radical to me.
I’m not up on historical French phonology, but as far its effect on the spread of the German uvular “r” the contemporary sources that I’ve checked regard the spread-from-France hypothesis with some skepticism, even comparing its popularity to the “100 words for snow in Eskimo” myth. The argument goes that French nobility from the 16-18th centuries served as role models in Germany (Trautmann’s hypothesis). But it seems that French pronunciation during this time was largely alveolar and that the uvular pronunciation was not common until the end of the 18th century. Furthermore, at least one German dialect (the Silesian dialect of mystic Jacob Böhme, ca. 1600) has a uvular “r” that antedates the French phenomenon. Nevertheless, it still seems possible that French pronunciation had some accessory affect. It does seem to be a European Sprachbund phenomenon. But I am not qualified to do more than regurgitate the opinions of others on this.
I can cite papers on the German phenomenon, which may lead to information on the French “r”. Hope this helps some.
- Moritz Trautmann, “Besprechung einiger schulbücher nebst bemerkungen über die r-laute,” Anglia 3 (1880), 201-222.
William G. Moulton, “Jacob Böhme’s uvular r,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 51 (1952), 83-89.
Joachim Göschel, “Artikulation und Distribution der sogenannten Liquida r in den europäischen Sprachen,” Indogermanische Forschungen 76 (1971), 84-126.
Niels Schiller, “The phonetic variation of German /r/,” In Variation und Stabilität in der Wortstruktur, ed. Matthias Butt and Nanna Fuhrhop (Olms, 1999), pp. 261-287.
Mona Lindau, “The story of/r/,” in Phonetic Linguistics: Essays in honor of Peter Ladefoged, ed. by Victoria A. Fromkin (Academic Press, 1985), 157-168.
Richard Wiese, The Phonology of German. Oxford (Oxford University Press, 2000).
Ghimmel (Gimel sans Dageish) was only pronounced that way during the Middle Ages, neither Biblical Hebrew nor Modern Hebrew has that particular sound.
Thanks everyone for the help and interesting tid bits. Lucus you explained the glottal stop very well, now I understand why some systems transliterate it with a symbol similar to the smooth breathing mark in Greek. I was mistaken, Gesenius doesn’t say anything about a Scottish or German r, but actually says that Resh is pronounced with the uvula vibrating. From my knowledge German and Scottish both use a uvular trill so that must be why I said that. So was Resh pronounced as a uvular trill in Classical Hebrew? That would seem to explain why Resh sometimes acts like the gutturals. I still don’t understand how Ayin is pronounced. Lucus, you said that Ayin is like Alef yet voiced, that seems to just produce a vowel sound. Is the tongue used to pronounce it? I’m not familiar with Arabic at all except that I know it’s in the same family as Hebrew and Arabic has initial, middle, and final letters (that must make learning it more horrible), but is there somewhere on the internet where I could here a pronounciation of the Arabic Ayin? I think that would be very helpful. One other side note, I’ve seen some different terminology used for r. I know the difference between an alveolar trill and a uvular trill, but some say merely trilled r or rolled r. Said that way is simply trilled r to be taken as an alveolar trill and rolled r as a uvular trill, or are they just being confusing by not specifying?
I pronounce reish with an uvular trill, I beleive, It often acts like a guttural because, if I’m not mistaken, uvualar sounds are included in the “guttural” (=throat) category of sounds.
The Arabic “Ghayin” may have been pronounced like the modern Greek Gamma (not the “y” flavor but the “gh” flavor). This is a voiced varient of the chaf or Modern Greek Chi. It may also have been pronouced like a voiced version of the quf (which yields a sound my monlingually english friends can’t easily tell from a “hard” g, but my Arabic speaking buddy can easily hear. However, it probably wasn’t always pronouced with a “g-like sound” becuase it is occasionally transliterated in the LXX as a smooth breathing or left out, instead of a gamma (qv Gommorah and Gaza). Trilling and rolling aren’t technical terms, and the people who use them aren’t writing for technical audiences, thus, their words are confusing to us.
The arabic initial, medial and final letters are only orthographic. But yes, it makes learning the Alif- ba’ quite a pain.
Well, here are some descriptions:
I can’t imagine why anyone would think of an <9ain> or <9ayin> as a /n/ or /ng/, but there we are! But he does recommend “long intercourse with natives” to get the sound right. the best way to learn a language!
Myself, I’d say that <9ayin> - in the Arabic or Sephardic style - is made by constricting the windpipe as low down as you can. It’s a ‘voiced’ consonant (think of the difference between ‘unvoiced’ /k/ and ‘voiced’ /g/). If you close your throat completely for a moment, and make a click like a /k/ in your throat, you’ve made a /qoph/; if you move the back of your tongue and almost block your windpipe, so that you make an /h/ sound with the back, not the front, of your tongue, you’d be making an Arabic <Haa’> = one type of Hebrew . But Hebrew is made up of two proto-semitic letters, the equivalents of <Haa’> and <xaa’> (for the latter, think of a modern Greek khi, or ch in German Aachen), so it seems quite legitimate to think that either might at some time have been used to realize .
Oh, here we are:
I sure Yad is right to pronounce as he does. As Wright puts it in his Arabic Grammar, “the of the modern Greeks, the Northumbrian r, and the French r grasseye are approximations to it” (he’s describing Arabic , but the sound is about the same).