[b-hebrew] Was Schewa really silent?
biblical hebrew
jcr.bhebrew at gmail.com
Fri Sep 14 14:44:22 EDT 2007
IF:
1. Your advice: "pronounce the schewa only when you have to" is good,
except that in my opinion you never have to, and that Hebrew sounds
better without it. A little bit of vocal discipline goes a long way
towards producing a crisper language. Whenever you feel the necessity
to enter an E insert instead a tiny gap.
JCR: I think you will find that the 'tiny gap' you refer to is what in phonetics
is represented by the symbol /ə/ and is the most common sound in the English
language. It is physically impossible for the human vocal system to pronounce
your suggested examples without a /ə/. As an experiment pronounce the English
word 'hard' to yourself a few times until you realise that out of context you
cannot say this word without pronouncing a /ə/
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James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew Thesis 1 - Aleppo codex machine translation
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc Thesis 2 - language acquisition simulation
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