[b-hebrew] Was Schewa really silent?
Isaac Fried
if at math.bu.edu
Thu Sep 20 19:58:57 EDT 2007
James,
OK. This is trickier. Now we are into counting. This is slippery
business that, if we are careful, could lead us directly into the
realm of odd, then irrational, then imaginary numbers. I have also
now to decide between what I hear in my ears and what I hear in my
head, over and above the tinnitus. I am, of course, not pronouncing
anything on my own since this would cause any phonologist to choke on
his bananas, I am only recording what I hear coming out of my
computer loudspeaker in supposedly fine American English read by an
apparently well bred gentleman. Here they are as I would write them
in Hebrew:
SLEYT, PENSL (with a long S), BANENA (with a fast and deep E), VERTICL.
Now, 'tinnitus' is different. Here I hear TENAYTES with a last E that
is as brief as a Hebrew I (a xirek as in 'pit'), a kind of an I
lowered or moved slightly back in the mouth. The same with the 'o' of
'bigot'.
In Hebrew it is pronounced TINITUS.
I wonder where the americans got this intricate, fine scale,
pronunciation system. In any event, all this phonetical fidgety
finesse is, of course, irrelevant to Hebrew. In Hebrew the vowels,
whether stressed or not, must be clearly marked because of their
grammatical function.
Isaac Fried, Boston University
On Sep 20, 2007, at 3:57 PM, biblical hebrew wrote:
> Would you mind telling me how many syllables you hear in 'slate'
> and 'pencil'? Also how many do you hear in 'banana', 'vertical' and
> other excellent examples that have been provided?
>
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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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> On 9/20/07, Isaac Fried <if at math.bu.edu> wrote:
> James,
>
>
> I don't trust my own voice so I am listening to the announcer on
> the American Heritage Dictionary. The 's' in 'slate' appears to me
> shorter than the 's' in 'pencil'. It is slate, but pensssl.
> Otherwise I hear nothing between the 's' and the 'l' in both.
> Possibly a mouse can hear it in the middle of the night. Not me.
> And if I don't hear it then it is not there, and in any event ə is
> not a vowel.
> I suspect that your mind it playing tricks on you. Upon seeing the
> 'i' of pencil your eyes incites your brain to restore it by an
> imaginary, fleeting, evanescent, inner voice that you believe
> hearing. It is akin to the common phenomenon of a widow "hearing"
> her departed husband of many years walking in the house, with some
> of them getting from time to time even a glimpse of him reading the
> paper.
> I am afraid you did not understand my point on the 'tiny gap'. The
> gap in XAG GAH is not a result of any phonetic exigency. I insert
> the gap deliberately and hold it long enough, say about 1/24 of a
> second, until the first G is separated from the second.
> Otherwise, there are, in my opinion, no "mobile" schwas is Hebrew.
>
>
> Isaac Fried, Boston University
>
> On Sep 19, 2007, at 11:41 AM, biblical hebrew wrote:
>
>> IF:To convince myself that something indeed hides between the 's' and
>> the 'l' of pensəl I would have to record the word, pass it through
>> an
>> oscilloscope, observe the Fourier wave decomposition of each of its
>> components and analyze its frequency and amplitude content.
>>
>> JCR: Or you could just explain to me what difference you hear
>> between the 's' and the 'l' of 'slate' with those of 'pencil'. I
>> suspect that you can hear this difference but that you just
>> believe it to be a 'tiny gap'.
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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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
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>>
>>
>>
>> On 9/19/07, Isaac Fried <if at math.bu.edu> wrote:
>> Jason,
>>
>> First, it is XAG GAH, '[she] celebrated', not XAGIGAH, 'feast'.
>> The question, of course, it what constitutes a "vowel". A consonant
>> has breadth and may include some faint, involuntary, miniscule vocal
>> aftershocks, depending on its situation in a word. Articulating 'B'
>> by itself I do hear the sound of air resonating in my mouth even as
>> it is being ejected between my spread lips. But in the combination BG
>> the sound of this trailing puff of air is absorbed in the G and it
>> becomes BGADIM to my ear. It is possible that some people hear
>> "something", to wit: "the shortest and quickest to pronounce vowel
>> available to the human vocal system", between the 's' and the 'l' of
>> pensəl because this is how they articulate it. As said, I cannot
>> hear
>> this whisper of the grass, this, audible to some, $IRAT HA(ASABIM. We
>> need to keep also in mind that the distance between hearing something
>> and dreaming of hearing it is very short [I am ignorant of the
>> essentials of the science of psychophonetics, but am occasionally
>> reproached that I hear only what I want to hear].
>> To convince myself that something indeed hides between the 's' and
>> the 'l' of pensəl I would have to record the word, pass it through
>> an
>> oscilloscope, observe the Fourier wave decomposition of each of its
>> components and analyze its frequency and amplitude content. But I
>> will not do it since I am not interested in this esoteric science of
>> phonetics, which, I admit, should be nevertheless of great interest
>> to scientists working on computer speech recognition.
>> In any event, this discussion of the microscopic nature of this
>> metaphysical ə is irrelevant to Hebrew. As you know, a Hebrew
>> speaker
>> overriding a schwa does it now by a premeditated, full-fledged vowel
>> and not by an incidental squeak. Thus, the question is if it should
>> be ,BGADIM, 'clothes', or B[E]GADIM, the same as M[E]GADIM, 'sweets,
>> gifts of the earth', is now commonly articulated.
>> I think that the pause in MacCoots is long and deliberate.
>>
> [cut]
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