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  • From: Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>
  • To: Jason Hare <jaihare AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Was Schewa really silent?
  • Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:17:17 -0400

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.

On Sep 19, 2007, at 5:54 PM, Jason Hare wrote:

Isaac,

A very clear difference between XfG|GfH and MacCoots is that /g/ is vocal while /k/ is not. In order to pronounce two /k/ sounds distinctly side-by-side, you have to completely stop the first (which ends in silence) before beginning the second. The same is not the case with vocal consonants. The vibration of the vocal cords in the /g/ sound creates a small /ə/ vowel before the next consonant. I can hear it; James can hear it; Michael can hear it. I think it's a natural sound. I think you hear it, but you have not identified it in the same way that we have. This is why James says that it's impossible to pronounce /b/ without a vowel. /b/ is a voiced phoneme, so it cannot be pronounced without moving the vocal chords and pushing out air (which is the very thing that creates a vowel). With unvoiced consonants (e.g., /p/ /k/ /f/), I can agree with you that there is no /ə/ sound at all. The same may be true of combinations of liquids or combinations of voiced and unvoiced consonants. I haven't thought about it sufficiently to put forward an opinion in this way. However, it is clear that there is a vowel sound that *must* exist between the cluster בג in בגדים, and this sound is *represented* as /ə/. It is simply the push of air required to sound the vocal cords and transition between the /b/ and the /d/.

The same vibration is not necessary for the word כביסה, so the consonant cluster is intact: /kvi.'sa/. Do you not feel this at all?

Jason Hare
Rishon Lezion, Israel

Isaac Fried wrote:
James and Michael,

Thanks for the advice. But the question is not articulating the / ə/ but just hearing it. Even listening on a good talking dictionary I hear nothing in 'pencil' but pensl. Possibly 's' leaves a faint, barely audible, trail, and 'l' a similar initial faint burst. Possibly it is indeed "the shortest and quickest to pronounce vowel available to the human vocal system", I just do not hear it, and certainly am not going to deliberately attempt it. In any event, I am not interested in the nano-phonetics of micro-second gaps and milli- decibel sighs. The sound-laboratory science of the ephemerally sonant /ə/ looks to me esoteric and irrelevant to the issue at hand. As I said, when a present-day Hebrew speaker "moves" a schwa he does it forcefully and to the fullest extent of the vowel. The bottom line is that there is in my opinion no such thing as a vocal schwa in Hebrew. I think Hebrew sounds crisper and more esthetic without the extra schwa "NA" E's. I have never encountered an instance where a word is unpronounceable without resorting to a schwa mobile.
I think it is so:
1. The nakdanim placed the schwas to avoid vacancies and block thereby latter unauthorized additions.
2. The meaning of the word schwa appears to me to refer to the fact that the sign is vertical, NICAB, in contrast with the tsere that is SARU(A, 'spread out'. I can hardly believe the often heard claim that the name schwa refers to 'nothing'.
3. The schwa is to be pronounced as the word $WA itself is pronounced, with $ abutting W.
4. Occasionally a thin cleavage is helpful, but never an E. Thus, it should be XAG[ ]GAH, '[she] celebrated', not XAG[E]GAH. If I am not mistaken the English pronounce MacCoots as Mac[ ]Coots, not Mac[E]Coots.

Isaac Fried, Boston University






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