Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter_Kirk AT sil.org]

This sort of assimilation sometimes happens, but by no means always. 
For example, the Udi people of Azerbaijan (now about 5000 people) have 
retained a phoneme repertoire of about 52 sounds (including a full set 
of pharyngealised vowels) although for more than 1000 years they have 
been surrounded by Turkic speakers who use around 32 phonemes. One of 
the factors affecting this is no doubt the sense of cultural, 
religious etc distinctiveness of the people. But then note that the 
Jews living in Europe lost their distinctive `ayins but those living 
among Arabs etc kep theirs.

Peter Kirk


______________________________ Reply Separator 
_________________________________
Subject: Re[2]: ayin, how to
Author:  HarryJ_Harm AT kastanet.org at internet
Date:    01/01/1999 19:46


Jack Kilmon wrote:

<SNIP>
The Galilee was very Hellenistic, hence how much 
influence did Greek have on the vocalization of 
Galilean Aramaic by the Semitic populace?  Did the 
Semitic speaking Galileans adopt the gentler and 
easier vocal gymnastics of Greek?  Does this explain 
the softer beyts and dropped pharyngeals?

It seems logical to me that a native language with 
more complex gymnastics would "degrade" under a 
heavy influence from a non-native language 
introduced into the region.  A more drastic example 
might be Egyptian to Coptic...but is this pattern 
considered when attempting to phoneticize Galilean 
Aramaic?

=========================================================================

Dear B-Hebrew Listers,

Greetings from Mississippi.

I can't speak for Galilean Aramaic but I can for Choctaw, a Native 
American language spoken in the US in Oklahoma and Mississippi.  The 
Oklahoma Choctaw speakers have dropped the lateral fricative which 
English doesn't have and replaced it with the English 'th" sound.  I 
have also seen the same process happening with the grammar here in 
Mississippi.  Choctaw speakers are losing the aspects of their language 
which English doesn't have, e.g., distant past tense, dual forms and 
switch reference system.  What is interesting is they are not adding 
English constructions which they don't have, e.g., a broad pronoun 
system which marks gender.

I wonder if something similar was happening in Galilean Aramaic.  I 
would expect similar changes if Greek were the majority language and 
Aramaic the minority.

Sincerely,

Harry J. Harm  :{)

---
You are currently subscribed to b-hebrew as: Peter_Kirk AT sil.org 
To unsubscribe, forward this message to 
$subst('Email.Unsub')
To subscribe, send an email to join-b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu.