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  • From: "Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>
  • To: "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: G.Gertoux and the Name...
  • Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 06:43:32 +0100


>You never know, perhaps someone out there pronounces "ouest" /uest/, but
>I've never
>heard it!

Just to follow up...

The distinction between /w/ and /u/ is sometimes not made in modern
languages, as
it seems in both French and Italian. Working with Italians, I have often said
that
the letter "u" can be used as a consonant and they swear to me I'm wrong, so
I
point out words like "uomo" (man) and "uova" (egg) and ask if they really
pronounce
these words as written, giving pronunciation examples. It takes a while.

The same is true for /j/ and /i/. In Italian "yesterday" is "ieri" in which
the
first "i" is a /j/, just as in the French "hier" (also think of "hierarchie"
or
"hiatus").

(How does this relate to BH? It's just the same story of waw and yod being
used
both as consonants and, where necessary, as vowels.)


Ian






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