Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Garth Grenache" <garthgrenache AT hotmail.com>]

Dear Uri and Jason,

Sorry I've taken so long to respond!

I am not counting syllables in Arabic.  You are right that Yaktubu is 3 
syllables, and Salaam is two!

What I am counting is the beats in relation to which each syllable is spoken.

Whether 'kt' is heard or not, if 4 beats are evenly spaced, Yak will occur on 
the first, Tu and Bu on the 3rd and 4th.
What happens on the 2nd beat?  The transition of the k to t.

Likewise in Salaam(u), the long vowel is long in such a way that the Mu will 
come on the 4th evenly spaced beat.

It makes sense to transliterate Arabic's long a as 'aa', because 'aa' 
requires two beats, and 'a' only one.

Are you having difficulty seeing what I'm seeing? hearing what I'm hearing?  
that Arabic (and probably ProtoSemitic) is a rhythmic language where 
syllables are one or two beats long?
YAK-TU-BU
2-1-1

SA-LAA-MU
1-2-1

If you are saying on 3 even beats Sa-Laa-Mu, you are not pronouncing the long 
a properly.  The syllable with the long a has two beats.  Sa-la-a-mu

Love from Garth.





Garth wrote: "....E.g. Arabic Yaktubu = Ya-KT-TU-BU -four beats, one per 
consonant.  Salaam = Sa-la-a-m -4 beats = one beat per
   consonant released 
and one for the long vowel...."
   
Uri replied:     "Sorry, I don't know what you mean. In your first example 
  there  are three syllables: YAK -TU- BU. No such thing as "KT".
  In the second example two syllables SA -LAM, the second with a
  long vowel ,and therefore transliterated sometimes with two 'A' s"