Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

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