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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Dagesh - a different sound or aspiration?

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  • From: Vadim Cherny <him AT vadimcherny.org>
  • To: James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>
  • Cc: B-Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Dagesh - a different sound or aspiration?
  • Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:18:52 +0300

The b/v confusion in Spanish, as far as I know, is a relatively modern phenomenon. Tracing back to Lartin, b/v's are sufficiently distinct.
Moreover, Spanish does not so much confuse the two as it abandoned [b] except in the word-initial positions (which we would call dagesh kal).
In that way, Spanish is the opposite of Hebrew: Spanish conflated two letters in a single sound while the Masoretes allegedly have two non-allophonic sounds for the same letter.

Vadim Cherny



James Read wrote:

Well, b/v are not "completely different" sounds neither. :)


Yep. See the Spanish language as an interesting example of this. The Spanish letter 'v' to the untrained English ear will sometimes sound like a 'v' and sometimes sound like a 'b'. There is also a Spanish 'b' which is distinguishable enough (to the trained ear) to never be confused with the Spanish 'v' when it sounds like an English 'b'.

Some don't really hear or distinguish the difference between a 'w' and a 'v'. And some don't distinguish the difference between an 'l' and an 'r'. In Ukrainian there is a hard 'l' and a soft 'l'. The difference is as minute as making a small space between your tongue and the roof of you mouth.

James Christian





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