Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Randall Buth <randallbuth AT gmail.com>]

>**Uri, so it would sound like a yemenite ayin? is there any biblical or
aramaic hebrew example of this phenomenon?


A Yeminite `ayin (voiced pharyngeal fricative)
should be clearly distisguished from an alef (glottal stop).

As the others have mentioned, the quf//alef merger
is prominent today in many urban dialects of Arabic.
Though even in a 'alef' dialect like northern Egyptian Arabic,
they still preserve the quf in al-qaahira umm ad-dunya.
This is a modren phenomenon, not reflected in BH, though I am
unaware of its earliest attestation in post-classical Arabic.


-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth AT gmail.com
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