I thought the use of 'h' to mark lenited sounds was given up because it is
unnecessary? Lenition is regular, and as long as you double the letters
where Hebrew uses a dot, it is as easy as reading Hebrew. I am confused by
the use of 'aspirated' in this context, as I thought the difference was one
of stop Vs fricative in both Hebrew and Arabic, not aspiration Vs
non-aspiration. Especially as it seems likely that it was the non-lenited
stops that were aspirated. Anyway, I would agree that using 'th' for tet is
inappropriate. I was taught to pronounce it as in Arabic, and the only
Hebrew I hear these days is from my supervisor, whose family is from Iraq,
so I was surprised that most Hebrew speakers do not do the same. Does that
mean that qof and kaf are also not distinguished?
Kevin Riley
-------Original Message-------
From: Jason Hare
Date: 1/02/2009 8:53:42 PM
So, you've got
Tet = th
Thaw (that is, tav without dagesh) = th
How can ת be represented in its soft form the same as ט? I just don't
Get the fact that two different people have suggested this, as if
There were a SOFT nature to tet, which is actually an emphatic
Consonant, corresponding to the Arabic ط rather than the aspirated ث
(corresponding to ת) or the non-aspirated ت (corresponding to תּ). How
Can emphatic ט be represented in transcription as aspirated th?
Additionally, all of these suggestions for using h in the soft
Consonant forms would really just lend to the confusion of actual heh
ה within words. How do we present הבהיר in these consonants? "hbhhyr"
- What a mess! It's so much clearer to see HBHYR as
Heh-bet-heh-yod-resh.
Again, I'm all for keeping the "standard" as it is. It's just clearer.