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Hebrew Phonology must take into account that the Hebrew Language has been used primarily for Liturgical , literary, and scholarly purposes for most of the past two millennia. As a consequence, its pronunciation has been strongly influenced by the Vernacular of each individual Jew ish community. In contrast to the varied development of these pronunciations is the relatively rapid development of modern Israel i Hebrew. CONSONANTS Below are the consonants of modern General Israeli Hebrew: Notes on writing # The Phoneme /v/ is represented by two letters: vet (ב, unemphasized bet) and vav (ו). Although modern Hebrew pronunciation does not differentiate between the two, the latter is historically weaker due to its being a semi-vowel (/w/). # The phoneme /k/ is represented by two letters: kaf (כ) and quf (ק). Although modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation doesn't differentiate between the two, the latter is pronounced by some speakers as in Arabic . # The phoneme /t/ is represented by two letters: tet (ט) and tav (ת). The tet was historically pronounced with Pharyngealization (as in Arabic ) or as an Ejective (often, but misleadingly, called "emphasis"). The letter ''tav'', when intervocalic and non-doubled (i.e. without dagesh) represented a Fricative phoneme . For example, what in Modern Hebrew sounds as "Beit Lexem" was transcribed (through Greek, which is ill-equipped to represent /ħ/) into English from Old Hebrew as "Bethleem", also demonstrating note number 5. The traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of tau without dagesh as "s" is a continuation of this former distinction. # In old Hebrew the צ () was, like ט, Pharyngealized or Ejective ("emphasis"). Currently, the only community of Hebrew-speakers which expresses this in speech are Yemenite Jew s, whose Hebrew did not lose them, as other communities did under the influence of Yiddish and other European languages); however the emphasis led to several types of phonetic change that still exist. The exact nature of the emphatic feature is a matter of debate; the most commonly suggested possibilities are pharyngealization (as in Arabic) and glottalization (or the Ejective mechanism) (as in the Ethiopian Semitic Languages ). # In the speech of most modern Hebrew speakers, the phoneme /χ/ is represented by two letters: het (ח) and khaf (כ). Het is presumed to historically have been a Voiceless Pharyngeal Fricative (like Arabic ح). The voiceless pharyngeal fricative pronunciation is found in the speech of many Teimanim, Mizrachim and Sephardim, who, like Ashkenazim, pronounce khaf as /x/. VOWELS The Hebrew word for Vowel s is ''tnu'ot''. The marks for these vowels are called Nikud . Israeli Hebrew has 6 vowel Phoneme s:
Many Israeli speakers have merged /ə/ into /e/, reducing the vowel phonemes to 5. In is often pronounced {Link without Title} as in Ashkenazi Hebrew . Hebrew is written with a special vowel called " Schwa ". Depending on its context in a word, it can be pronounced in three ways, called resting ("nakh"), moving ("na'"), and floating ("merahef") . The resting schwa is silent, while the moving schwa is pronounced /e/ in Israeli Hebrew (though it was traditionally /ə/) . The floating schwa can be pronounced either as a moving schwa or a resting schwa. STRESS Hebrew has two main kinds of are different for verbs and nouns, which influences the stress; thus the ''mil‘el''-stressed ''ókhel'' (="food") and ''milra‘''-stressed ''okhèl'' (="eats", masculine) differ only in the length of the vowels (and are written identically if vowels are not marked). Little ambiguity exists, however, due to nouns and verbs having incompatible roles in normal sentences. This is, however, also true in English, in, for example, the English word "conduct," in its nominal and verbal forms. Biblical Hebrew had only these two stress patterns. Modern Hebrew, however, has a moderate number of words which are neither ''milra'' nor ''mil‘el'', but are stressed on the antepenult or even further back. These are mostly borrowings, e.g. ''ótobus'' 'bus', though a handful are native Hebrew words with an added Clitic , e.g. ''míshehu'' 'someone' (''mi'' 'who' plus ''shehu'' '-ever, any'). SEE ALSO |
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