Pronunciation of ع/ע
Thursday, July 7th, 2011 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manHere's one for the the Arabists and Sephardim amongst my readership: what's the correct pronunciation(s) of ع/ע?
When I hear Sephardim who distinguish ע from א pronounce it, they make a sound like their epiglottis is trying to become intimately familiar with their uvula (ETA: or, as the apostate Guglielmo Franchi described it in 1599 (see below) "twisting the deepest part of one's throat almost to the point of strangling oneself, with the help of one's nose"). I read somewhere about how in the nineteenth century sometimes Ashkenazim would transliterate (and sometimes pronounce) ע as "ng", e.g. shemang for שְׁמַע (as the last vowel is an example of the wonderfully named furtive pataḥ (not to be confused with
furtivepatach)); trying to pronounce "ng" without the "ng"-ness seems to get me close to this pronunciation (but hurts my throat).
However, my Arabic alphabet teach-yourself book tells me to make a different sound: like in the French pronunciation of "Marie", only without the contact at the back of the mouth.
And The Koran: A Very Short Introduction recommends a third pronunciation altogether: like ح (ḥ, pronounced /ħ/) but voiced. Wikipedia concurs with this pronunciation, but from the small amount of Arabic I've heard spoken I don't hear the level of breathiness that this would imply.
So which of these second two pronunciations is correct in Arabic? Or are they both correct, but in different places; or is neither correct? And would the first pronunciation be wrong if you said it in Arabic, and the second two if you said it in Hebrew?
When I hear Sephardim who distinguish ע from א pronounce it, they make a sound like their epiglottis is trying to become intimately familiar with their uvula (ETA: or, as the apostate Guglielmo Franchi described it in 1599 (see below) "twisting the deepest part of one's throat almost to the point of strangling oneself, with the help of one's nose"). I read somewhere about how in the nineteenth century sometimes Ashkenazim would transliterate (and sometimes pronounce) ע as "ng", e.g. shemang for שְׁמַע (as the last vowel is an example of the wonderfully named furtive pataḥ (not to be confused with
furtivepatach)); trying to pronounce "ng" without the "ng"-ness seems to get me close to this pronunciation (but hurts my throat).However, my Arabic alphabet teach-yourself book tells me to make a different sound: like in the French pronunciation of "Marie", only without the contact at the back of the mouth.
And The Koran: A Very Short Introduction recommends a third pronunciation altogether: like ح (ḥ, pronounced /ħ/) but voiced. Wikipedia concurs with this pronunciation, but from the small amount of Arabic I've heard spoken I don't hear the level of breathiness that this would imply.
So which of these second two pronunciations is correct in Arabic? Or are they both correct, but in different places; or is neither correct? And would the first pronunciation be wrong if you said it in Arabic, and the second two if you said it in Hebrew?
