What's a Ḫ when it's at home, anyway?
Thursday, March 1st, 2012 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manAfter my last post, it's occurred to me that some most of my readers are going to be left scratching their heads at many of the be-dotted letters I use in my transcriptions. So, a brief guide to sounds in Biblical Hebrew.
' represents a glottal stop, the sound of א. It's the brief silence in the middle of a word when a Cockney says "bottle" and leaves out pronouncing the Ts altogether.
I'll occasionally use GH and DH for ג and ד without dāgesh. The former is a voiced KH (the sound in "loch"), the latter like in English "this".
Semitic languages have, to a greater or lesser extent, a series of emphatic consonants; the ones represented in Biblical Hebrew are ח Ḥ, צ Ṣ̣ and ט Ṭ. According to my teach-yourself-Arabic book, the difference between S and Ṣ̣ is similar to that between the Ss in the English phrase "sin in the sun"—observe the position of your tongue in your mouth as you say them—with a bit more emphasis added. Ḥ is, says the same book, the sound you make when you breathe on a window to mist it up.
The last sound of Scottish "loch", is in Hebrew related to K, and written "ch", "kh" or "x". In non-Canaanite languages, however, it is related to Ḥ (in Arabic, the three letters are written ح and خ) and transcribed "ḫ" to convey this. In Hebrew the two sounds/letters coalesced into ח Ḥ.
` represents ע. Constrict the entrance to your throat as you say this, and if using this sound gives you a sore throat, don't apply for citizenship in an Arabic-speaking country just yet. Arabic also has a related letter غ ghayn, pronounced ɣ or GH (see above). In Biblical Hebrew these two sounds were both represented by the letter ע, but were still distinguished, as may be deduced from the way ע in some names has since ancient times been transcribed with a G, e.g. עֲמוֹרָה Gomorrah, or עַזָה Gaza.
Q represents ק. Make a K sound but pronounce it at the back of the throat rather than the roof of the mouth.
Sometimes I'll use š and θ to represent שׁ and ת (as opposed to תּ); the sounds are those in English "she" and "think". Using single-letters avoids the ambiguity of figuring out whether "th" is like in English "think" or "hothouse".
You'll occasionally see me using ś to distinguish שׂ from ס, though I think these were pronounced the same by Biblical times.
Finally, vowels. I use Ā to represent Hebrew ָ. Most people nowadays pronounce this like in English "cat"; I pronounce it like in "cot", but in Biblical times it was the sound in English "father".
Hebrew has three E vowels: ֶ , which I transcribe E, ֵ , which I transcribe ē or é (I pronounce this "ei" but am not sure how it was pronounced in Biblical times) and ְ , which is ə: the sound of the "a" when unstressed in English "about".
Hebrew also had what are called ḥaṭef vowels or compound shvas, ultrashort versions of the other vowels. I transcribe these with a breve: Ă, Ĕ and Ŏ.
' represents a glottal stop, the sound of א. It's the brief silence in the middle of a word when a Cockney says "bottle" and leaves out pronouncing the Ts altogether.
I'll occasionally use GH and DH for ג and ד without dāgesh. The former is a voiced KH (the sound in "loch"), the latter like in English "this".
Semitic languages have, to a greater or lesser extent, a series of emphatic consonants; the ones represented in Biblical Hebrew are ח Ḥ, צ Ṣ̣ and ט Ṭ. According to my teach-yourself-Arabic book, the difference between S and Ṣ̣ is similar to that between the Ss in the English phrase "sin in the sun"—observe the position of your tongue in your mouth as you say them—with a bit more emphasis added. Ḥ is, says the same book, the sound you make when you breathe on a window to mist it up.
The last sound of Scottish "loch", is in Hebrew related to K, and written "ch", "kh" or "x". In non-Canaanite languages, however, it is related to Ḥ (in Arabic, the three letters are written ح and خ) and transcribed "ḫ" to convey this. In Hebrew the two sounds/letters coalesced into ח Ḥ.
` represents ע. Constrict the entrance to your throat as you say this, and if using this sound gives you a sore throat, don't apply for citizenship in an Arabic-speaking country just yet. Arabic also has a related letter غ ghayn, pronounced ɣ or GH (see above). In Biblical Hebrew these two sounds were both represented by the letter ע, but were still distinguished, as may be deduced from the way ע in some names has since ancient times been transcribed with a G, e.g. עֲמוֹרָה Gomorrah, or עַזָה Gaza.
Q represents ק. Make a K sound but pronounce it at the back of the throat rather than the roof of the mouth.
Sometimes I'll use š and θ to represent שׁ and ת (as opposed to תּ); the sounds are those in English "she" and "think". Using single-letters avoids the ambiguity of figuring out whether "th" is like in English "think" or "hothouse".
You'll occasionally see me using ś to distinguish שׂ from ס, though I think these were pronounced the same by Biblical times.
Finally, vowels. I use Ā to represent Hebrew ָ. Most people nowadays pronounce this like in English "cat"; I pronounce it like in "cot", but in Biblical times it was the sound in English "father".
Hebrew has three E vowels: ֶ , which I transcribe E, ֵ , which I transcribe ē or é (I pronounce this "ei" but am not sure how it was pronounced in Biblical times) and ְ , which is ə: the sound of the "a" when unstressed in English "about".
Hebrew also had what are called ḥaṭef vowels or compound shvas, ultrashort versions of the other vowels. I transcribe these with a breve: Ă, Ĕ and Ŏ.
