LL-L "Transliteration" 2003.02.15 (10) [E]

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2003.02.15 (06) [D/E]

Ron,

An aside: why did you transcribe the final /t/ phoneme in Hebrew "kashrut"
as a /th/? This to me suggests /theta/.

During Christmas trip to the Netherlands and Fryslan I noticed this was the
standard practice in Dutch and Frisian newspaper articles - e.g., "thorah"
where in English we would write "Torah" or "Tora" (preferably the former,
although the latter is seen now and again).

I realise there are considerable difficulties in transcribing Afro-Asiatic
languages into Latin script because of the phonemic distance but I've never
encountered, except in Lowlands languages, Afro-Asiatic /t/ represented as
/th/.

I does make sense, but it's just a surprising something! (And I am one who
is perennially perplexed by the appropriate pronunciation of Hebrew in both
its Ashkenazi and Sefardi forms.)

Go raibh maith agat

Criostóir.

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Transliteration

Criostóir,

> An aside: why did you transcribe the final /t/ phoneme in Hebrew "kashrut"
as a /th/? This to me > suggests /theta/.

The answer is simple (at first): It does denote a /θ/ (/theta/).  :)

Ancient/Biblical Hebrew has/had a phoneme inventory very much like that of
Literary Arabic.  That of Modern Hebrew is comparatively impoverished, due
to being largely based on Sephardic (Ladino) pronunciation and other
influences of other European languages, a far cry from the "Semitic type"
(with which many immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries arrive in Israel
and for various reasons lose quick-smart).  The orthography is based on the
old language.  This means that original phonemes are still distinguished
that in modern pronunciation have coincided.  This includes the phonemes /θ/
(/theta/) (ת, letter _thaw_ > mod. pron. [tav], Yiddish [sof]) and /t/ (ט,
letter _teth_ > mod. pron. [tet], Yiddish [tes]).  As you can see, Yiddish
distinguishes them as /s/ and /t/ respectively, while they coincided as /t/
in Ladino.

For "everyday" use, Hebrew tends to be transliterated -- or better to say
"transcribed" -- on the basis of modern pronunciation.  In Semitic studies
this is unacceptable, because the Romanization must make all distinctions
the native script makes.  This also extends to vowel distinctions, many of
which are lost in Modern Hebrew but to an extent still exist in Yiddish
(albeit "destorted").

I hope this explained it.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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