LL-L "Transliteration" 2003.02.15 (12) [E]

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

I responded to Criostóir's question:

> > 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").

Here’s a quick postscript to this largely extraneous thread:

Actually, the letter _teth_ (ט) ought to be transliterated as something like
_ŧeth_, symbolizing a glottalized /t/, thus being related to Arabic _ŧâ_
(ط).  The other letter I mentioned comes as the “plain” or “lenis” variant
_θâw_ (ת, pronounced like English <th> in “thought”), related to Arabic _θâ_
(Ø«), and in a “hard” or “fortis” variant _tâw_ (ï­ , pronounced like English
<t>, but usually without aspiration, thus like Dutch <t>), corresponding to
Arabic _tâ_ (ت).  All of them have coincided as /t/ in Ladino and Modern
Hebrew, while _θâw_ is pronounced as [s] and the others as [t] in Yiddish.
“Kashruth” (_kašrûθ_) is pronounced _kašrút_ in Ladino and Modern Hebrew but
is pronounced _kášres_ in Yiddish (with Germanic-type stress on the first
syllable and unstressed vowel neutralization in the last syllable).  _Torah_
(pronounced _torá_ in Ladino and Modern Hebrew and _tóyre_ in Yiddish)
begins with a _tâw_, thus should be transliterated as <Torah> rather than as
<Thora> (unless it occurred in certain compounds ... but that’s another
story we definitely won't go into here).

What *is* of some interest is that in Yiddish a /θ/ (/theta/) is pronounced
as [s], thus like many German speakers pronounce English <th> as in
"thought".

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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