LL-L "Phonology" 2003.06.04 (03) [E]

[R. F. Hahn]

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From: Críostóir Ó Ciardha <paada_please at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2003.06.03 (09) [E]

A chairde,

Uilleam wrote:
"My question is, if this does not occur naturally in Lowland languages
or
German, then does it appear anywhere other than French naturally?"

Uvular /r/ is standard in modern Israeli Hebrew - Israelis speaking
other languages can often sound French at the first
listening because of it.

Go raibh maith agaibh

Criostóir.

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From: "Peter J. Wright" <peterjwright at earthlink.net>
Subject:  Phonology

Dear Reinhard,

>>Indeed, and rather comprehensively as well as comprehensibly presented,
if I may add.  Thanks for and congratulations on an informative and
examplary posting!

Thank *you*.  It's a subject that's near and dear to my heart.

Regards,
Peter

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

Criostóir (above):

> Uvular /r/ is standard in modern Israeli Hebrew - Israelis speaking
> other languages can often sound French at the first
> listening because of it.

But the uvular /r/ in Israeli Hebrew is due to recent European
influence, certainly did not develop independently.  Most likely, it is
derived from a combination of French, German (and Dutch?) and in part
Yiddish "accents" of influential European immigrants.  (Yiddish has both
apical and uvual /r/, depending on dialects and individual speakers,
very interesting since Yiddish used to be surrounded by languages with
apical /r/; I assume the uvular type was a spill-over from French via
German.)

Pre-20th-century Hebrew, like all other Semitic languages, most
certainly had an apical /r/.  When I lived in Israel, I met quite a few
North African immigrants (mostly via France).  They spoke Arabic and
Judeo-Arabic at home and French as a foreign language, plus, they tended
to have varying degrees of liturgical Hebrew proficiency and had an easy
time learning Modern Hebrew.  Their pronunciation of Hebrew was most
likely very close to the "real" (ancient) thing, due to the fact that
Arabic, Aramaic and Ancient Hebrew have very similar phonologies.  They
also still distinguished phonemes that in Modern Hebrew are no long
distinguished, though still written differently.  I, like a few
linguistically inclined Israelis, delighted in this and loved listening
to it.  However, usually within the span of a few months the same
speakers would have switched to uvular /r/.  It was no problem for them,
because [R] is an allophone of (original) Hebrew /g/ (_gimel_), and some
of them also used it in French.  However, a couple of them confessed to
me that the switch didn't feel right at first, because of their mental
association of [R] with /g/.  They felt obligated to switch because of
peer pressure, to get rid of their (at least then) less than prestigeous
"oriental" accents.  I always thought that that was a shame, but that's
how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

I similar case of influence exists in certain dialects of Romany
(including Sinti).  Romany has an apical /r/.  Like Semitic, it also has
a uvular fricative [R] that is an allophone of /G/.  In the dialects of
Eastern Europe the two remain distinct.  In Western European dialects
(especially of sedentary groups, specifically Sinti of Germany) sporadic
adoption of uvular /r/ has been blurring this distinction.  I assume
that this led to the adoption of the grapheme <rr> for /G/, as opposed
to <r> for /r/, in the current Romany and Sinti orthographies (where I
feel <gh> or an "accented" <g> would be more appropriate, e.g. _Ghoma_
instead of _Rroma_ for the name of the ethnic group).  In dialects with
uvular /r/, the <rr> is simply pronounced longer; thus, the system now
equals that of predominant Brazilian Portuguese.

So there you have another two cases of export.  Isn't something similar
also happening in Canadian French?

To return to the Lowlands, for a while at least, uvular /r/ was used by
some speakers of English in England.  You occasionally heard it on the
radio or on T.V.  (I haven't heard it lately.)  I think we discussed
this a long time ago, but I am not sure we ever came to any conclusion
as to its origin.

Peter (above):

> Thank *you*.  It's a subject that's near and dear to my heart.

That makes at least two of us on this list alone.  (Enough for an
R-Club?)

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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