Talk:Modern Hebrew phonology

Velar Fricative

I'm pretty sure khet and khaf are voiceless uvular fricatives, not velar (at least in modern Hebrew). --Mo-Al 05:50, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

You are right, velar fricative is e.g. the corresponding sound in Russian (the 'hard' variant, the 'soft' being palatal). The harsh sound of the Hebrew fricative is due to vibration of the uvula on top of the rear part of the tongue body. Uvular fricative was the description in Asher Laufer's article on Hebrew in the 'Handbook of the International Phonetic Association' (1999). The fricative is not at the same place of articulation as the stops, which are velar, but more retracted than them. It should be noted, however, that both this fricative and the rhotic are higher (more 'advanced') than the corresponding sounds in German and French.Beckeroy (talk) 15:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

10 vowel phonemes?

As a native speaker, this seems completely wrong to me. Hebrew might have more than 5 vowel sounds, but not more than 5 vowel phonemes. All of the examples, except the pair ילד,אם, are in pairs of a short "phoneme" on an unstressed syllable and a long "phoneme" (actually the same phoneme) on a stressed syllable, which seems to suggest this is merely about allophonic variations. But even the words ילד and אם have the same /e/ phoneme. To wit, Hebrew speakers learning English generally have difficulty producing the difference between /ɪ/ and /i/ or between /ʊ/ and /u/ (the latter still sounds very subtle to me after many years of hearing English). 87.68.44.49 (talk) 16:47, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

WillRock41 is the one who has recently added 5 more phonemes. The page originally listed only 5 phonemes. He has also made a similar set of changes to Help:IPA for Hebrew (including some changes to the consonants). In both cases he doesn't state where this information comes from, or what pronunciation of Hebrew he is trying to represent. I will post on his talk page asking him to comment here. — Eru·tuon 20:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

As a native speaker, I hear some speakers sometimes pronounce /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ as [e] and [o] respectively and the others pronounce /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ as [i] and [u] respectively(similar to Literary Arabic /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ phonemes). In addition Hebrew academy considers vowel length as phonemic feature even length distinction is no longer exist. WillRock41 15:11, 5 December 2014 (UTC +2)

If the pronunciation of some phoneme varies between [e] and [i] in some position, that does not mean that it's a separate phoneme from both /i/ and /e/. I believe it is simply a variation of /i/ on unstressed syllables. I think that when speakers are trying to speak carefully, their pronunciation will be clearly [i] or [e] rather than some intermediate sound (more commonly [i] for more educated speakers, since I think all these cases have Hirik rather than Segol/Tzere).

But more important than what either of us think, which is OR, is the verifiability of the claims. The chart in the article with 5 phonemes is cited. Do you have a citation backing the claim that there are 10 phonemes? RowlfTD (talk) 01:51, 11 December 2014 (UTC) (the unsigned comment that started this thread is also by me)

Wow, yea, I'm just seeing this now. This is completely wrong. Modern Hebrew has only 5 phonemic vowels. Anything else is allophonic although I'm really not sure that's even the right way to analyze it phonetically, I mean the two short vowels becoming a long one. Someone needs to change this back to 5 vowel phonemes. 84.229.127.28 (talk) 13:43, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

תם - טעם mic drop 79.183.87.191 (talk) 15:00, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

tʃ

@AntonSamuel: What is your basis for characterizing the tʃ in words where prefix -ת precedes a root beginning with ש as a single phoneme? Largoplazo (talk) 00:48, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

This is not something I've argued, the words I mentioned (תשובה, תשוקה, תשע-עשרה) do not have ת as a prefix, ת is part of the root for all three words. AntonSamuel (talk) 00:55, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Are you sure it isn't a prefix, whether inflectional or derivational, in תשובה ("answer", "return") given that it looks awfully convincing that it's derived from the root שוב, "again"?

You're right about תשע, I hadn't looked at it carefully, but, then, just because a [t] and an [ʃ] that used to have a vowel between them no longer do, it doesn't mean they've become a phoneme. What would lead to them being regarded as such? Largoplazo (talk) 01:51, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Yeah now that I've checked again, you were right, only תשע has ת as part of the root. However even though that is the case would it change the status of tʃ as a phoneme? I would argue that tʃ is a phoneme simply since it is used as such, both for foreign words, usually represented by צ' and תש for native words (at least colloquially) like תשמע and תשאל AntonSamuel (talk) 07:42, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on where adjacent sounds become treated like phonemes, but I don't think that's correct, that if a language has two phonemes that, when adjacent, create a phonetic sequence that happens to be the same as underlies a third phoneme in the language, then that phonetic sequence is always identified with that third phoneme. For example, in English, which possesses all three of /t/ (usually ⟨t⟩), /ʃ/ (usually ⟨sh⟩), and /t͡ʃ/ (usually ⟨ch⟩ or ⟨tch⟩), would you analyze "hotshot" as /ˈhɑtˌʃɑt/ or as /ˈhɑˌt͡ʃɑt/? Largoplazo (talk) 22:58, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: It would be analyzed as /ˈhɑt.ʃɑt/ (General American), and would be pronounced differently from a hypothetical word *hah-chot /ˈhɑ.t͡ʃɑt/ because the /t/ at the end of the syllable would be unreleased or glottalized or even pronounced as a glottal stop, whereas a /t͡ʃ/ at the beginning of a syllable is aspirated. I wonder if there is any such contrast in Hebrew. — Eru·tuon 23:25, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

First sentence

"Modern Hebrew is phonetically simpler than Biblical Hebrew and has fewer phonemes, but it is phonologically more complex."

And you've lost me there at the the first sentence. Yes, I'm vaguely aware that phonetics are not the same as phonology, but it's not a distinction that I carry around easily available in my head, not being a student of linguistics. This Wiki article appeared in a search engine's results for "pronunciation stress in modern Hebrew"

Hundovir (talk) 17:29, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you, that the first sentence is problematic for the following reasons: 1. It compares apples to oranges--Modern Hebrew is a living language, where you can study the phonology from living speakers, compared to an ancient language for which the phonology is reconstructed and inferred from historical sources. If you're going to make the statement, I feel like you really need to back it up with sources and evidence. 2. The comparison with Biblical Hebrew is not the topic of the article, and is hardly expanded upon in the rest of the article, so making this comparison doesn't belong in the first sentence. 3. The sentence is meaningless to people without a linguistics background and understand the difference between phonology and phonetics. I am not a linguist, and from reading the phonetics and phonology Wikipedia articles, I'm still not exactly sure what the first sentence means.

Brian louis ross (talk) 07:58, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

The lead should definitely not start with that observation, and should probably not contain it. Imagine if the first sentence of United States read "The United States is much larger in both area and population than it was when it was founded." It wouldn't be wrong to have a section in which the comparison is made and the factors that made the phonology what it is today are discussed, but that's not what the lead is for. Largoplazo (talk) 11:36, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Consonants, Illustrative words

The grouping of צ׳, תשׁ‎ is confusing While /tʃ/ seems to be the best option for both, they aren't pronounced the same in practice. (the difference between ts, tsh, and ch is very rarely lost on Hebrew native speakers)

the grouping is especially confusing when paired with the example word תְּשׁוּקָה‎ (simply pronounced 'tshuka'), which won't be pronounced by (the majority) natives with צ׳ (as 'chuka'). Dar Chiffon (talk) 10:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Footnote "Phoneme is not present in English phonology"

In the consonant section, why is there a footnote noting phonemes that are not present in English? This is completely irrelevant for an article about the phonology of Modern Hebrew and should be removed promptly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hantanfjantan (talk • contribs) 15:23, 9 April 2022 (UTC)