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Is ℵ a Greek Letter? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 17 of 26 19 April 2015 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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There are more niqqud than just the patach that represent the vowel /a/.
Aleph does represent the glottal stop, it's just often dropped as an initial (which is its most common use as a mater lectionis). In loanwords it may represent /a/ but that is because the glottal stop is assumed silent in that case. However you can also see /e/ underneath or even /o/ (think of לא). Just because the niqqud aren't written doesn't mean they're not there! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6825 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 18 of 26 19 April 2015 at 4:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yiddish doesn't need the vowel points. See. They've been used in the bible for ages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4844 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 19 of 26 19 April 2015 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
So, first of all, you are absolutely right that, in Modern Hebrew, there are several signs indicating /a/, however I meant to say that patach was the sign for /a/ in Biblical Hebrew. I somehow jumped from Biblical to Modern Hebrew in the middle of my post without making that clear. Sorry for that, but I edited my post several times and somehow lost track of its inner logic. Anyway, all the other niqqud signs which are pronounced /a/ in Modern Hebrew today had different sounds in Biblical times.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant to say! In loanwords and even some Hebrew words, consonant signs like א , ו, י, and ע can be used to designate vowel sounds. This is a practice which comes from Yiddish and whose name I forget. If I had the Routledge Modern Hebrew book here, I could look up its name. Of course, the niqqud is still there (in theory), but the consonant signs serve as matres lectionis (so, yes, of course they’re silent) for the vowel sounds. That’s what I meant to say by "א can be used as an A". Of course, that was oversimplified, but I didn’t deem it necessary to discuss the entire Hebrew alphabet here.
Yes, of course! But that’s restricted to traditional Hebrew words. Once again, sorry for oversimplifying the matter.
Yeah, that’s what I said. The niqqud signs have been invented to add the vowel sounds to Biblical and other theological texts without changing the written (consonant) letters, because the written word was considered holy and unchangeable. However, Yiddish couldn’t be written with consonant letters alone, because it’s not a Semitic language, so you needed to write the vowels in order to produce intelligible text. Instead of putting tiny dots and dashes beneath each letter, people simply used consonant letters which were useless in Yiddish (such as ע, because there are no pharyngeal consonants in Yiddish) and turned them into vowels. Also, they adapted the system of the matres lectionis from Hebrew and turned it into the ordinary way of indicating /a/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ by using א, י, ו exclusively as vowels. At the same time, י and ו were doubled when they were used to indicate /j/ and /v/ (ײ, װ). This system was adapted by Modern Hebrew to indicate vowels in loanwords and to write Hebrew words which might be ambiguous without any indication of vowels. And, as I said, this practice has a special name which I have unfortunately forgotten. But I will look it up, if need be. EDIT: Sorry, the Hebrew letters are all in the wrong order and don't match the order in which I wrote their sounds. The forum seems to have some issues with right-to-left text... Edited by Josquin on 19 April 2015 at 1:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 20 of 26 19 April 2015 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Yeah it's one of the spelling formats. It's actually the most common one too (for
example, everyone writes vav in the -ot plural). I forgot the name, I think that is the first thing the Routledge book explains. I don't have my copy with me either (it's in the Netherlands). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5308 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 21 of 26 20 April 2015 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I noticed the letter ℵ in the background image of this forum. Near the left edge, a bit above the Omega. Is it an ℵ?
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 22 of 26 20 April 2015 at 4:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Yes, from my limited experience with Yiddish I really think it's that :)
There's also ש which is related to the cyrillic щ that is near it. Edited by Serpent on 20 April 2015 at 4:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 23 of 26 27 April 2015 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, I strongly object. He didn't ask how to find information efficiently, he asked a question which has resulted in a very interesting discussion (unfortunately I haven't been getting emails about updates, so this response is a bit late). The OP didn't ask for efficiency, and if they took your advice then the rest of us would have been deprived of the discussion. I thought I made that clear. I object to any response which might discourage people from asking questions. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5135 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 24 of 26 07 May 2015 at 5:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Chill out, guys. This is my way of seeking information. I will just post my question to a forum I'm a member of, and while waiting for other members to answer I google it up myself. I do that just in case that my searching doesn't get any result at all and other people just happen to know more about it.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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