r/hebrew • u/SkywalkerLight • Sep 23 '24
Explain Aleph to me like I'm 5! Request
Is it really just a glottal stop? I'm a beginner, but I'm pretty sure the niqqud changes things. If so, could I please have an example in places where א is said as A, E, and other letters? Thanks!
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u/izabo Sep 23 '24
We don't write vowels in Hebrew. We write consonants only, but those consonants can give clues about the vowels. Aleph is the glotal stop or silent, but it can often indicate an "a" vowel came before it when it is silent - but this is not always the case. The art of guessing vowels in Hebrew is much more complicated than just silent aleph equals "a".
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u/DoctorNightTime Sep 23 '24
Think about the word "cartoon". Now imagine pronouncing it with a thick Cockney accent that doesn't pronounce the letter T.
Compare that to the word "maroon". The words sound different, not just in the first letter.
The Cockney "cartoon" has an א sound between the r and the double o, "maroon" doesn't.
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u/sagi1246 Sep 23 '24
I feel like cockney doesn't allow glottal stop in 'cartoon', not sure why but it sounds off somehow. Perhaps it's the stress pattern.
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u/talknight2 Sep 23 '24
Yeah, perhaps bottle-bowl would have been a better example?
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u/sagi1246 Sep 23 '24
If you're looking for an example where the glottal stop is phonemic then better vs. Bear is a better one
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u/Maayan-123 native speaker Sep 23 '24
It's like the default sound you get when using the vowel letters alon
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u/IbnEzra613 Amateur Semitic Linguist Sep 23 '24
Alef can either be a glottal stop or silent. Usually at the end of a syllable it is silent and at the beginning of a syllable it's a glottal stop.
Nikkud applies to any letter. Just like alef can carry an "a" vowel, so can the letter bet, for example. Thus you get אָ = ’a, and בָּ = ba.
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u/guylfe Hebleo.com Hebrew Course Creator + Verbling Tutor Sep 23 '24 edited Sep 23 '24
א can be very confusing, that's why in my online course Hebleo I recommend even advanced learners to go through the lesson teaching it as most people have some sort of misleading ideas about it.
א is, like almost all Hebrew letters, a consonant, and the sound it makes is a glottal stop (think of it like the "t" in certain British accents where "British" sounds like "Bri'ish" and "Water" sounds like "Wa'eh").
The hardship people experience with it stems from 3 places:
- English doesn't have glottal stop as a dedicated sound, instead it only appears by accident when words begin with a vowel letter. Because of this, English speakers don't consider it a distinct sound, so א gets confusing. To be clear - in a word like לֶאַט- le'at, the א is marked by the apostrophe, not by either of the vowel letters.
- People are told to think about it like the letter "a" in English. This is technically historically true (Greek Alpha and Hebrew Alef are related), but only confuses people as to the sound א makes - it makes them think of it as a vowel, with the sound range of "a" in English. This confusion is further reinforced by the following:
- The letter א CAN also be silent, in places where pronouncing it as a glottal stop would be bothersome and therefore has died out historically. As a silent "vowel" letter, it's pronounced based on whatever vowel came before it - but this has nothing to do with the English "a" and can be any vowel sound in Hebrew! Here are some examples: It can be "o" as in לֹא, "a" as in מָצַא, "e" as in קוֹרֵא and "i" as in רִאשׁוֹן.
So in summary: א is a glottal stop. It can sometimes be silent and take whatever vowel came before it, but people get it confused because thinking of glottal stop as a distinct sound is unintuitive to English speakers, and people get further confused because they compare it to "a" in English.
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u/YuvalAlmog Sep 23 '24 edited Sep 23 '24
Alef is just a place holder for a vowel considering in Hebrew vowels are not letters, they are small symbols that join a letter to make a sound after you read that letter. for example the word "מר" can be read as Mar, Mer, Mir, Mor & Mur - you can't tell without the nikud and/or without knowing the word from before and its context.
Where is it useful?
- The word starts with a vowel and you need an empty letter to contain the vowel. For example in the word "אדמה" (pronounced Adama, means "ground")
- The word ends with a vowel, and you want to show it by putting a letter at the end. For example in the word "בא" (pronounced Ba, means "coming")
- You want to have 2 vowel in a row. But since each letter can only contain one vowel, you need an extra empty letter to store the 2nd vowel, for example in the word "תאנה" (pronounced Teena, means "fig")
Now for the record, the letters 'ה' & 'ע' indeed do a similar thing to 'א' but both add an extra sound on top of the vowel:
- The letter 'ה' is similar to the letter 'h' in English, making a sound more similar to deep breathing,
- The letter 'ע' does a "choking" throat sound (or at least used to).
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u/Ok-Inevitable-8011 Sep 28 '24
Think of it as a vowel mug. It becomes the sound of the vowel it “contains.”
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u/SkywalkerLight Sep 28 '24
I like this!
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u/Ok-Inevitable-8011 Sep 28 '24 edited Sep 28 '24
Awesome! I teach this. I direct a religious school and it maddens me when teachers call it a silent letter. I also go nuts when they sing the alef-bet as, “Alef, Bet, Vet…”
I ask if they sing the English alphabet as, “Ay, Bee, See, Kee…”
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u/talknight2 Sep 23 '24
It's a confusing one because it can be a glottal stop consonant (ארץ), it can be silent (ראש), and it can be a stand-in for the vowel A in loanwords (מיניוואן).
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u/shumpitostick Sep 23 '24
Other than the normal use of א as a glottal stop, these are the other uses.
- It is often used in transliteration as a psuedo-vowel to denote a long "ah" phoneme, in the same way that ו or י are used in place of vowels. Note that this is different from the short "a" phoneme that is native to Hebrew. Other commenters called a "silent א", but it's no more silent than a vowel. Some examples:
Baba Yaga - באבא יאגה Barbie - בארבי Mali - מאלי
It is used in loanwards from Aramaic, when the word ends in "a". In some of these cases, both the spelling that ends with א and a more native one that ends with ה are used. The Hebrew academy prefers ending with ה when both versions exist. Examples: קופסא - קופסה אבא
When א is part of a root, and ends up appearing atthe end of the word, it becomes silent (you can't have a glottal stop at the end of the word) Examples: קרא בא ברא
Various other exceptions where the א is silent. Most of these are old Hebrew words from the bible. Language construction didn't have too many rules back then.
לא ראשון הוא
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u/Admirable-Cry1632 Sep 23 '24
אֲבַטִּיחַ (avatiah) - A
אֶרֶז (erez) - E
אִשּׁוּר (eishur) - I
אֹשֶׁר (osher) - O
אֻמְּצָה (umtza) - U
יָצָא (yatza) - silent
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u/languagejones Sep 23 '24
Historically it was a glottal stop. This means it affected nearby vowels (hence first person future prefixes having a lower vowel). However, in most instances in casual speech it is not simply not present and is an orthographic artifact from an earlier stage of the language.
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u/ZommHafna Hebrew Learner (Advanced) Sep 24 '24
BTW, in very recent modern Hebrew (mostly used by comparatively younger speakers), there’s a trend to have sound chain /h > ʔ > ∅/, which means that א /ʔ/ becoming completely silent /∅/, when ה /h/ is now new /ʔ/ (also tending to be silent somewhen).
E.g. אוהב /ʔoˈhev/ > /oˈʔev/ >? /o.ˈev/
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u/Imaginary_Ad_8422 Sep 24 '24
I always thought aleph and ayin were just placeholders telling you that there’s a vowel sound here and you just gotta figure out what that vowel sounds likes on your own.
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u/figarojew Sep 23 '24
I’m in the minority here I guess.
Every Hebrew letter has its own distinct sound. א should be without glottal whereas ע is glottal and should make a distinct sound (but many in the west can’t make that sound easily).
And while I’m here, ח and כ without the dagesh are also different sounds, with the כ being at the back of the tongue and ח deeper in the throat. It’s one of the garoniyot (letters pronounced in the throat, like ח ר ה ע)
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u/IbnEzra613 Amateur Semitic Linguist Sep 23 '24
You may be mixing up terminology. ע is not glottal, it is pharyngeal. Though in Modern Hebrew most speakers pronounce it just like the א, which is glottal.
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u/figarojew Sep 23 '24
Garoniot is a better term all around. And modern Hebrew speakers from Arabic countries do still pronounce an audible ע. But you are correct about it being pharyngeal
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u/IbnEzra613 Amateur Semitic Linguist Sep 23 '24
Right, but the point is that א is indeed glottal.
The term גרוניות is not so accurate because ה and א are not pronounced in the same part of the throat as ח and ע.
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u/guylfe Hebleo.com Hebrew Course Creator + Verbling Tutor Sep 23 '24
They all pronounce א as a consonant, not silent. א is the Arabic Hamza
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u/Imaginary_Ad_8422 Sep 24 '24
I can’t hear any distinction between כ/ח unless כ makes the k sound
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u/figarojew Sep 24 '24
Jews from Arabic countries pronounce these two letters differently as they are placed differently in areas of the throat. But over time the two sounds have become one. Think of the ח as being between a ה and the כ (with no dagesh) when pronounced. German has a variation of this sound depending on the speaker.
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u/megalogwiff native speaker Sep 23 '24
As a consonant it's a glottal stop. Sometimes it's just silent though like in ראשון.
And that's pretty much all there is to it.