# Hebrew phonology: א and ע



## ks20495

> (This is a highly problematic definition, by the way, since א is not pronounced, and neither is ע by most speakers of Hebrew.)



'א is still pronounced wherever it historically was pronounced. It's true that we sometimes don't fully stop when we speak fast. But, מֵאֲמָר is contrastingly different from *מָמָר for Hebrew speakers.

'ע is definitely still pronounced. Its pronunciation has simply changed -- just like 'צ and 'ח.


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## elroy

ks20495 said:


> 'א is still pronounced wherever it historically was pronounced. It's true that we sometimes don't fully stop when we speak fast. But, מֵאֲמָר is contrastingly different from *מָמָר for Hebrew speakers.


  When you say מֵאֲמָר, you're not pronouncing the א but the vowel underneath it.  א is always silent; you only pronounce the vowel that accompanies it.


> 'ע is definitely still pronounced.


 It is?  What does it sound like?  Do you differentiate between אף and עף?


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## ks20495

> When you say מֵאֲמָר, you're not pronouncing the א but the vowel underneath it. א is always silent; you only pronounce the vowel that accompanies it.



'א is a consonant. It is the same consonant as "hamza": a glottal stop, which is written [?] in IPA. Thus, מֵאֲמָר is written in IPA as [ma?amar]. The consonant is  the [?], and the vowel is the [a]. (Just like Arabic مَأْكُول [mæ?ku:l]. Only in Hebrew, we must have a vowel _after_ the glottal stop.)



> It is? What does it sound like? Do you differentiate between אף and עף?



No...But, once again, we pronounce 'ע as a glottal stop.


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## elroy

ks20495, do you pronounce a glottal stop in ראש and רגע?


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## ks20495

No...But, those are exceptions. In those cases, the letters are completely silent. There is no vowel accompanying them (as you say). 

But, the fact remains that - in general - 'א and 'ע are pronounced as a glottal stop, which is a consonant.


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## elroy

ks20495 said:


> No...But, those are exceptions. In those cases, the letters are completely silent. There is no vowel accompanying them (as you say).
> 
> But, the fact remains that - in general - 'א and 'ע are pronounced as a glottal stop, which is a consonant.


 Hmm...I guess you and I have different ways of looking at it.  In my opinion, it's more logical to say that they are always silent, but in certain phonological environments a glottal stop _may_ be conditioned by surrounding sounds.  Notice that I say "may" because the glottal stop isn't actually obligatory - normatively speaking, that is.  In other words, whether or not there should be a glottal stop from a _prescriptive_ point of view, the fact is that native speakers do not always pronounce a glottal stop.  מאמר is often pronounced [ma.a.mar], with no glottal stop, and the same applies to other words with an א or a ע.  In my opinion, this supports the view that they are actually silent, with an optional glottal stop in certain environments.


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## ks20495

Linguistics distinguishes between phones (the actual sounds that the speaker makes) and the phonemes (a language's vocabulary of sounds that can be contrasted from one another). 

For example, in Arabic, the words قَلْب and كَلْب both contain a _fatHa_. However, one is pronounced [qɑlb] and the other is pronounced [kælb]. But, in the vocabulary of Arabic sounds, there is no distinguishing between [ɑ] and [æ] -- they are both _fatHa_, which is a phoneme in Arabic. (See this Wikipedia article for more information.)

The same is true for Hebrew: Even though people sometimes realize מאמר as [ma.a'mar] or even [ma'mar], the phonemic value of מאמר remains /ma?amar/. 

Otherwise, Hebrew would no longer distinguish (for example) between כשר and כאשר.


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## elroy

Yes, I know what you're talking about.  It's called allophony.  I'm not sure that a "zero phone" can be considered an allophone of an actual phone, but either way, I still believe that considering the phonemic value of א and ע to be a glottal stop is somewhat shaky, because the glottal stop only ever occurs in specific environments.

If the pronunciation of ע had actually changed from [ʕ] to [ʔ], as you claim, then רגע would have at one point been pronounced [re:gɑʔ], with a glottal stop, before eventually losing the glottal stop.  But as far as I know, that pronunciation never occurred.  So it seems more logical to assume that the sound was completely lost, and that a glottal stop was added later _in certain environments_.  This is also supported by the fact that most speakers of languages that do not have [ʕ] in their phonological inventory simply omit the sound when trying to pronounce words that contain it, rather than replacing it with a glottal stop.  It stands to reason, then, that the same type of thing happened around the time Hebrew was revived, due to the fact that the native languages of its principal revivers lacked the sound.

Interesting discussion.


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## Abu Rashid

Very interesting.

So א and ע are pretty much the same letter today? Only distinguished in writing due to the fact they were still separate when the writing system was established? like שׂ and ס?

So a Hebrew speaker who was illiterate would probably not even distinguish their separate existence?

Does this confuse children when first learning to read and write?


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## yuval9

Abu Rashid said:


> Very interesting.
> 
> So א and ע are pretty much the same letter today? Only distinguished in writing due to the fact they were still separate when the writing system was established? like שׂ and ס?
> 
> So a Hebrew speaker who was illiterate would probably not even distinguish their separate existence?
> 
> Does this confuse children when first learning to read and write?


it does linguistically affect words. 
but yes, when learning how to write children sometimes have spelling mistakes.
i still see all the time on the internet hebrew speakers who write "עם" (=with) instead of "אם" (=if), this is really annoying


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> So א and ע are pretty much the same letter today? Only distinguished in writing due to the fact they were still separate when the writing system was established? like שׂ and ס?


It depends. Jews who migrated from oriental countries (Arabic, Iran, Kurdistan etc.) maintain the separate sounds. Yet there's a tendency to pronounce ע like א.



> So a Hebrew speaker who was illiterate would probably not even distinguish their separate existence?


There aren't too many of these... and in any case, the separate existence is not completely lost.



> Does this confuse children when first learning to read and write?


This is one of many spellling problems - ע, ה, א sound alike (alef, he, `ayyin), כ and ק (kaf and kof), ת and ט (tet and taw), ב and ו (vet and wow), ס and ש (samakh and sin). Children learn it at school and in second grade (age 7-8) most of them write very well.


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## amikama

elroy said:


> [...], and the same applies to other words with *an *א or *a *ע.


Interesting choice of articles... So א is a vowel and ע is (still?) a consonant?


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## Abu Rashid

> It depends. Jews who migrated from oriental countries (Arabic, Iran, Kurdistan etc.) maintain the separate sounds. Yet there's a tendency to pronounce ע like א.



Do they pronounce them like they are in Arabic? Or differently?


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## ks20495

> I'm not sure that a "zero phone" can be considered an allophone of an actual phone, but either way, I still believe that considering the phonemic value of א and ע to be a glottal stop is somewhat shaky, because the glottal stop only ever occurs in specific environments.



I believe the glottal stop is the default phone. The silent 'א and 'ע are what occur in specific environments in the written language. (for 'א: at the end of words, in ראש and derived words, in שמאל and derived words, in [...גזרת פ"א [יֹאהֵב; for 'ע: only at the end of words.)

I do not think that "the zero phone" is an allophone. (For example, the phonemic value of English "knee" is not /kni:/) The written language sometimes contains unpronounced letters for historical or morphosyntatic reason. (For example, קרא /kara/ contains an 'א to maintain the connection with the root ק-ר-א.)



> If the pronunciation of ע had actually changed from [ʕ] to [ʔ], as you claim, then רגע would have at one point been pronounced [re:gɑʔ], with a glottal stop, before eventually losing the glottal stop. But as far as I know, that pronunciation never occurred. So it seems more logical to assume that the sound was completely lost, and that a glottal stop was added later in certain environments. This is also supported by the fact that most speakers of languages that do not have [ʕ] in their phonological inventory simply omit the sound when trying to pronounce words that contain it, rather than replacing it with a glottal stop. It stands to reason, then, that the same type of thing happened around the time Hebrew was revived, due to the fact that the native languages of its principal revivers lacked the sound.



The people who stopped pronouncing 'ע were European Jews. This pronunciation developed centuries before the revival of the Hebrew language. Neither their native languages nor Hebrew featured glottal stops at the end of words. Therefore, it is expected that they would go directly from [regaʕ] to [rega].

But, words like כועס were pronounced [ko'?es]. Today (and hypothetically back then), many people say [ko.es]. But, I believe the phonemic value is still a glottal stop - /ko?es/. If you ask native speakers of Hebrew to say כועס slowly, the vast majority (I believe) would say [ko?es].

(An example of this in English to the phrase "come here". People pronounce it [kʌmi:r]. But phonemically, the word "here" is certainly /hi:r/. And most native speakers would say [kəm hi:r] if they were asked to speak slowly.)


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> Do they pronounce them like they are in Arabic? Or differently?


ע is like in Arabic (the sound of ع, not غ).


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## berndf

elroy said:


> Hmm...I guess you and I have different ways of looking at it. In my opinion, it's more logical to say that they are always silent, but in certain phonological environments a glottal stop _may_ be conditioned by surrounding sounds. Notice that I say "may" because the glottal stop isn't actually obligatory - normatively speaking, that is. In other words, whether or not there should be a glottal stop from a _prescriptive_ point of view, the fact is that native speakers do not always pronounce a glottal stop.





elroy said:


> מאמר is often pronounced [ma.a.mar], with no glottal stop, and the same applies to other words with an א or a ע. In my opinion, this supports the view that they are actually silent, with an optional glottal stop in certain environments.





elroy said:


> Yes, I know what you're talking about. It's called allophony. I'm not sure that a "zero phone" can be considered an allophone of an actual phone, but either way, I still believe that considering the phonemic value of





elroy said:


> א and ע to be a glottal stop is somewhat shaky, because the glottal stop only ever occurs in specific environments.



You need at least a hiatus the distinguish /ma.a.mar/ from */ma.mar/ (if such a word existed) since vowel length is non-phonemic in Modern Hebrew. You can view the hiatus as a variant realization of א (or ע for that matter). But this is not a null-phone. This is similar the stop in German "beenden" between the two "e"s is always phonemic whether realized as a glottal stop or as a hiatus. In my view, it is still justified to regard א as a proper consonant. Of course, there was a truly mute א already in Tiberian Hebrew, like in מְלָאכָה /mə.lɔ:'χɔ:/, but that is a separate issue.


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## elroy

amikama said:


> Interesting choice of articles... So א is a vowel and ע is (still?) a consonant?


 Well, א is always "alef" but ע is "ayin" or "ʕayen" depending on who you ask. 

Just to be clear, I think all Hebrew characters represent consonants (whether or not those consonants are actually realized today).  In other words, I also think ו and י are silent unless they are pronounced as consonants. 





ks20495 said:


> Neither their native languages nor Hebrew featured glottal stops at the end of words. Therefore, it is expected that they would go directly from [regaʕ] to [rega].
> 
> But, words like כועס were pronounced [ko'?es].


 Okay, so you're saying that they applied the rules of their native languages to Hebrew, meaning that they alternated between [ʔ] and zero.  So what is your evidence for the glottal stop, and not zero, being the phonemic value of ע, if both changes occurred simultaneously? 





berndf said:


> You need at least a hiatus the distinguish /ma.a.mar/ from */ma.mar/ (if such a word existed) since vowel length is non-phonemic in Modern Hebrew. You can view the hiatus as a variant realization of א (or ע for that matter).


 Or you can view is a phonetic necessity that arises when two vowels need to be pronounced in succession. 


> This is similar the stop in German "beenden" between the two "e"s is always phonemic whether realized as a glottal stop or as a hiatus.


 I thought "beenden" had to be pronounced with a glottal stop.  I've never heard it with a "hiatus."  Is that a regional variant?





> In my view, it is still justified to regard א as a proper consonant.


 On what grounds, though?


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## berndf

elroy said:


> I thought "beenden" had to be pronounced with a glottal stop.  I've never heard it with a "hiatus."  Is that a regional variant? On what grounds, though?


It is free variation; essentially anything works as long as it produces an audible syllable break without producing any characteristics of another consonant. I normally use a hiatus if the word is unstressed and a glottal stop if stressed because a very forceful pronunciation without closure will produce an /h/ sound. I am telling this because I think the Hebrew Aleph is used quite in the same way. The use of the Aleph I heard by native speakers seems quite natural to me following my intuition from German and I have no problem identifying it as phonemic. The only issue I have is differentiating between /?i/ and /ji/ as in _'irgun_ vs. _Israel_. But this seems to be more problem with the combination /ji/ then with /?/.


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## ks20495

> So what is your evidence for the glottal stop, and not zero, being the phonemic value of ע, if both changes occurred simultaneously?



The evidence is this: In any position in which 'א is a phonemic glottal stop, 'ע is also a phonemic glottal stop: מבאר = /mva?er/ = מבער. (The actual pronunciation varies between [meva?er] and [meva.er].) 



> In other words, I also think ו and י are silent unless they are pronounced as consonants.



I really disagree with you on this point. 'ו represents three phonemes in Hebrew: the consonant /v/ and the vowels /o/ and /u/. 'י represents two phonemes: the consonant /j/ and the vowel /i/. 

It isn't possible to make a one-to-one connections between every letter and a phoneme.



> The only issue I have is differentiating between /?i/ and /ji/ as in 'irgun vs. Israel. But this seems to be more problem with the combination /ji/ then with /?/.



I would say...Among many native speakers of Hebrew, [?] is an allophone of /j/ before the vowel _: יסתקר /jistarek/ --> [?istarek]._


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## elroy

ks20495 said:


> The evidence is this: In any position in which 'א is a phonemic glottal stop, 'ע is also a phonemic glottal stop: מבאר = /mva?er/ = מבער. (The actual pronunciation varies between [meva?er] and [meva.er].)


  I think we both agree that the two letters are pronounced/treated the same way by most speakers (the exceptions being, of course, those that still produce [ʕ]).  I still don't see any strong evidence for saying that they are "glottal stops that are sometimes silent" versus saying that they are "silent but sometimes realized as glottal stops."  In the chart here, under "Israeli," both [ʔ] and zero are listed for both letters, and in fact, under "Ashkenazi," which is the variety we've been discussing, only [-] is listed.

(By the way, out of curiosity, is there a particular reason you've been using [?] instead of the IPA symbol [ʔ] for the glottal stop?)



> I really disagree with you on this point. 'ו represents three phonemes in Hebrew: the consonant /v/ and the vowels /o/ and /u/. 'י represents two phonemes: the consonant /j/ and the vowel /i/.


 Whenever ו and י are not consonants, the vowel sounds that they are generally considered to represent are actually represented by diacritics (in fully vowelized Hebrew, of course).


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## ks20495

> Whenever ו and י are not consonants, the vowel sounds that they are generally considered to represent are actually represented by diacritics (in fully vowelized Hebrew, of course).



Only sometimes. The fully vocalized form of *כתיב* is כְּתִיב. The fully vocalized form of כתוב is כָּ*תוּב*. The fully vocalized form of תי*כון* is תּיכוֹן. 

(If the syllable is closed and stressed, it will receive a "big vowel" -- םִי, םוּ, מוֹ. If the syllable is open and unstressed, it will also receive a "big vowel". I bolded the stressed syllables.)



> In the chart here, under "Israeli," both [ʔ] and zero are listed for both letters, and in fact, under "Ashkenazi," which is the variety we've been discussing, only [-] is listed.



We know that the letter 'א can be silent for - in my opinion - historical reasons (ראש)  or morphosyntactic reasons (קרא). 

The chart you were looking at displays the pronunciation of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet -- not of the phonemes in the Hebrew language. 
Both of the words above contain the letter 'א. But, both of them contain neither a phonemic nor a phonetic glottal stop. 

Look at the words "night" /naɪt/, "right" /raɪt/, "sight" /saɪt/, and "fight" /faɪt/ in English. They are written with 'g' and 'h'. But, they by no means include the phonemes /g/ and /h/. This is simply a "leftover" from the historical pronunciation of the trigraph "igh". This is analogous to silent 'א and 'ע. 

The phoneme /ʔ/ exists in Modern Hebrew and is realized as either 'א or 'ע.



> ...under "Ashkenazi," which is the variety we've been discussing, only [-] is listed.



I have been speaking about Modern Israeli Hebrew. Ashkenazi Hebrew has only been brought up, because the origins of modern 'ע are among Ashkenazi Jews.


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## elroy

ks20495 said:


> Only sometimes. The fully vocalized form of *כתיב* is כְּתִיב. The fully vocalized form of כתוב is כָּ*תוּב*. The fully vocalized form of תי*כון* is תּיכוֹן.


 Right, and in every one of those words, there is a diacritic indicating the vowel sound. 


> Look at the words "night" /naɪt/, "right" /raɪt/, "sight" /saɪt/, and "fight" /faɪt/ in English. They are written with 'g' and 'h'. But, they by no means include the phonemes /g/ and /h/. This is simply a "leftover" from the historical pronunciation of the trigraph "igh".


 I understand that.   I don't know what led you to believe that I think every grapheme has to correspond to a phoneme 





> I have been speaking about Modern Israeli Hebrew. Ashkenazi Hebrew has only been brought up, because the origins of modern 'ע are among Ashkenazi Jews.


 I've been talking about Modern Israeli Hebrew too.  I just meant that we've been discussing the Ashkenazi-influenced variety (which is considered "standard" today) and not minority varieties.  





> The phoneme /ʔ/ exists in Modern Hebrew and is realized as either 'א or 'ע.


 I realize that it's traditionally classified as a phoneme.  I just find that somewhat problematic, because it's not obligatory, so it's not consistently used to form meaningful contrasts.  It's not stable enough.


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## ks20495

> I realize that it's traditionally classified as a phoneme. I just find that somewhat problematic, because it's not obligatory, so it's not consistently used to form meaningful contrasts. It's not stable enough.



That is the crux of this discussion. I'm not sure if we can resolve it without consulting an expert


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## berndf

ks20495 said:


> I would say...Among many native speakers of Hebrew, [?] is an allophone of /j/ before the vowel _: יסתקר /jistarek/ --> [?istarek]._


_Exactly.


elroy said:



			(By the way, out of curiosity, is there a  particular reason you've been using [?] instead of the IPA symbol [ʔ]  for the glottal stop?)
		
Click to expand...

Easier to type, it is on the standard keyboard.


elroy said:



			I realize that it's traditionally classified as a  phoneme.  I just find that somewhat problematic, because it's not  obligatory, so it's not consistently used to form meaningful contrasts.   It's not stable enough.
		
Click to expand...

I would say a phoneme is lost in a language, if minimal pairs relying on a phoneme become consistently unmaintainable, like the phoneme /h/ in Greek and in Romance languages. I don't see this being the case in majority Israeli Hebrew (yet). But the phonemes represented by the letters א and ע are certainly merged. Minimal pairs like עין and אין have consistently become indistinguishable._


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## ks20495

> But the phonemes represented by the letters א and ע are certainly merged. Minimal pairs like עין and אין have consistently become indistinguishable.



In their speech, the majority of Israelis do not distinguish between the pronunciation of the two letters. 

However, some still do. Furthermore, native speakers can distinguish between [?] and [ʕ] when they hear them pronounced and can identify [?] as 'א and [ʕ] as 'ע.


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## berndf

ks20495 said:


> However, some still do.


Of course, that's why I said "majority Israeli Hebrew".


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## ks20495

> Minimal pairs like עין and אין have consistently become indistinguishable.



I was just picking up on the word "consistently."

I think they are relatively distinguishable, because all native speakers still associate [ʕ] with 'ע.

_(From personal experience, people sometimes pronounce the [ʕ] to create a distinction. For example, I might say [?oʃeʁ veʕoʃeʁ] when it's important to distinguish between 'א and 'ע.)_


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## berndf

ks20495 said:


> I was just picking up on the word "consistently."
> 
> I think they are relatively distinguishable, because all native speakers still associate [ʕ] with 'ע.
> 
> _(From personal experience, people sometimes pronounce the [ʕ] to create a distinction. For example, I might say [?oʃeʁ veʕoʃeʁ] when it's important to distinguish between 'א and 'ע.)_


Correct me if I am wrong, but I suspect this is one of those cases you find in many languages that speakers artificially revive lost phonemic distinctions which are preserved in writing in order to disambiguate homophones. If you allow me to give an another analogy from my one language: Most Standard German speakers today pronounce "Gabe" and "Garbe" identically, namely [ɡa:bə]. As soon as a confusion occurs the same speaker will change to the theoretical pronunciation of "Garbe" as [ɡaʁbə].

I also wonder how people would then realise the /ʕ/ in examples like the one you quoted. In my observation (which of course can be distorted), most native speakers of European origin do not know how to produce a /ʕ/ which is really a difficult sound to produce.


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## ks20495

> I suspect this is one of those cases you find in many languages that speakers artificially revive lost phonemic distinctions which are preserved in writing in order to disambiguate homophones.



That is true in the examples I gave from my personal experience.

But, there are still those native speakers of Hebrew who naturally pronounce [ʕ]. So, the phoneme is not dead yet. 

This is radically different from the example you gave of vowel length in Hebrew. Historically, vowel length was phonemic. Today, variations in vowel length not have lost their phonemic value, but have also disappeared from the language. [ʕ] definitely still exists and is phonemic for some.



> I also wonder how people would then realise the /ʕ/ in examples like the one you quoted. In my observation (which of course can be distorted), most native speakers of European origin do not know how to produce a /ʕ/ which is really a difficult sound to produce.



A large number of native speakers of European origin (myself included) _can_ pronounce the guttural consonants [ʕ] and [ħ]. (I emphasize "can",  because they do not do it naturally.)


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## berndf

ks20495 said:


> But, there are still those native speakers of Hebrew who naturally pronounce [ʕ]. So, the phoneme is not dead yet.


Absolutely.



ks20495 said:


> Today, variations in vowel length not have lost their phonemic value, but have also disappeared from the language.


Just to make sure I got you right, you mean that  vowel length has lost phonemic status in all varieties of Hebrew, not that Hebrew speaker never vary vowel lengths because they certainly do, it just doesn't matter.


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## yuval9

berndf said:


> Absolutely.
> 
> Just to make sure I got you right, you mean that  vowel length has lost phonemic status in all varieties of Hebrew, not that Hebrew speaker never vary vowel lengths because they certainly do, it just doesn't matter.


we usually pronounce all vowels as they were short


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## ks20495

Also, 'ע can often be distinguished from 'א at the end of words.

If the word ends [e.a], [i.a], [u.a], or [o.a], you know that the word ends in 'ע.


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