# Tzere, Segol and Cholam: Pronounced open or closed in Israeli Hebrew



## berndf

Hello,

when listening to modern speakers I have the impression that a closed [e] for tzere and segol and a slightly opened [o] for cholam is predominant. But I read conflicting things about this with some authors claiming open /e/ and /o/ sounds to be standard (I have problems producing IPA symbols on this web site).

What do native speaker perceive as "normal" today or is it simply irrelevant?

Thank you,
Bernd


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## בעל-חלומות

Tzere and Segol are the same in Hebrew today, and are both like Latin E. Holam is like O. I don't know what you mean by open and close here, though. Can you give an example for a close and an open O and E?

I know that in some languages there are short and long and all kinds of other vowels, but Hebrew only has five, as far as I know.


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## Tamar

> Hebrew only has five, as far as I know


I agree. We have: i, e, a, o, u. All short, Hebrew has not dixtinction between long vowels and short ones. 

berndf, it would be great to know what is an open [o] and a closed [e], I too didn't quite understand what you meant.

Btw, the nikud system describes the the vowels as they were when the nikud was invented, not what we have now (so you can see Modern Hebrew has less vowels).


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## berndf

בעל-חלומות said:


> Can you give an example for a close and an open O and E?


 
French, e.g., has both the closed and the open /e/ spelled é and è, respectively like in été (closed) or in chèr (open). A closed /o/ would be like German _Ofen_ while an open /o/ is like in German _offen _(German _Ofen_ and _offen_ also differ in vowel length. With the exception of a, all German vowels are pronounced closed when long and open when short).

In the drawing in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel the blue "e" is a closed /e/ while the green epsilon is an open /e/. This explains why they are called open and closed.



Tamar said:


> Btw, the nikud system describes the the vowels as they were when the nikud was invented, not what we have now (so you can see Modern Hebrew has less vowels).


Thank you. I am aware of this. That is why I asked. I know that in Tiberian pronunciation the tzere was closed and the segol was open.


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## Tamar

First of all thanks for the lovely link 

Anyway, both [e] and [o] are open.


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## berndf

Thank you.

Have a look at this Tiberian and modern vowels. So would you say that it is plainly wrong because it caims that Modern Hebrew have only _closed_ vowels?


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## Tamar

Sorry for not answering sooner...
I had French and German vowels in mind, I think they are higher than the Israeli ones, right? Apparently I was wrong and confused (an open [e] would be something like the American one such as in 'bad'), I guess Israeli [e] and [o] are actually mid vowels, if that's of any help...


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## berndf

Thank you, Tamar. So, you are saying they are somewhere in between German/French open/close e and o. That makes a lot of sense to me.


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## jdotjdot89

This is not 100% true.  The standard dialect of Modern Hebrew spoken today makes no distinction, but others do.  Ashkenaz Hebrew, for example, does make a distinction between the tziere and the segol, as well as between the kamatz and the patach.  

An excellent source on the matter is this (omniglot.com/writing/hebrew.htm) from omniglot.com.  You can also see the IPA for Modern vs. Tiberian Hebrew side-by-side.

For me to make a comparison with the other languages I speak without using IPA, I would best describe the vowels of Hebrew as correlating to the Spanish a e i o u.

As for whether they are opened or closed, vowels, here is a (encyclopedia.com/doc/1O87-midvowel.html) on what that means in case anyone confuses them with long and short vowels.  The tzeire and segol, if pronounced the same, are mid-vowels.


berndf said:


> Have a look at this Tiberian and modern vowels. So would you say that it is plainly wrong because it caims that Modern Hebrew have only _closed_ vowels?



With regards to this, you are absolutely correct.  It is quite wrong that Modern Hebrew has only closed vowels, with any "a" sound (patach, for starters) immediately disproving that.  Famous words such as "Shalom" show that that can't possibly be true.


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## berndf

jdotjdot89 said:


> For me to make a comparison with the other languages I speak without using IPA, I would best describe the vowels of Hebrew as correlating to the Spanish a e i o u.


Makes a lot of sense as modern Hebrew is based on Sephardic pronounciation. And it agrees with what Tamar wrote.



> Famous words such as "Shalom" show that that can't possibly be true.


I agree, "shalom" or "tov" with a closed "o" like in French "hôtel" would sound very odd indeed. I have the impression that the "o" in לא ("lo"="no") is a bit more closed than the "o" in "shalom" or "tov". If my impression is right, could it be that in open syllables the "o" tends to be more closed than in closed syllables?


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## jdotjdot89

I actually meant the "a" in "shalom" shows that Hebrew has open vowels, as the "a" is open.  Try saying it yourself; your jaw drops way down.

The "o" is actually closed in both "shalom" and "tov".

And I suppose to be more fair, the "a" sound itself could even be considered a mid-vowel.  It is fair to say that the vowels are generally more closed, but definitely not _all_ closed.


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## berndf

I have no issue with the /a/. Apart from the Kamatz Katan I don't think there are alternative pronunciations to consider.
 
About the /o/: English does not have a closed /o/ so it gets a bit abstract. A proper French closed /o/ as in _hôtel_ is pronounced with puckered lips as if you had lemon juice in your mouth. I don't think you would ever pronounce the /o/ in _shalom_ like that whereas in _lo_ you might, though not so extreme as in French. Would you agree?


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## jdotjdot89

I disagree, actually.  That's exactly how I pronounce _shalom_.  Actually, while not much for either, my jaw moves slightly more for _lo_ than for _shalom_.


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## berndf

How very interesting! An you would also pucker your lips with "shalom"? (Coming to think of it, the position of the lips is maybe even more important than the position of the jaws in distinguishing the French/Italian/German open and closed /o/s.)


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## jdotjdot89

Yup.  For any "o" sound I pucker my lips.  My jaw moves so little I would even consider it a closed vowel.


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## jdotjdot89

This and this (two entries from omniglot.com) agree with what I'm saying.  They have the exact same IPA for the holam and for ô.


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## berndf

Thank you so much! Would you agree with this summary: /e/ and /o/ are in principle mid-open like in Spanish but there is a tendency to pronounce them more like their French/Italian/German closed counterparts.


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## jdotjdot89

I am not sure, honestly.  I suggest you view omniglot.com and check out what it has for the IPA for all those languages.


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## David S

I feel like I've been pronouncing tzere and segol wrong, only pronouncing them as closed vowels [e] if followed by a yud or at the end of a syllable, and as open otherwise [ɛ​]. So words like "delet" are pronounced as [delet] and not as [dɛlɛt]? (i.e. rhymes with "late" rather than "let")


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## tFighterPilot

In words like /delet/ there's usually a dissimilation process which causes the two vowels to be slightly different from each other. I think in this case the first /e/ is slightly lower than the second one. It can vary between speakers, though, and there's no right and wrong here.


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## arielipi

While we do have the 5-vowel system in major, there is a slight low-ratio of reassessing the lost vowels. Even though we lost it almost entirely you can still hear in some words the past vowel system, simply because it is not comfortable with the new system.


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## David S

arielpi said:
			
		

> While we do have the 5-vowel system in major, there is a slight  low-ratio of reassessing the lost vowels. Even though we lost it almost  entirely you can still hear in some words the past vowel system, simply  because it is not comfortable with the new system.



What do you mean by "in major" and "slight low-ratio"? Can you give examples of words that have the old vowels rather than the new?



tFighterPilot said:


> In words like /delet/ there's usually a  dissimilation process which causes the two vowels to be slightly  different from each other. I think in this case the first /e/ is  slightly lower than the second one. It can vary between speakers,  though, and there's no right and wrong here.



So you're saying that with segolate nouns it's more like /dɛlet/ than /dɛlɛt/ or /delet/ ?

Does דלת rhyme with "late" or "let"?


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## arielipi

i do not have an example right now but we do have words you can hear the past-system.
In major i mean in most of the times.
Slight low ratio - almost insignificant scale of reusing it.


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## berndf

David S said:


> Does דלת rhyme with "late" or "let"?


Unless you speak English with a Scottish accent, your language does not have an [e] monophthong. Hence [dɛlet] can't rhyme with any English word.


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## David S

berndf said:


> Unless you speak English with a Scottish accent, your language does not have an [e] monophthong. Hence [dɛlet] can't rhyme with any English word.



English has [eɪ], and when native English speakers try to pronounce a foreign word containing the monophthong [e], what comes out of their mouth is usually [eɪ]. So to an English native speaker's ears, [e] and [eɪ] sound the same.

So how do you pronounce the Hebrew word for door? What is the second vowel?


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## berndf

David S said:


> English has [eɪ], and when native English speakers try to pronounce a foreign word containing the monophthong [e], what comes out of their mouth is usually [eɪ]. So to an English native speaker's ears, [e] and [eɪ] sound the same.


What I tried to explain to you is that this often more confusing than helpful, when talking not non-native English speakers because for most of us [e] and [eɪ] aren't even remotely similar.


David S said:


> So how do you pronounce the Hebrew word for door? What is the second vowel?


As a native speaker of a language that distinguishes [ɛ] and [e], I would say that both "e"s are in-between. But I can relate to the opinions voiced by Hebrew native speakers that the second syllable "e" is a bit more [e]-ish and the first syllable "e" a bit more [ɛ]-ish. But again, neither is a clean, cardinal [e] nor a clean, cardinal [ɛ].


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## origumi

Historically the two "e" of דלת could have been different. XeXeX words (segolites) were originally XaXX, their pausal form is X*a*XeX with a long "a". In modern Israeli Hebrew the two are identical as far as I can tell.


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## berndf

origumi said:


> In modern Israeli Hebrew the two are identical as far as I can tell.


Phone*m*ically identical. Phone*t*ically, stressed and unstressed vowels differ significantly in length; like in Italian, stressed vowels are about twice as long as unstressed vowels but this difference remains non-phonemic. There might be interactions with quality too. Here is an MA thesis on contextual influences of Modern Hebrew vowels. Maybe you can take a look, if there is anything useful concerning our question in there. I am too slow a reader in Hebrew to go through the entire text.


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## origumi

berndf said:


> Here is an MA thesis on contextual influences of Modern Hebrew vowels.


Thanks, interesting. Maybe not comprehensive enough - the research is based on 6 Hebrew speakers, one of them of Russian origin. An interesting finding is that stressed "e" is twice as long as unstressed "e". Also, there's a lot about influence of the following consonant on the vowel. I am not sure how important it is - when expressing the vowel we get ready for the next consonant, which may seem as a different sound when analyzing the recordings, but in fact the interference belongs neither to the vowel not to the following consonant.


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## berndf

origumi said:


> An interesting finding is that stressed "e" is twice as long as unstressed "e".


Have a look at FORVO, there is one sample for דלת. It nicely shows the length difference. The first Segol is 100ms long and the second 50ms. If I had to transcribe it from how I perceive it, I would indeed write [dɛːletʰ] but the quality difference seems a delusion caused by the length difference. I see no relevant formant difference in the spectrum and if I cut 50ms out of the first Segol they sound equal to me and I hear [deletʰ].


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## origumi

berndf said:


> I see no relevant formant difference in the spectrum and if I cut 50ms out of the first Segol they sound equal to me and I hear [deletʰ].


Reading the thesis (beyond a quick glance earlier), I see that it deals mainly with vowel / consonant  length, a little with volume (decibels), but nothing in regard to vowel nature (e.g. /ɛ/ vs. /e/]. An assumption seems to hide there, similar to your observation, that the (main? only?) measurable variable for the Modern Hebrew vowel is its length. Therefore the 5-vowels system remains safe, with an open issue about lengths.

Phonemically it's all the same, that's at least my understanding as a native. Phonetically - would yo define the phenomenon of different lengths (with ratio of up to 1:2), caused by the vowel's surrounding, as incidental or substantial?


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## berndf

origumi said:


> Phonetically - would yo define the phenomenon of different lengths (with ratio of up to 1:2), caused by the vowel's surrounding, as incidental or substantial?


I think, it is substantial for identifying a stressed syllable. If I listen to the shortened version of the דלת recording from FORVO I find it hard to tell which syllable is stressed. There is some energy stress but without the additional length information the contrast between stressed and unstressed becomes very faint.

It is probably also part of the overall sound of the language. Take Italian as a more extreme example: It identifies stressed syllables by three characteristics: Energy (stronger), length (longer) and pitch (falling). If any of the three were missing, it simply wouldn't be Italian, would it?


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## origumi

berndf said:


> If I listen to the shortened version of the דלת recording from FORVO I find it hard to tell which syllable is stressed.


But then for me as a native, listening to the word in FORVO, there's no question about the stress position. If the stress moved, I'd hear another word (either existing one or not). On the other hand, I wouldn't notice the length difference unless been told in advance.

(this is the one I listened to: http://www.forvo.com/word/דלת)



> Energy (stronger), length (longer) and pitch (falling). If any of the three were missing, it simply wouldn't be Italian, would it?


If we are to describe language tune ingredients, in Italian it's energy/length/pitch, in Hebrew it's the stress position (and not at all length, in native perception). That's one reason French and Hungarian are easily noticeable in Israel even after many years.


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## berndf

origumi said:


> ...in Hebrew it's the stress position (and not at all length, in native perception).


Yes, and what *IS* stress? Syllable length is a vital ingredient of the very definition of the term "stress" in many languages, even if you as a native speaker don't recognize it as such.


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## origumi

berndf said:


> Yes, and what *IS* stress? Syllable length is a vital ingredient of the very definition of the term "stress" in many languages, even if you as a native speaker don't recognize it as such.


Not sure that this is the case with Hebrew. The analysis discussed earlier shows correlation, yet the significance of this correlation is questionable. One can say deleeet with a short stressed vowel and a long unstressed one, and this would sound fine. At the same time deeeelet is meaningless. I think that the main part or stress realization in Hebrew is somewhere else, not the length.


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## berndf

origumi said:


> One can say deleeet with a short stressed vowel and a long unstressed one...


I seriously doubt it. I can't (at least not without unreasonable effort) and your phonology is too much influenced by German to be very different. Especially since the energy difference is so weak in Hebrew, again like in German.  Did you listen to the sound tracks I sent you by Email?


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## arielipi

No one says deleeet, its delet with short length. stress means where i emphasize the word. emphasis determines words in hebrew much more than anything else(but there are few more)


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> emphasis determines words in hebrew much more than anything else(but there are few more)


And what is "emphasis"? It is the whole point we are debating here how emphasis is expressed in Hebrew.


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## arielipi

emphasis, is just where we stress the word. speed/length of pronouncing isnt relevant to that, but to the niqqud system.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> emphasis, is just where we stress the word.


And what is stress? You explain one undefined word by another. Speakers have an intuitive sense how to identify "stress" and normally this is enough. Here we have to me more precise and define what are the measurable characteristics which make us hear a syllable as "stressed". And my answer to Origumi's question was that stress is defined by a bundle of characteristics; which ones depends on the language in question, and I argued my case why I think that syllable length is an important element of this bundle in Modern Hebrew.


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## arielipi

lets take the word na'al. it could be shoe, or locked.
the difference is the stress on show is on the na, while on locked is on al.
no change in length or anything, simply where i stress it. the word in hebrew would be dagesh, where i put the dagesh on a word.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> lets take the word na'al. it could be shoe, or locked.
> the difference is the stress on show is on the na, while on locked is on al.
> no change in length or anything, simply where i stress it. the word in hebrew would be dagesh, where i put the dagesh on a word.


I asked you to define what "stress" is.  Saying that na'al=shoe and na'al=locked are differentiated by "stress" is meaningless, if we have no common understanding what we mean by "stress".


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## arielipi

I have explained it to you, its simply where we emphasize the word.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> I have explained it to you, its simply where we emphasize the word.


Good Lord! No you didn't. You explained "emphasize" by "stress" and "stress" by "emphasize". But you didn't say what any of them mean in phonetic terms. You didn't say how you modify the pronunciation of a syllable in order to emphasize it.


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## arielipi

Because... there is no equivalent for the word dagesh!
stress is where we emphasize a word which in turn is (in simple shallow explanation) rate of productions of sounds. until we reach the stressed part the rate is fast, but nothing else changes, not the pitch, not the tone or anything, simply how fast we reach that part. after that the rate is maintained in most cases.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> Because... there is no equivalent for the word dagesh!
> stress is where we emphasize a word which in turn is (in simple shallow explanation) rate of productions of sounds. until we reach the stressed part the rate is fast, but nothing else changes, not the pitch, not the tone or anything, simply how fast we reach that part. after that the rate is maintained in most cases.


So you say that unstressed syllables are pronounced "faster". I said stressed syllables are "longer". That is the same thing. Your last comment suggests you pronounce unstressed syllables following the stress syllable (for words where this occurs) longer as well. I don't quite agree with that.


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## arielipi

That is not accurate, im talking about rate of producing voices, not of their length.
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%98%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%94
in any case, its much more of the rythm than anything else.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> That is not accurate, im talking about rate of producing voices, not of their length.


"Sound are produced at the rate of 10 per second" or "one sound is 100ms long". Where is the difference?


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## origumi

After listening to recordings (thanks a lot, berndf), and making some experiments on my own speech, but having no scientific expertise (audio visualization tools for analysis of voice wave etc.), I am still in darkness regarding what makes the stress in Hebrew.


My observations are:
* Expressing a word with no stressed syllable - sounds robot-like
* Expressing a word with two stressed syllables - sound noisy, hyperactive
* Lengthening the unstressed syllable or shortening the stressed syllable - sounds strange and yet clear
* Raising the voice on the unstressed syllable - confusing, the listener is not sure where the stress is
* Adding a question mark intonation to the unstressed syllable - may make the unstressed stressed, but varies

My feeling is that stress is build of several changes:
* More "energy" on the stressed syllable's consonant (the one before the vowel). This is generated by physical stress (more air?) on the speech mechanism (larynx etc.)
* Lingering on the vowel (which results in longer vowel, but perceptually different from intentional lengthening)
* Maybe some kind of vowel change, like acutus (acute) as learned in classical Greek class

I guess someone must have run a research about stress, of the same style of the thesis quoted earlier in this thread, with recordings, analysis, and statistical data.


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## berndf

origumi said:


> My feeling is that stress is build of several changes:
> * More "energy" on the stressed syllable's consonant (the one before the vowel). This is generated by physical stress (more air?) on the speech mechanism (larynx etc.)
> * Lingering on the vowel (which results in longer vowel, but perceptually different from intentional lengthening)
> * Maybe some kind of vowel change, like acutus (acute) as learned in classical Greek class


I agree with the first and the second. That is in fact what I said: Stress is in Hebrew a bundle of energy (called "dynamic stress") and length (called "quantitative stress"). The third would be "tonal stress". Italian has it: falling pitch, this is equivalent to a Greek grave accent. I don't think this is very important (if at all) in Hebrew. If you compare it directly to Italian where tonal stress is very prominent, you'll know what I mean.

A fourth form of stress is "qualitative stress". This means that vowels in stressed syllables are pronounced somewhat differently. This would be an explanation, if we had found a real quality difference between the two Segols in "delet". This is why we discuss stress here now. But this seems not the case. It seems rather that the length difference between the two gives the false impression of a different quality.


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## arielipi

Yes, origumi explained it very well, emphasis = energy the way i see it. Too bad im not familiar with all the formal names etc.


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## berndf

arielipi said:


> Yes, origumi explained it very well, emphasis = energy the way i see it. Too bad im not familiar with all the formal names etc.


Yes, we basically agreed. These are the "ingredients" of stress we had been discussing before:


berndf said:


> It is probably also part of the overall sound of the language. Take Italian as a more extreme example: It identifies stressed syllables by three characteristics: *Energy *(stronger), *length *(longer) and *pitch *(falling). If any of the three were missing, it simply wouldn't be Italian, would it?





origumi said:


> My feeling is that stress is build of several changes:
> * More "*energy*" on the stressed syllable's consonant (the one before the vowel). This is generated by physical stress (more air?) on the speech mechanism (larynx etc.)
> * Lingering on the vowel (which results in *longer* vowel, but perceptually different from intentional lengthening)
> * Maybe some kind of vowel change, like *acutus (acute) as learned in classical Greek class*


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