# Amharic: Teff flour ጤፍ pronunciation



## Sheikh_14

Dear Foreros,

I was interested to find our how you pronounce teff in Amharic. For instance is the T sound remniscent of the one in English or rather that which is found in Latin languages which in Arabic would be written as ت and in English as a th sound as found in "that"? Whereas is the following e sound a short e sound as found in theft or a longer ee sound as heard in meet or meat?

I would hugely appreciate any assistance as I would like to properly transliterate in my own language's script. Also feel free to transliterate the original pronunciation in as many scripts as you wish, but do bear in mind that I cannot read Amharic 

Regards,
Sheikh


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## סייבר־שד

Sheikh_14 said:


> Dear Foreros,
> 
> I was interested to find our how you pronounce teff in Amharic. For instance is the T sound remniscent of the one in English or rather that which is found in Latin languages which in Arabic would be written as ت and in English as a th sound as found in "that"? Whereas is the following e sound a short e sound as found in theft or a longer ee sound as heard in meet or meat?
> 
> I would hugely appreciate any assistance as I would like to properly transliterate in my own language's script. Also feel free to transliterate the original pronunciation in as many scripts as you wish, but do bear in mind that I cannot read Amharic
> 
> Regards,
> Sheikh


Hi there,

Amharic "ጤ" is pronounced as a so-called "unaspirated t" followed by an "e" sound pretty much like the one in "theft", indeed, and also like in "met" and "bet".
Transliterated into the Latin alphabet it looks like this: "t'e".

Now, the word "unaspirated" is, strictly speaking, something of a misnomer, because there _is _always a certain degree of aspiration, i.e. air expelled through the mouth when pronouncing a given phoneme, but in the case of "unaspirated" sounds, that puff of air has to be reduced to a minimum, thus it is less noticeable than in "aspirated" sounds. Thus, the "t" in English "tower" is "aspirated" and you can verify it by putting your palm or a thin sheet of paper dangling in front of your mouth and saying that word, you'll see that the puff of air that comes out of your mouth when doing it is strong enough to clearly feel it in your hand or make the sheet of paper tremble slightly, just like with the "k" of English "king" or the "p" in English "puff" 😉.
Amharic "ጤ" , on the other hand, produces a much weaker puff or burst of air.

Here's Wikipedia's way of explaining the difference between aspiration and unaspiration:

_"In dialects with aspiration, to feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say _spin [spɪn]_ and then _pin [pʰɪn]_. One should either feel a puff of air or see a flicker of the candle flame with _pin_ that one does not get with _spin_."_

As for transliterating it into the Arabic script, I have to point out I've never seen Amharic transliterated into Arabic letters, so I'm not sure about this, but Chechen is another language that also has that "unaspirated t" sound: "тӀ" and even though it's usually written in the Cyrillic alphabet nowadays, there was a time when the Arabic script was used instead, and back then Arabic "ط" was used to represent that "unaspirated t" sound, as opposed to "aspirated t": "т" , which was transliterated as "ت".

Maybe the same could be done for Amharic "ጤ" and "ቴ"? The first one would then be "ط" and the second one "ت".


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## Sheikh_14

That's excellent! Linguistic jargon does send my head into a tailspin more often than not but your clarification was excellent so in essence the T in Teff is equivalent to the unaspirated T you find in romance/Latin languages with Latin names like Teresa and Theo. Do note that Arabic doesn't accomadate aspirated sounds so that may have been a means to an end. For instance Urdu has a letter of its own in ٹ that represents the aspirated T sound since neither Persian nor Arabic have a letter for such a sound much like Spanish and Italian don't cater to the aspirated T.

From the above it appears that Amharic too doesn't have an aspirated T sound but does have an aspirated t. So in Arabic, Persian or Urdu the word could be transliterated as طیف  or تیف but in English they would pronounce it as ٹیف. In each case the word would rhyme with ref i.e. shorthand for referree or Heff shorthand for Heffner. This is exactly what I was after I wanted to see if English was properly capturing the T sound of the word which it isn't. Romance languages on the other hand do have the capacity to. 

Also the expulsion of air is evident in aspirated Ts and is subtle with unaspirated ts so I can catch the drift.


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## fdb

The Amharic ተ is very much like the Arabic ت . Both are dentals (the tongue touches the ridge of the upper teeth) and both are aspirated (perhaps less strongly in Amharic than in Arabic). The closest Urdu equivalent is تهـ .

Amharic ጠ is ETYMOLOGICALLY the equivalent of Arabic and Semitic ط , but it does not sound like ط . It is “post-glottalized”; that means it sounds like ተ followed immediately by a glottal stop, and without aspiration. There is no similar sound in Arabic or Urdu.


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## סייבר־שד

Like _fdb _pointed out, there's *no* Arabic phonetic equivalent of Amharic "ጠ", even if it is indeed etymologically related to Arabic "ط".
Amharic "ጠ" is unaspirated, Arabic "ت" is aspirated, as well as "ط".

Here, I think this might help clear things up a bit more: ipachart.com
In this website you can hear the sound of "ጠ", just scroll down to the section labelled "_Non-pulmonic consonants » Ejectives » Dental/Alveolar_". The "_ t'_ " there is the phonetic representation of the sound of "ጠ" according to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and if you click on it you'll be able to hear its correct pronunciation. As you'll see, it's definitely different from both "ت" and "ط".


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