# Glottal Stop in Hebrew



## sethmachine

Hello everyone,
                    I understand that there is indeed a glottal stop in Hebrew which serves phonemic purposes, right?  Is this due to dialect/overlooking, but I have been learning Hebrew since I was 5 and taken as well as completed a Bar-Mitzvah, but through all my time learning pronounciation of Hebrew, I never heard any of my teachers mention the glottal stop.  Is there a reason for this?


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## Menachem Avinoam

Yes, there is a reason. Mainly because the correct pronunciation of the 4 gutturals, which are pronounced with the throat, have been corrupted over time: א ע ח ה. Very _very_ few people know how to pronounce them or even heard them in their entire life. I can tell you about ח but not about א and ע since I haven't stayed in Israel long enough to find anyone that knows how to pronounce them yet I've heard stories from people finding Yemenite Jews that know how to pronounce them...

Sorry to tell you but Ashkenazi don't pronounce ח properly but rather pronounce כ and ח indistinguishably. Yet the ח is supposed to be pronounced by the throat while the כ in a completely different part of the mouth -- there are five such parts to the mouth.
Every letter in Hebrew used to have its own distinct sound. Among the letters to distinguish are  ו and ב - believe me or not ו is actually supposed to be pronounced as "w". As a proof of concept you'll find many transliterations of Hashem's name using W's instead of V's. I believe Yemenites are one of the few which actually preserve this pronunciation unlike the Ashkenazi and Sephardi. 

The first time I heard a Mizrahi Jew pronounce a ח was when they said my name מנחם yet the ח sounded more like a ה to me yet somehow I wasn't hearing a ה either. Over time, with great toil I learned to distinguish between כ and ח yet my new problem was that my ח was sounding too much like a ה. Only recently after a long period of toil did I manage to finally mastered the ח. It is like a hot ה with the added functionality that it actually rolls around in the back of your throat. I don't use my tongue at all when I pronounce it. The location of the tongue is the same while pronouncing ה as with ח since they are pronounced with the same sector of the mouth. As far as the roll it goes from a diagonal between  straight-back and the top of your throat and the roll also ends in the same diagonal yet slightly closer to the top of your throat. As a finishing comment on ח, I began pronouncing it emptying my entire breath just to get the sound correct.

So it seems the reason it is called a guttural *stop* is because the letter is so hard to pronounce due to its roll that it requires one to use up extra breath to pronounce in order to hit the right sound somewhere within the roll that one usually has to stop within a word to take an extra inhale before pronouncing it. : /
Eventually though I hope to shorten the roll, but until then it will continue to be a roll and pretty hot sound and dead *stop*.


Let me make it clear however that I don't feel I am a reliable authority as far as an official pronunciation of the ח since I'm sort of self-taught on it and even if my pronunciation is the best in the world, it will probably vary greatly from the actual Mizrahi since I grew up Ashkenazi.


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## Outsider

Here's a useful overview of the various ways to pronounce Hebrew.

The glottal stop is by no means the hardest sound to pronounce in there.


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## sethmachine

Is this special Hay you speak of like the Johta sound in Spanish?


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## berndf

The Spanish J is like כ (chaph, i.e. kaph without a dagesh) in modern Hebrew. The ח is pronounced the same. The historical pronunciation of ח is like _h_ in Arabic _Mu*h*ammad_.

PS: Here you find a sound sample for the historical ח: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_pharyngeal_fricative. For comparison, here is one for כ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative
I don't find the sample for כ particularly good. But I guess you know how a Spanish J (or German _a*ch*_) sounds.

The glottal stop is simply the א. Is is no different from glottal stops in European languages. Only it has no phonemic status there. An example from European languages where the glottal stop is important is German "beerdigen" (I give this example because because you know some German): Without the glottal stop the two "e"s would merge and the result would be a different word. The alternative to the glottal stop is the ע in Semitic languages. It is this contrast which gives the glottal stop phonemic status in Semitic languages. In modern Hebrew the ע is indistinguishable from א. This is maybe the reason why your teachers didn't make a big ado about the glottal stop. The original ע sound also exists in Arabic from where you can take samples. Here is a sound sample: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_pharyngeal_fricative.


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## Menachem Avinoam

Umm... the Spanish letter Jota/Xota, judging from how I'm hearing it on youtube, sounds more like a slur between כ and ח. I'm not gonna agree with _berndf_ either, that it sounds like a perfect כ, since I am hearing an old slur I used to do.

Umm... I did happen to find a Yemenite on youtube and I'd link you to it but I can't seem to post URLs to other sites on these forums until I have 30 posts.
He even pronounces the Ayin , wow this is a first for me.

My ח on the other hand sounds way more distinct than his lazy attempt so I'm not so sure the video clip is the best source for a perfect ח. My rolling ח actually hits the precise part of the throat nearly every time at some point of the roll while the lazy ח doesn't roll nor hit the precise point either although it is definitely a distinct ח.  Like _berndf_ said though, Arabic preserves the sound very well.


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## Nunty

Moderator Note:
Please remember that everyone must have audio or video links pre-approved by a moderator before posting them.
Thanks,
Nun-Translator


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## berndf

Menachem Avinoam said:


> ...it sounds to me like a slur between כ and ח


If you mean by Spanish Mexican Spanish: yes. If you mean Castillian: no. Latin American Spanish also has the sound [ç] which is yet something else. It occurs e.g. in Jorge ['xɔrçe]. In Castillian it would be ['xɔrxe].


> Might also look into Persian.


Farsi is an Indo-European language. It doesn't have the [ħ] or [ʕ] sound as far as I know.


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## berndf

Nun-Translator said:


> Moderator Note:
> Please remember that everyone must have audio or video links pre-approved by a moderator before posting them.
> Thanks,
> Nun-Translator


 
Oops, sorry. Are my links Ok?


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## Menachem Avinoam

berndf said:


> Farsi is an Indo-European language. It doesn't have the [ħ] or [ʕ] as far as I know.


Hmm, I stand corrected, I must have been mixing up Farsi with Arabic - their alphabet looks similar.
Sorry about that.
*edits previous post*


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## sethmachine

I was under the impression that these sounds were all distinct (I dinstinguish between them atleast)
J in Spanish is not like ch in German buch but ch in German buch is like Chaf or Chet in Hebrew and the /ç/ sound is like the sound in German nicht or English human.


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## berndf

Menachem Avinoam said:


> Hmm, I stand corrected, I must have been mixing up Farsi with Arabic - their alphabet looks similar.
> Sorry about that.
> *edits previous post*


 
Yes, Farsi is written with Arabic letters.


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## berndf

sethmachine said:


> I was under the impression that these sounds were all distinct (I dinstinguish between them atleast)
> J in Spanish is not like ch in German buch but ch in German buch is like Chaf or Chet in Hebrew and the /ç/ sound is like the sound in German nicht or English human.


 
Agreement about the German sounds. Spanish J really depends on the variety of Spanish.


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## Forero

Spanish _rojo_, for example, is pronounced with a ח sound in Mexico and with a כ sound in the part of Spain where _z_ sounds like an English unvoiced _th_.

Spanish makes almost no use of the glottal stop, but German uses it in front of any word beginning with a vowel, and within a word between two vowels when they belong to different morphemes.

In Arabic, _alif_ functions as the bearer of _hamza_, the glottal stop. Arabic _alif_ of course corresponds to Hebrew _aleph_.


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## Tararam

I don't find it too rare to hear ח and ע in contemporary Hebrew, it's not a "rare, once in a life experience" hearing it... sometimes the sound of those letters spontaneously comes out in speech, even for Ashkenazi speakers (in words like חרא or שעועית)
It is however, becoming more and more rare no doubt, since you don't hear many young Sepharadi using it (you will mostly hear it from Sepharadi parents or grandparents).


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## Nunty

I agree with Tararam. It is not rare to hear ח and ע in Jerusalem, and even less so in areas with a large (and older) Sephardi population. An ashkenaziya, I only pronounce ח when I think about it, and almost never pronounce ע. But rare? No, not in my experience.


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## Mr.Slade

<...>
   In Arabic, _alif_ functions as the bearer of _hamza_, 
   the glottal stop. Arabic_ alif_ of course corresponds 
   to Hebrew _aleph_.[/quote]

The glottal stop in Arabic, which is phonemic (as it used to be in Hebrew), is represented by the symbol "hamzah," which can be supported by an alif, or by either of two other letters, or is can appear on its own.


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## elroy

Moderator Note:

Now that we've covered various Hebrew sounds other than the glottal stop, in addition to sounds in Arabic, German, and Spanish, I'd like to remind everyone of the actual thread topic:


> I understand that there is indeed a glottal stop in Hebrew which serves phonemic purposes, right?


Please restrict your comments to this topic: whether there is a glottal stop in Hebrew, and whether it is phonemic.

Further off-topic posts will be deleted.

Thank you for understanding.


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## Mr.Slade

The glottal stop is a robust phoneme in classical Hebrew phonology, but it is very often elided in Israeli Hebrew speech. To complicate the issue, the sound of the letter 'ayin (ע) is not generally articulated in the classic Semitic manner but rather as a glottal stop, which is then commonly elided in normal extemporaneous speech as well.

I think it would be very hard to find a non-concocted-sounding, truly ambiguous example of a minimal pair in context, to "prove" the phonemicity of the glottal stop in modern Hebrew. The issue seems to be approximately on the order of the wail/whale difference in English; many speakers pronounce the two words identically, and no one seems to be confused by that very often.


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## amikama

Mr.Slade said:


> I think it would be very hard to find a non-concocted-sounding, truly ambiguous example of a minimal pair in context, to "prove" the phonemicity of the glottal stop in modern Hebrew.


Didn't understand what you meant by "truly ambiguous example". Anyway, I know one minimal pair for glottal stop in Hebrew: קופים - קופאים (ko-fim, ko-fʔim). According to what I read, the difference between those two words is actually heard (and pronounced) by Hebrew speakers. (I'm deaf, so I cannot speak from my own experience.)


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## Mr.Slade

amikama said:


> Didn't understand what you meant by "truly ambiguous example". Anyway, I know one minimal pair for glottal stop in Hebrew: קופים - קופאים (ko-fim, ko-fʔim). According to what I read, the difference between those two words is actually heard (and pronounced) by Hebrew speakers. (I'm deaf, so I cannot speak from my own experience.)


 
That's a good example of a minimal pair, but I'm pretty sure that the one with the underlying glottal stop is commonly pronounced without it, so that the two words sound exactly the same. Also, since one word is a verb involving freezing and the other is a noun involving monkeys, it would be unlikely that the use of one would be mistaken for the other in a natural context. It would be fun to concoct an example. How about קופים קופאים ("Monkeys freeze.") versus קופאים קופים ("They freeze monkeys.")?

Although any Hebrew speaker can pronounce all the glottal stops he or she likes and even perhaps sound completely natural, my point was that it is extremely common for the glottal stop to be elided. In the case of קופאים, one might hear an epenthetic mid-vowel (a sort of short shva-na') substituted for the glottal stop, resolving any potential ambiguity. I think that sort of epenthetic vowel might even be considered an allophone for the glottal stop.


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## Sidjanga

Mr.Slade said:


> ... but I'm pretty sure that the one with the underlying glottal stop is commonly pronounced without it, so that the two words sound exactly the same. ...


The Hebrew speakers I know do pronounce the difference.

Also:
.קורים הרבה דברים - Many things happen.
.קור*א*ים הרבה דברים - They read many things.

Two entire sentences, whose only difference in spoken language consists in the glottal stop in קור*א*ים.

Nevertheless, the general context in which these sentences are said would probably also here avoid real ambiguity. (?)
.


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## Nunty

I am a native Hebrew speaker. I pronounce קןרים and קןראים differently, but it's not a glottal stop, as I understand the term. I could very well be wrong,(*)  but I thought a glottal stop was more pronounced. I'll research that elsewhere.

One of the ways to spot a non-native speaker is the elision in words such as this pair.

EDIT:
(*) Yes, I was wrong. Please see my humble retraction in post 27.


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## berndf

Nun-Translator said:


> but it's not a glottal stop, as I understand the term.


A glottal stop is when the glottis is closed for brief period of time (in the 10s of milliseconds) and the airflow from the lungs is completely blocked. I think I hear a glottal stop when I hear a native speaker pronounce the word.


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## Sidjanga

Hi,

I've just found this in Wikipedia:





> Representing the glottal stop is one of the functions of the Hebrew letter aleph.


It's just like any other voiceless plosive consonant really, but just the furthest down of all.


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## berndf

Sigianga said:


> It's just like any other voiceless plosive consonant really, but just the furthest down of all.


If distinguished from the aleph, the aiyn is further down.


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## Nunty

Okey doke. Thank you for saving me the research.

That being the case (especially that it is so very brief), I correct my earlier statements: they are wrong. The glottal stop is alive and well in Israel.

"Just like any other voiceless plosive consonant"? It looks like English... sounds like English... but I don't understand it even a little bit. I'll take your word for it.

Thanks to both of you. 



berndf said:


> If distinguished from the aleph, the aiyn is further down.



That is interesting and it explains that when I (ashkenaziya) need to pronounce an _ayin_ I often cheat and substitute a strong (long?) glottal stop of the _aleph_ type.

I think I'd better sit quietly with my hands folded in my lap now. This conversation is way over my head.


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## berndf

Nun-Translator said:


> "Just like any other voiceless plosive consonant"? It looks like English... sounds like English... but I don't understand it even a little bit. I'll take your word for it.


Plosive: The sound is initiated with the airflow completely blocked. There are explosive and implosive plosives. But both, English and Hebrew, have only explosive one. Plosives in English are d,t,g,k,b,p.
Voiced/Unvoiced: Whether or not the vocal cords vibrate. "s" as in "sun" is unvoiced, "z" as in "zone" is voiced.
consonant: You know that one.
Hope it is clear now.


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## Sidjanga

berndf said:


> If distinguished from the aleph, the aiyn is further down.


Anatomically, there is nowhere further down to produce a plosive (a complete closure of the air flow tract/complete stop of the air flow) than the glottis, which is where the sound represented by א is produced.
And I thought ע - or rather the sound it represents - wasn't considered to be a plosive anyway*, and this page, for example, seems to confirm that.
_______________________
* at least not originally; as to nowaday's Hebrew, there seem to be actually quite few people who pronounce א and ע differently


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## Mr.Slade

Semitic 'ayin / 'ayn represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative, not a "plosive".


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## berndf

Sigianga said:


> Anatomically, there is nowhere further down to produce a plosive (a complete closure of the air flow tract/complete stop of the air flow) than the glottis, which is where the sound represented by א is produced.


As we all agree it is not a plosive (see below). The way I pronounce it (which might be wrong, corrections are welcome) the ע is not produced further down but does resonate down to the bronchi.


> And I thought ע - or rather the sound it represents - wasn't considered to be a plosive anyway*, and this page, for example, seems to confirm that.


Of course not. If you understood me implying this I must have expressed myself misleadingly.


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