# pronunciation of לנמל



## Ali Smith

שלום!

אתמול הגעת לנמל התעופה.
Yesterday you arrived at the airport

Is לנמל in this sentence pronounced linmal or lenemal? I think it should be pronounced linmal, but my textbook says it's pronounced lenemal (see attachment). However, it should also be noted that they transliterated ראיתם as raitem instead of reitem, so I wonder if the author(s) can be trusted.

תודה רבה!


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## Drink

Your textbook is just giving you the colloquial pronunciations.


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## JAN SHAR

The rule of shwa applies, of course: when you have two shwas in succession, the first one changes into a khireq, unless the first letter is a guttural, in which case it changes into a patach


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## Ali Smith

But why does the second vowel in נָמֵל change in the construct form? The first one gets reduced, of course.


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## Abaye

Not sure about the reason, foreign words may find their unique way, yet as a mnemonic you can compare נָמֵל to זָקֵן, they share the same conjugations.

השפה העברית - נמל (נמלים)


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## Ali Smith

Yeah, the same thing happens there:

זָקֵן 'old man' becomes זְקַן־
נָמֵל becomes נְמַל־

I know why the first vowel gets reduced but I don't know why the second vowel 1. reduces and 2. changes.


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## Drink

It's a case of Philippi's law. Stressed short i in a closed syllable becomes a (except when it doesn't).


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## Haskol

To be honest, I think in colloquial Hebrew people who mostly say "lenamal" today.


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## Drink

Haskol said:


> To be honest, I think in colloquial Hebrew people who mostly say "lenamal" today.


I think they say lenamel, no? Maybe I'm not remembering correctly.

But regardless, this discussion is about historical vowels, not modern colloquial pronunciation.


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## Ali Smith

Drink said:


> It's a case of Philippi's law. Stressed short i in a closed syllable becomes a (except when it doesn't).


Well, a short _i_ in a closed, stressed syllable does usually turn into a short _a_, but in זְקַן־ and כְּבַד־ it isn't stressed, since they're both construct forms. So, the question remains: why did the צירי turn into a פתח?


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## Drink

It is stressed, actually, at least in Masoretic Hebrew.


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## Ali Smith

How can it be stressed if it's in construct with another noun?


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## Drink

Who said construct nouns aren't stressed?


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## Ali Smith

Well, when a noun is in construct, the last syllable becomes pretonic and the second-last becomes propretonic. It’s as if there were an invisible syllable at the end that bears the stress.


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## Drink

That's with regard to reduction rules. Note the words "as if". There is not actual invisible syllable, and so in fact the word in the construct state does in fact bear stress (unless it is connected to the following word with a maqaf).

Here we're not talking about vowel reduction. For other processes, this imaginary syllable is not necessarily applicable.


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