# Prevalence of pharyngeals



## Sorridom

Greetings,

In Modern Israeli Hebrew, how prevalent are the pharyngeal articulations of _het_ and _'ayin_?  Or is this something that's restricted to Sephardi and Mizrahi dialects only?

Would it, for example, be conspicuous or unnatural-sounding for someone to use these pronunciations while, at the same time, pronouncing the _resh_ and _chaf _as uvular fricatives?


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## cfu507

Most of us doesn't say chet and ayin as we soppused to say. we say ayin as we say aleph. 
We are sabras. It is more common among Sephardi and Mizrahi seniors, less comon among younger people. 

I think.... don't try so hard, if that's what you meen.


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## Sorridom

Many thanks.


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## Outsider

You may find this page useful.


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## Sorridom

Yes, I _have_ seen that.  I just haven't been entirely sure as to its level of accuracy.


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## elroy

Sorridom said:


> Would it, for example, be conspicuous or unnatural-sounding for someone to use these pronunciations while, at the same time, pronouncing the _resh_ and _chaf  _(see below) as uvular fricatives?


 Yes - those who pronounce ח and ע the "western" way also pronounce ר as an uvular fricative, and those who pronounce them the "eastern" way roll their ר's.

But I'm confused as to why you included כ in your question. As far as I know, the pronunciation of this letter is consistent among all speakers of Hebrew.


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## Sorridom

My understanding is that it can be either uvular or velar.


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## elroy

Sorridom said:


> My understanding is that it can be either uvular or velar.


 Yes, it can, but there are phonological and morphological rules for when it is pronounced which way; that is, the two different phonemes associated with this grapheme do not correspond to different Hebrew dialects, but are both realized by all speakers of Hebrew. In this respect, this letter is akin to פ, ב, and ש - each of which also corresponds to two distinct phonemes realized by every speaker of Hebrew. Such is not the case with ע ,ח, and ר, which are always pronounced the same way by the same speaker but are realized as different phonemes depending on the speaker's dialect. 

I hope the difference is clear.


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## Sorridom

Yes, I'm aware of the hard/soft-distinction.

I was speaking strictly of the non-dageshed fricative and the realization of it being either [χ] or [x].


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## elroy

Sorridom said:


> I was speaking strictly of the non-dageshed fricative and the realization of it being either [χ] or [x].


 I see. Sorry for the misunderstanding. To tell you the truth, I have never noticed a difference in the way the voiceless fricative is pronounced. My pronunciation of it is uvular, as in Arabic, and I always thought that's how everybody pronounced it. The difference between the uvular variant and the velar variant is probably so slight that it's almost imperceptible; in any case, the uvular pronunciation certainly doesn't stick out as much as the "eastern" pronunciation of the other letters mentioned.


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