# Saad ص pronounced /ts/



## Qcumber

[from the "sphere" thead in "etymology"]
Mahaodeh wrote ]: "Arabic sifr for zero is صفر, a different letter sometimes translitrated as ts - tsifr, it comes from the root meaning "empty/null"."

ص
/ts/ This is not the first time I hear of this pronunciation of the letter Saad 
ص
. In what areas is it used?


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## WadiH

I don't think it's used anywhere.  It's just a way of transliterating ص in Latin letters.


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## Josh_

Using 'ts' to transliterate ص  might just be a particular transliteration choice, in the same vein that a capital 'S' is used, so as to differentiate it from a singular 's' used for س . It seems to me Maha was just trying to make the distinction between صفر and سفر , not necessarily saying that ص can be pronounced 'ts'.  

Anyway, this particular transliteration might be an influence of Hebrew in which the letter  צ tsadi (the Hebrew equivalent of ص (as well as the other emphatics)), is pronounced with the initial 't' sound, is transliterated with the 'ts'.  

I don't know if the pronunciation of ص with that initial 't' sound occurs, but if it does I would  venture to guess that it happens in those areas influenced by Hebrew.


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## Qcumber

Perhaps /ts/ is the original pronunciation of the Arabic letter Saad, and then it became the emphatic /s/.
Has no scholar written on this matter?


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## clevermizo

It is unlikely that the original sound of ص was [ts]. There are several pieces of evidence for this:

In related languages in native environments (i.e. Jewish and Christian speakers of Hebrew or Aramaic native to the Middle East), the analog of ص is also pronounced as an emphatic [s] sound, and not as [ts]. The [ts] sound occurred in Jewish pronunciation of Hebrew/Aramaic in Europe, where the Semitic emphatics and laryngeals mostly disappeared due to influence of European languages.

The Proto-Semitic sound corresponding to ص is _also_ emphatic [s] and this is as reconstructed from its pronunciation across Semitic languages.

That said, I'm not sure why _Sifr_ is sometimes transcribed as _tsifr_ (I've not heard of this, actually), but it is likely as Josh has said due to influence of the pronunciation of צ among European Jews.

The counterpoint to this is that Jews of the Middle East may be pronouncing their letter צ as ص due to their being native speakers of _Arabic_ but that only serves to support that [s] is the original pronunciation of the sound in _Arabic_, despite however it may have sounded in other related languages or their ancestors.


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## كويتي

والله يا اخوي هالمناطق تستعمل في اشياذ وااجد

thank you


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## Outsider

> Tsade (also spelled Ṣādē or Tzadi or Sadhe or Tzaddik) is the eighteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tsadi and Arabic Ṣād. Its oldest sound value is probably [s-glottalized], although there is a variety of pronunciation in different modern Semitic languages and their dialects.
> 
> Wikipedia


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## Qcumber

clevermizo said:


> In related languages in native environments (i.e. Jewish and Christian speakers of Hebrew or Aramaic native to the Middle East), the analog of ص is also pronounced as an emphatic [s] sound, and not as [ts]. The [ts] sound occurred in Jewish pronunciation of Hebrew/Aramaic in Europe, where the Semitic emphatics and laryngeals mostly disappeared due to influence of European languages.
> The Proto-Semitic sound corresponding to ص is _also_ emphatic [s] and this is as reconstructed from its pronunciation across Semitic languages.


So you mean the very opposite took place: the proto-semitic sound was an emphatic /s/, and remained so in Arabic while in Hebrew as spoken in Europe it became /ts/.
I am not convinced, but it is important for me to know the consensus on this matter. Thanks a lot.

Outsider, thanks for the link.
I have just read the Wikipedia article, and what follows seems to prove that the Hebraic letter tsade was already pronounced /ts/ as early as the 9th c. CE.

"It may have inspired the form of the letter Tse in the Glagolitic alphabet." (Wikipedia)
"The *Glagolitic alphabet* or *Glagolitsa* is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It was created by brothers Saint Cyril (827-869 AD) and Saint Methodius (826-885 AD) in 855 or around 862––863 in order to translate the Bible and other texts into the Slavic languages." (Wikipedia)


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## clevermizo

Qcumber said:


> So you mean the very opposite took place: the proto-semitic sound was an emphatic /s/, and remained so in Arabic while in Hebrew as spoken in Europe it became /ts/.
> I am not convinced, but it is important for me to know the consensus on this matter. Thanks a lot.



I'm not sure what to use to convince you, but where an analog of this sound exists in any Semitic language I can think of (Hebrew, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Arabic, Tigrinya, etc.), it is pronounced as an emphatic S except in one case: the pronunciation of European Jews, where is becomes [ts]. Thus we would consider the the European Jewish case exceptional (however it did in fact become part of the base for modern spoken Hebrew). 

Note that _emphatic_ S is a bit cryptic and I should qualify by saying that means _velarized_ or _pharyngealized _for languages originating in the Middle East, but _ejective_ for languages of African provenance (Ge'ez, Amharic, Tigrinya).


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## Qcumber

I think the proto-Arabic emphatics had the ejective trait. [I found this a long time ago, but don't remember where. Sorry.]

When would have Hebrew Sade become tsade? If it did serve as a model for the Glagolitic /ts/ - not sure, but arresting - it must have been pronounced that way in the 9th c. CE. This is a very early change.

Also it would be interesting to see how Jews in Medieval Spain transcribed Spanish in Hebraic letters, and see what the tsade/Sade represented.

I am convinced new research should be done on the pronunciation of the emphatics in Medieval Arabic.


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## Mahaodeh

I think I owe Qcumber an apology; as elroy sai, I just used it for transliteration not to say that the saad in Sifr is pronounced in any different way.  I'm sorry that I caused confusion but since it was a general forum I just assumed that using the capital will not get my idea across to most since many are not familiar with the Arabic alphabet.

I also assumed the Hebrew ts is pronounced the same way as the Arabic saad, simply because they are equivalent in the two languages.  My wrong, I'm sorry.

As for which is the original pronunciation - I have no idea.


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## Ander

Mahaodeh said:


> As for which is the original pronunciation - I have no idea.


 
See this  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsade


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## veryshy

It was only a try to make difference between saaad and siiin!Nothing more! The sound ts doesn't exist in arabic at all !


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## WadiH

Yes, it does actually; it replaces "k" in certain situations among most beduoin tribes in the Arabian Peninsula and in the towns of Nejd.  It's called كسكسة, and predates Islam.  But you're right that it does not exist in Standard Arabic.


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## veryshy

Thank you Wadi Hanifa! Yeah, I was talking about classical Arabic! When it comes to slangs, we have all latin letters used here and even words from different languages around! Many spanish and French words are believed to be Arabic in North Africa for example !


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## Qcumber

From the answers to my query, the letter Saad is not pronounced tsaad in any modern dialect of Arabic.

Yet, my contention is that the Arabic letter Saad represented /ts/ in the Middle-Ages or earlier. 

I am not talking about Modern Standard Arabic. Neither am I speaking about Classical Arabic as it is pronounced nowadays. Languages change. For instance the letter jiim was originally pronounced giim. Now it is almost universally pronounced jiim.


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## clevermizo

I would like to point out that if Saad is not pronounced [ts] in any modern dialect of Arabic (which we may or may not have established) it is unlikely that it existed in their common ancestor, considering the extremely large number of Arabic dialects.

You bring up the example of giim and jiim, however there are in fact representative modern dialects (in Egypt and Yemen) where giim is used. Therefore we at least have some vestigial evidence to this effect.

What I would like to ask is why this is your contention that Saad was pronounced [ts]? What evidence do you see to believe this? I really see nothing compelling.


Qcumber said:


> Outsider, thanks for the link.
> I have just read the Wikipedia article, and what follows seems to prove that the Hebraic letter tsade was already pronounced /ts/ as early as the 9th c. CE.


And Jews by the 9th century C.E. were already established in Europe and had been living there for around 7 centuries, developing Jewish dialects in Europe which affected their pronunciation of liturgical Hebrew. In fact we see evidence of Yiddish in the 10th century and undoubtedly things were developing prior to that.


> "It may have inspired the form of the letter Tse in the Glagolitic alphabet." (Wikipedia)


A European alphabet - and Hebrew was being pronounced [ts] by Jews in Europe during the Middle Ages and undoubtedly earlier than that (9th century as you say).

Again Jews in the Middle East and North Africa pronounced this letter as [s]. Now while it is possible that this was under the influence of Arabic, it only serves to show that Arabic too was pronouncing this sound this way.


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## Qcumber

Mahaodeh said:


> I think I owe Qcumber an apology.


No need to apologize, Mahaodeh. I just took this opportunity to check whether present dialects of Arabic had the pronunciation /ts/. From what you wrote, I hoped there still existed at least one.


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## clevermizo

Qcumber said:


> Also it would be interesting to see how Jews in Medieval Spain transcribed Spanish in Hebraic letters, and see what the tsade/Sade represented.



I don't believe they used the letter Sadi/tsadi in Ladino writing at all.

By the way this is compelling evidence if the above is true, because ç [ts] was a separate phoneme in Medieval Spanish and Ladino, and so if Sadi _was_ pronounced [ts], one would think that it would be sought as an appropriate equivalent for Medieval Spanish ç. Spain stands apart from other parts of Jewish Europe for obvious reasons, and there's no reason to think the change of S > ts couldn't have happened in northern and eastern Europe at an earlier time (9th century as you quote). The traditional Sephardic Jewish pronunciation for this letter is S and not ts.


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## Qcumber

clevermizo said:


> By the way this is compelling evidence if the above is true, because ç [ts] was a separate phoneme in Medieval Spanish and Ladino, and so if Sadi _was_ pronounced [ts], one would think that it would be sought as an appropriate equivalent for Medieval Spanish ç.


I searched the net, and failed to find a Judeo-Spanish text in Hebraic characters along with its equivalent in Spanish written in the Medieval spelling.
Most sites have modern Sephardim works, and many only have a modern Latin transcription.
I'm afraid only libraries have documents to my purpose.


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## clevermizo

LadinoType™: Ladino Chart

This has a chart of the Rashi/Solitreo scripts. It includes sadi/tsadi and lists its phonetic realization as [s]. I mean, it's just a chart on some site, so it's hardly definitive. I'll add some links when I hunt things down. Surely a poem or two should suffice, and if you can read Hebrew characters and know a thing or two about Medieval Spanish phonology, the Latin transcription becomes transparent.

It seems they used the "zayin with rafe'" (ז׳) to represent the sound [ž]. I'm not sure what they mean by this here, but I presume [ts/dz] as there was not more than one type of "j" or "zh" sound in Med. Spanish. The sounds [dz] and [ts], written _z_ and _ç_ were already converging in Medieval Spanish, so I doubt they needed more than one character to represent the two (actually I'm not sure if they were really separate phonemes because the voicing of fricatives and affricates intervocalically was automatic in Medieval Spanish). I doubt there was much of a need to use more than one "s" sound to transcribe Romance words, so sadi would have been reserved for native Hebrew words or perhaps for words from Arabic containing ص.


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## Qcumber

clevermizo said:


> http://www.solitreo.com/ladinotype/chart.php


Yes, this is very useful. Thanks a lot for your help.

Unfortunately it deals with Ladino as it was spoken when the Jews expelled from Spain emigrated into the Ottoman Empire, occupied Greece in particular.

I suppose that by the time they left Spain, Arabic had evolved from /ts/ to emphatic /s/. So it's quite possible the reading /s/ is not that old and was influenced by Arabic.

If my hypothesis that /ts/ was the pronunciation found both in Arabic and Hebrew in the Middle-Ages holds water, there should exist at least one text where the Hebraic letter tsade stands for the Spanish /ts/. 

Let's be patient, something will eventually turn up.


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## Outsider

Qcumber, here's a thread that may be of interest to you, if you haven't seen it yet. The whole thread is worth reading.

P.S. I made a mistake transcribing the Wikipedia, because of the small print. The original sound they suggest for tsade is actually a _pharyngealized_ [s].


clevermizo said:


> It seems they used the "zayin with rafe'" ( ) to represent the sound [zh]. I'm not sure what they mean by this here, but I presume [ts/dz] as there was not more than one type of "j" or "zh" sound in Med. Spanish.


Maybe there was. I've seen it suggested that the sounds "zh" and "dj" were free allophones in the medieval Romance languages of Iberia. I've noticed that the two still  alternate today in Ladino.


clevermizo said:


> The sounds [dz] and [ts], written _z_ and _ç_ were already converging in Medieval Spanish, so I doubt they needed more than one character to represent the two (actually I'm not sure if they were really separate phonemes because the voicing of fricatives and affricates intervocalically was automatic in Medieval Spanish).


Oh, no, they were separate phonemes in medieval Spanish -- or at least in the other R.L. of the area. They were spelled "z" and "ç/c", respectively.


clevermizo said:


> I doubt there was much of a need to use more than one "s" sound to transcribe Romance words [...]


Again I must disagree. In at least some areas of the peninsula, the phoneme /ts/ went through a stage where it became a predorsodental /s/, which contrasted with the apicoalveolar /s/ you find in the north of Spain and Portugal. Medieval Spanish and Portuguese were very rich in sibilants.


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## Qcumber

Outsider said:


> Qcumber, here's a thread that may be of interest to you


Yes, very interesting. It is difficult to imagine that the Jews of Barcelona adopted the Yiddish pronunciation to name this city. In this case the tsade reflects the <ç>.


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