# Arabic "accent" in Hebrew



## clevermizo

Hey, I normally post in the Arabic forum, but I figured this was more appropriate to ask here. Do Palestinian (or other Arabic-speaking) speakers of Hebrew in Israel/Palestine typically "Semitize" some of the consonants - i.e., pronounce ayin like its Arabic equivalent, tsadi as Saad or tet as Taa, or roll their [r] for resh. 

The reason I ask is because one would expect this sort of influenced accent with other Arabic speakers, however specifically many Palestinians or Arabic-speaking Israelis are functionally native/bilingual in Hebrew, and so their pronunciation might not be much different from that of any other Israelis. I know that many Yemenite Jews or other Mizrahi Jews have/have had more Arabic-like pronunciation trends, but I presume 2nd or 3rd generation Hebrew speakers in Israeli would have assimilate to the norms of Modern Hebrew pronunciation.

Thanks so much.


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## elroy

clevermizo said:


> Do Palestinian (or other Arabic-speaking) speakers of Hebrew in Israel/Palestine typically "Semitize" some of the consonants - i.e., pronounce ayin like its Arabic equivalent, tsadi as Saad or tet as Taa, or roll their [r] for resh.


 -ayin as in Arabic: yes
-tsadi as Saad: no
-tet as Taa: no
-rolled r: yes

You will also hear: 
-het/chet as in Arabic
-(not in all words) e as i 


> The reason I ask is because one would expect this sort of influenced accent with other Arabic speakers, however specifically many Palestinians or Arabic-speaking Israelis are functionally native/bilingual in Hebrew, and so their pronunciation might not be much different from that of any other Israelis.


 Non sequitur.  Yes, most Arab Israelis are fluent in Hebrew, but most of them did not learn Hebrew through heavy exposure to or interaction with native speakers, but were taught it at school by native speakers of Arabic who passed along their Arabic-influenced pronunciation. 


> I know that many Yemenite Jews or other Mizrahi Jews have/have had more Arabic-like pronunciation trends, but I presume 2nd or 3rd generation Hebrew speakers in Israeli would have assimilate to the norms of Modern Hebrew pronunciation.


 Generally, this is not the case. Arab speakers of Hebrew who make efforts to pronounce Hebrew like most native speakers are few and far between.


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## Nunty

I would go even farther and say it's not that important. There are so many different accents, even among Jewish native speakers of Hebrew.


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## Ander

I would add that in my opinion Arabs who pronounce Hebrew the "Arab" way actually pronounce it correctly, and so do Jews from North Africa or Yemen.

The modern pronunciation of Hebrew has been influenced by Ashkenaz Jews who could not pronounce the `ayin or distinguish between כ or ח


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## Nunty

On the other hand, dear Ander, modern Hebrew does not distinguish in most cases between kametz gadol and katan or between tav and sav as do Ashkenazi Jews. The so-called standard accent of modern Hebrew is a kind of hybrid and, I repeat, is not actually imposed. Native Israelis like me who grew up in an Ashkenazi home do not generally pronounce ayin and het but neither do we distinguish between tav and sav in normal discourse. In the same way, Yemenites who, I believe, have kept the gimel-jimel distinction, drop that distinction in daily discourse.

If you listen to that rarified breed that populates the Academy of the Hebrew Language, both the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim among them pronounce  ayin and het, particularly when making a point.


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## Spectre scolaire

Ander said:
			
		

> The modern pronunciation of Hebrew has been influenced by Ashkenaz Jews who could not pronounce the `ayin or distinguish between כ or ח


It seems natural to me that those who were the _primi motores_ in the resuscitation process of Hebrew also influenced it most when it comes to the pronunciation.

It is, however – with reference to the transition period between Hebrew scholars speaking Hebrew to their children and children growing up with Hebrew as their mother tongue - linguistically a bit challenging to talk about an Ashkenazi _substratum_ of a superimposed non-spoken Hebrew! 

Compared to, say, Rumania, where vulgar Latin was superimposed on a Dacian population – which, according to a theory, may well have been the ancestors of today’s Albanians! – it was Latin which prevailed, but various linguistic features may have remained from “Dacian”. The interesting point in the Hebrew case is that both _substratum_ and _superimposed language_ emanated from the same source, i.e. Jews of the diaspora. 

In a créole language development situation, the superimposed language also takes the upper part, so to say, but the representatives of the substratum and the superimposed language emanate from two very different sources. And those who “superimpose” have absolutely no control whatsoever about the eventual result. (I started a thread “Le français – langue créole?” - see http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=473612, but it has not received the interest I was hoping for.)

One could possibly say that the Ashkenazim didn’t have much control either about the eventual result – at least not in the beginning of the process – but since they were both “at the top” and “at the bottom”, and a national ideology inspired them to succeed, things went like they did. One might perhaps say that, after all, the reviving of Hebrew was a sort of creolizing process in which the speakers had to learn a language which basically was not theirs – not their _mother_ tongue, but their _liturgical_ tongue, as it were – and that this process made Classical Hebrew fit into a phonetic (and to some extent, a verbal syntactical) mould of a modern language, in casu Yiddish. Classical Hebrew was subsequently as much altered as Classical Greek through all the “barbarians” who, following Alexander’s conquests, had to learn Greek.

In the Hebrew case, the _’ayin_ was “lost” in the process. In the Greek case the whole phonemic inventory – and together with that, the morphology of the language – went through a fundamental restructuring process. The interesting thing to observe in the Modern Greek linguistic struggle is that purism was never a phonetic endeavor. Nobody ever tried to revive “lost” phonemes. The Hebrew case is consequently quite different, and it is intriguing to inquire about the reasons for this. Obviously, any Jews from North Africa or Yemen would produce sounds which on one side, the purely academic side, are attractive, but on the other side are considered to be hypercorrect. 

I will leave my reflexions at this point.
  ​


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## Allegro

clevermizo said:


> Hey, I normally post in the Arabic forum, but I figured this was more appropriate to ask here. Do Palestinian (or other Arabic-speaking) speakers of Hebrew in Israel/Palestine typically "Semitize" some of the consonants - i.e., pronounce ayin like its Arabic equivalent, tsadi as Saad or tet as Taa, or roll their [r] for resh.
> 
> The reason I ask is because one would expect this sort of influenced accent with other Arabic speakers, however specifically many Palestinians or Arabic-speaking Israelis are functionally native/bilingual in Hebrew, and so their pronunciation might not be much different from that of any other Israelis. I know that many Yemenite Jews or other Mizrahi Jews have/have had more Arabic-like pronunciation trends, but I presume 2nd or 3rd generation Hebrew speakers in Israeli would have assimilate to the norms of Modern Hebrew pronunciation.
> 
> Thanks so much.


 
* 

Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages, very close, but yet from different linguistic branches. There are consonants that don't exist in the other language, such as: you don't have "P" with diacritic dot  (dagesh) which sounds as in "Palestine", "Poem" etc in Arabic. Arabic has only soft "F". In Hebrew one doesn't have "G" like in the first "G" in "Geography". 

So the 'TSad'i and the 'Saad' sounds different too. Arabic has several options to pronouns 'Saad'. The' tet' and the 'taa' are quite the same. Hebrew and Arabic have tow kinds of "T" the "soft" one and the "hard" one.

Israeli Arabs, who meet daily with the Israelis at work and study, speak as Israeli Jews. There is no difference of pronunciation from the second generation and on.  

*


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## elroy

Allegro said:


> *Israeli Arabs, who meet daily with the Israelis at work and study, speak as Israeli Jews. There is no difference of pronunciation from the second generation and on.
> 
> *


 In my experience, this is not true.

As an Israeli Arab, I have many family members who have worked or studied in close contact with Israeli Jews, yet they (my family members) still pronounce Hebrew like most other Arabs. 

By the time you've reached working or university age, it is generally too late for you to change your accent to an entirely new one.  Remember that Israeli Arabs begin learning Hebrew around the age of seven, far before they ever begin to interact with Israeli Jews on a regular basis (if they ever do).


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## bat777

Allow me to take the discussion to a different direction: 
Research in sociolinguistics show that adopting or adjusting one's accent to that of some environment or society is largly a matter of identity. In other words, a person would tend to adjust his accent to the accent of a social group he wants to become or to feel a part of, and vice versa. Perheps, then, part of the reason for Arabs who speak Hebrew to speak it with non-native accent has to do with keeping their identity as a distinct social group within the Israeli society.


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## Qcumber

Doesn't the defective German-based Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew entail mistakes and confusions?


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## Nunty

Qcumber said:


> Doesn't the defective German-based Ashkenazi pronunciation of Hebrew entail mistakes and confusions?


Maybe, but what does that have to do with the accent of native Arabic speakers?


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## scriptum

Nun-Translator said:


> Maybe, but what does that have to do with the accent of native Arabic speakers?


I think Qcumber's remark is rather appropriate. Phonetically, the Arab accent in Hebrew is truer to the Semitic origins of the language than the Jewish one. One may argue that Arabs speak better Hebrew than Jews...


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## Qcumber

In my mind it is related because Arab speakers can pronounce Semitic sounds that Ashkenazi cannot. It's marvellous: it's as though Greeks could hear how their ancestors of the Antiquity realized some of their phonemes.


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## Nunty

scriptum said:


> I think Qcumber's remark is rather appropriate. Phonetically, the Arab accent in Hebrew is truer to the Semitic origins of the language than the Jewish one. One may argue that Arabs speak better Hebrew than Jews...


It was a question, not a criticism. I would probably understood, if he had made his point the way you have explained it. Thank you.


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## eli-milqo

Hello all!

In my opinion the modern Hebrew spoken in "Israel" is not really pronunciated as "semetic" at all because it is very different from the Syriac and Arabic pronunciation...and letters which are very "semetic" are not pronounced in modern hebrew like (( Ain, TTeth,Thaw,SSadi, Qof..))!!
actually each imigrant pronunciates it like his original language and this dialect is passed this way to the next generations.
and thus I guess that the "Arabic" pronounciation in hebrew is more correct although it is not right .

and I guess some palestinians pronounce it more into Arabic...and others pronounciate like the majority does like pronouncing the "R" as french "r" , or "Ain" as "A"....etc

thanks


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## Nunty

Qcumber said:


> In my mind it is related because Arab speakers can pronounce Semitic sounds that Ashkenazi cannot. It's marvellous: it's as though Greeks could hear how their ancestors of the Antiquity realized some of their phonemes.


Thank you for explaining.


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## elroy

*Moderator Note*: Please refrain from making value judgments about which accent/dialect of Hebrew is more "correct" than the other, as this is not the topic of the thread.  The topic of the thread is the Arabic accent in Hebrew, i.e. the way most native speakers of Arabic in Israel pronounce Hebrew.  Please discuss this phenomenon without evaluating it.


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## Qcumber

Well, I only meant that, as regards the Hebrew phonemes that don't exist in Modern Hebrew, the best current source to know how they were pronounced is the Arabs. Conversely one cannot refer to the Arabs for sounds that do not exist in Arabic but are found in Hebrew such as [p] of [v].


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## elroy

bat777 said:


> Perheps, then, part of the reason for Arabs who speak Hebrew to speak it with non-native accent has to do with keeping their identity as a distinct social group within the Israeli society.


 That could be the case for some, but I'm not sure it applies in all or even most cases.

As I said earlier, I think it's largely a matter of what you've grown accustomed to. The vast majority of Arab Israelis learn Hebrew in school by native speakers of Arabic, so they acquire an Arabic accent - not of their own volition. Later in life, they may be exposed to native speakers of Hebrew who speak with a different accent (it's important to note that some Arabs do not heavily interact with native speakers of Hebrew), but by this point they've gotten so used to their accent that changing it would require a conscious effort that I don't think most of them are willing to make - particularly because there is indeed a perception that their pronunciation of Hebrew is "more correct" than that of most native speakers.

I've heard comments along the lines of the following: "If I happen to pronounce Hebrew better than native speakers anyway, why should I change my accent?". I guess they don't really see an incentive to do so.

This is not to say, however, that there are no Arabs who do in fact try to pronounce Hebrew the "Ashkenazi way" (I know that's not an accurate description, but I trust you all know what I mean). They do exist; there's just not many of them. 

Another thing that I'd like to throw out there is the fact that most Arab Israelis do not view Hebrew so much as a foreign language in the way that English is but as a language that is so ingrained in them that they have a near-native command of it. They truly think in Hebrew when they speak it, and they feel the effect of Hebrew words and phrases, hundreds of which they have adopted into their everyday (Arabic) vernacular. The speech of Arab Israelis is so colored by Hebrew - the way they speak it - that I would imagine that switching to a different accent would make it seem artificial and affected.


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## Nunty

There is a superficial but not incorrect (as far as I could see in a quick look through) history of the development of Modern Standard Israeli Hebrew here. The pertinent section, "Development of Modern Hebrew", is about a third of the way down the page. Some people might also be interested in looking at the website of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. The link I'm giving is for the English page.

As a native speaker who left as an adolescent and returned (with a permanently changed accent) as an adult, my impression is that pronunciation in the state media (where usage and pronunciation are supposed to conform to Acadamey decisions) puts much more emphasis on correct division and stress on the syllables of words and less on whether or not 'ayin or het are correctly pronounced.


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## WadiH

elroy said:


> Another thing that I'd like to throw out there is the fact that most Arab Israelis do not view Hebrew so much as a foreign language in the way that English is but as a language that is so ingrained in them that they have a near-native command of it. They truly think in Hebrew when they speak it, and they feel the effect of Hebrew words and phrases, hundreds of which they have adopted into their everyday (Arabic) vernacular. The speech of Arab Israelis is so colored by Hebrew - the way they speak it - that I would imagine that switching to a different accent would make it seem artificial and affected.


 
Do you think it's a matter of time before the Palestinians within the green line lose the Arabic language and switch to Hebrew?


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## Nunty

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Do you think it's a matter of time before the Palestinians within the green line lose the Arabic language and switch to Hebrew?


Nope.

Listen to what Elroy said. A very large number Palestinians in Israel, or Israeli Arabs, do not have all that much contact with Jewish native speakers of Hebrew and a good deal of that contact is not friendly and casual.

I'm wondering if we don't need to split this thread, since we seem to be straying out of earshot of the original topic.


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## elroy

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Do you think it's a matter of time before the Palestinians within the green line lose the Arabic language and switch to Hebrew?


 As Nun-Translator said, no.

Arab Israelis may be fluent in Hebrew, but Arabic is still their native language. It is the language they use all the time except when they need to speak to native speakers of Hebrew who do not speak Arabic. Go to any Arab city or town in Israel and you'll hear Arabic spoken everywhere. You'll see Arabic-language signs, newspapers, literature, you name it - and you'll be able to watch TV and listen to the radio in Arabic. 

As Nun-Translator pointed out, interaction with Jewish speakers of Hebrew is generally minimal, and virtually nonexistent before adulthood. As I stated above, that is in fact one of the reasons I believe Arabs have maintained their Arabic accent in Hebrew over the years, and I don't think that's going to change any time soon. If Arab children started to interact with Jewish children from a very young age, we may begin to hear some changes in pronunciation.


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## Nunty

elroy said:


> If Arab children started to interact with Jewish children from a very young age, we may begin to hear some changes in pronunciation.


In and near Jerusalem there a couple of schools that mix Arab and Jewish children, have an Arab and Jewish teacher for each class, and use both languages as languages of instruction (i.e. not just as foreign/second language learning). The children also learn about and celebrate one another's feasts and so on.

It really will be interesting to follow these kids to adulthood and listen to how they talk.


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## Spectre scolaire

scriptum said:
			
		

> I think Qcumber's remark is rather appropriate. Phonetically, the Arab accent in Hebrew is truer to the Semitic origins of the language than the Jewish one. One may argue that Arabs speak better Hebrew than Jews...





			
				Qcumber said:
			
		

> In my mind it is related because Arab speakers can pronounce Semitic sounds that Ashkenazi cannot. It's marvellous: it's as though Greeks could hear how their ancestors of the Antiquity realized some of their phonemes.


 I think one should make a point here _for whom_ “it’s marvellous”. In fact, the Greeks themselves are not the least interested in knowing how the ancient Greeks actually pronounced Greek. If some linguist tells them how a restored pronunciation of, say, the obituary of Pericles (as related by Thucydides) would sound like, they would invariably react with a quip, saying that such a pronunciation is a Western idea.

I hinted at this in my post #6:




> The interesting thing to observe in the Modern Greek linguistic struggle is that purism was never a phonetic endeavor. Nobody ever tried to revive “lost” phonemes. The Hebrew case is consequently quite different, and it is intriguing to inquire about the reasons for this.


 Of course, the premise for saying that “the Greeks are not interested” is that a book like Sidney Allen’s _Vox Greaca_ is a solid piece of scholarship. The Greek reasons for not accepting Allen’s conclusions, but maintaining that the “restored pronunciation” is an _Erasmian invention_, would go far beyong the topic of this thread. 

For my comparison to be meaningful in our context, we would have to ask how come the Israeli themselves accept that “the Arab accent in Hebrew is truer to the Semitic origins of the language than the Jewish one” (as stated by _scriptum_). 

I would be very skeptical to such a statement, and the reason is precisely the créole connection I came up with. Phonetically, French has gone a looong way from Latin, and the reason must be sought in various substrata (especially the Celtic and the Germanic ones). This does not mean that French is not a Latin-based language! 

To say that Modern Hebrew is not a Semitic language because of failure to pronounce certain _letters_[sic] in a “Semitic way”, sounds a bit odd to me. Since Modern Hebrew is a revived language, I explicitly talk about “pronouncing letters”, a seemingly contradictory argument – as if the letter came along before the sound. A letter is nothing but a representation of a sound – but then, Modern Hebrew is challenging more than one rule in linguistics. In fact, there is basically nothing wrong in saying the opposite of this fundamental Saussurean principle, and the reason should be sought in Jewish history. During the whole Middle Age, (male) Jews were strongly incited to read the Holy Texts. The study of the _Torah_ was like a ritual.

Christians, on the other hand, were literally _prevented_ from reading _their_ Holy Texts, and when various vernacular translations came along, there was a great fear of heresies. No wonder that the first _Index prohibitorum librorum_ came in 1564 when Gutenberg had made people read like never before. In Christian tradition there is a _logos_ which is supposed to be imparted by an initiated person to the congregation. This is precisely what _catechism_ is all about, a Greek word which means “by word of mouth”. Christians did not need to read! The _word_ among Jews was a written one, and it was supposed to be _read aloud_ by all males (to the extent of their ability), not only imparted orally by a small priestly elite. 

Then, what is the result when Yiddish-speaking Jews read the _Torah_? Obviously, you get a Hebrew with a Yiddish substratum! This obtains for Eastern Europe. In Spain, a different pronunciation of Hebrew would emerge. The ritual of reading aloud wouldn’t be different among Sefardim. It was this “ritual” which offered the very basis for a revived language – as far as I understand it. The quibble about Ashkenazic or Sephardic pronunciation has its origin in the different “substratum” of Torah readers, the latter containing Jews from North Africa (and secondarily from other Arab countries).

As long as a revived language is a rather unique event in human history, no wonder there are other theories as to the emergence of Modern Hebrew. I find it difficult to understand Paul Wexler’s theory about _A Slavo-Turkic people in search of a Jewish identity_, cf. the reference given by _Nun-Translator_ in post #20), but then, I have got no first knowledge of his arguments.



> Wexler claims that modern Hebrew is not a Semitic language at all, but a dialect of "Judaeo-Sorbian". On his argument, the underlying structure of the language is Slavic, "re-lexified" to absorb much of the vocabulary and inflexional system of Hebrew, in much the same way as a creole


 This reminds me of Arthur Koestler’s thought provoking book: _The thirteenth tribe: The Khazar Empire and its heritage_, the heritage being East European Jewry. Whatever the language of the Khazars - most probably a Turkic one – this has nothing to do with Hebrew which was (basically) a liturgical language until it was revived as a spoken tongue. 

Would Modern Hebrew be less _Semitic_ if some sounds (which are common in other Semitic languages) have been “lost” during the revival process?

In descriptive linguistics, there is no such thing as a “loss”. Only when comparing language stages there may have been a development which, from a purely academic point of view, involves a “loss”. This can easily become a value judgment like in the case of the Modern Greek “loss” of its infinitive (around 1000 years ago). A famous German classical philologist wrote about hundred years ago that “he could hardly imagine a civilized language without an infinitive.” This became a part of an underdog argument for the Greeks to restore their language to its ancient glory. However, they never seriously tried to implement a restoration of the classical infinitive. Pedagogically, it would have been an impossible task. 




			
				Nun-Translator said:
			
		

> [M]y impression is that pronunciation in the state media (where usage and pronunciation are supposed to conform to Academy decisions) puts much more emphasis on correct division and stress on the syllables of words and less on whether or not 'ayin or het are correctly pronounced.


 Do I see a parallel here to the case of the Greek infinitive? State media are pragmatic, many language academies are ... well, less pragmatic.

1) The “embarrassing thing” is obviously that – once we are used to thinking in terms of “lost language categories” – those who pronounce these sounds “correctly”, are the Arabs...

This seems nugatory, however, compared to the fact that Jews of today have got their own functional modern language purported to be a continuation of the first of the three Holy Languages of European Middle Age – however much this idiom may be “a re-lexified Slavic language having absorbed much of the vocabulary and inflexional system of Hebrew, in much the same way as a creole.”

2) The “funny thing” (on the other side) is that the Arab pronunciation of Hebrew stems from _solecistic speech_:



			
				elroy said:
			
		

> [Arab] interaction with Jewish speakers of Hebrew is generally minimal, and virtually nonexistent before adulthood [my addition: when it is too late to learn a language like a native speaker!]. As I stated above, that is in fact one of the reasons I believe Arabs have maintained their Arabic accent in Hebrew over the years, and I don't think that's going to change any time soon. If Arab children started to interact with Jewish children from a very young age, we may begin to hear some changes in pronunciation.


 The inevitable conclusion of 1) and 2) is that Arabic accent in Hebrew, oxymoronically, is both enviable and solecistic...
​


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## KvodIvrit

Unless you speak English the same way Chaucer did, or write your posts in the same style as "Beowulf", you probably should not have thoughts about whether modern Hebrew is correct Hebrew.

As is so excellently explained by Professor  Ghilad Zuckermann , "modern Hebrew" is 100% correct Israeli.  And unless you are prepared to tell Australians and New Zealanders that they are speaking English wrong, it's best to just leave it at that.

I happen to disagree with one point by the esteemed moderator. Not all Palestinian Israelis (i use the term as an ethnic description, not as a political statement) have noticeable "Arab"-accented Hebrew. They grow up watching Hebrew TV and listening to Hebrew pop songs; quite a good percentage grow up in only nominally "Arabic" speaking households, in mostly Hebrew neighborhoods.
They speak "correct" Hebrew merely for the same reason as american Jews who are born and grow up in Charlotte, North Carolina speak correct "Southern". Let's ask the Palestinians who grew up in Ramallah if they have any trouble recognizing an "Arab" who grew up in Jaffa the moment he starts spreaking, perhaps?

I grew up amongst African-americans who were very often, quite recent arrivals from Jamaica.  I have no trouble "code-switching" to their dialect which encompasses MANY "obsoletisms" of Old English.   For a sampling of it, just read the King James Version of the bible. Eg, "thee", "thou", "thy", "thyne" "ye".     Quite a few Israeli Arabs in the periphery are able to turn on and turn off the TelAviv "accent" at will. Or maybe even, they do so without thinking about it.      Well,  are y'alls fixing to understand me?


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## arbelyoni

> Unless you speak English the same way Chaucer did, or write your posts in the same style as "Beowulf", you probably should not have thoughts about whether modern Hebrew is correct Hebrew.


The question is not whether Modern Hebrew is correct or not, but whether Arabic accent is closer to the original pronunciation(s) of Hebrew than the modern standard accent or not.
It is true in some respects (Ayin and Het), but not in others (many Arabs have difficulties pronouncing [p] and [v]).


> Not all Palestinian Israelis (i use the term as an ethnic description, not as a political statement) have noticeable "Arab"-accented Hebrew. They grow up watching Hebrew TV and listening to Hebrew pop songs; quite a good percentage grow up in only nominally "Arabic" speaking households, in mostly Hebrew neighborhoods.
> They speak "correct" Hebrew merely for the same reason as american Jews who are born and grow up in Charlotte, North Carolina speak correct "Southern".


From my experience, Arabs who speak Hebrew with a perfect standard Israeli accent are very few and are the exception that proves the rule.
The number of Arabs who live in Jewish (Hebrew speaking) neighborhoods is very small, and like elroy said, most Arab citizens of Israel do not interact with Jewish Israelis and are not exposed to Hebrew until adulthood.


> Let's ask the Palestinians who grew up in Ramallah if they have any trouble recognizing an "Arab" who grew up in Jaffa the moment he starts spreaking, perhaps?


Palestinians from Ramallah may easily recognize an Arab from Jaffa, but it's not because of his "Israeli" pronunciation, but because they have different sub-dialects and accents.


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## origumi

arbelyoni said:


> It is true in some respects (Ayin and Het), but not in others (many Arabs have difficulties pronouncing [p] and [v]).


Did the sound [v] exist in Biblical Hebrew? Not sure. At least in early times.


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## arbelyoni

> Did the sound [v] exist in Biblical Hebrew? Not sure. At least in early times.


It exists as an allophone of ב.


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## origumi

arbelyoni said:


> It exists as an allophone of ב.


Based on what?


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## arielipi

what did you base your fact on?


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## arbelyoni

Based on the assumption that beged kefet spirantization occurred during the lifetime of Biblical Hebrew (not at its early stages).


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## origumi

arbelyoni said:


> Based on the assumption that beged kefet spirantization occurred during the lifetime of Biblical Hebrew (not at its early stages).


I am not sure what you're saying. There are two questions:
* Did the early Biblical Hebrew speakers pronounced [v] as part of the language (not for foreign words), in each period
* Did the early Biblical Hebrew speakers, when hearing [v], interpreted it as *, in each period

If the realization of bgd-kpt changed between 600 BC (just before the Babylon exile, or maybe even earlier) and 200 AD (when Aramaic became the Hebrew people's mother language) - it could happen under Aramaic influence or natively, it could have been gradual or sudden, it could start in Israel or Babylon or both. Consequently, there could be places and time in which  and [v] were mixed, allopohones, or whatever, or yet maybe not. The actual development is unclear (to me) and therefore any claim requires justifications.*


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## Abu Rashid

KvodIvrit said:


> Unless you speak English the same way Chaucer did, or write your posts in the same style as "Beowulf", you probably should not have thoughts about whether modern Hebrew is correct Hebrew.



They might be comparable situations if English had ceased being a spoken language around those respective time periods, and was only just revived in the past century.


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## Abu Rashid

arbelyoni said:


> The question is not whether Modern Hebrew is correct or not, but whether Arabic accent is closer to the *original* pronunciation(s) of Hebrew than the modern standard accent or not.
> It is true in some respects (Ayin and Het), but not in others (many Arabs have difficulties pronouncing [p] and [v]).



The word original is a little hard to define when speaking about languages. What stage of Hebrew/Semitic language do you refer to when you say original? Clearly 'v' as an allophone of 'b' was not the situation in the earlier (more original?) stages of Hebrew, and certainly is not the situation in other Semitic languages. It's also pretty clear that a few other phonemes vanished from Hebrew, for which no distinct grapheme existed, cognates to Arabic غ & خ.


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## Abu Rashid

elroy said:


> -ayin as in Arabic: yes
> -tsadi as Saad: no
> -tet as Taa: no
> -rolled r: yes
> 
> You will also hear:
> -het/chet as in Arabic
> -(not in all words) e as i



Would also be interesting to know how they pronounce כ and ב? Always as 'k' and 'b' as in Arabic? Or do they use 'kh' and 'v' also?


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> Would also be interesting to know how they pronounce כ and ב? Always as 'k' and 'b' as in Arabic? Or do they use 'kh' and 'v' also?


I think that כ and ב in Arabic Hebrew accent follow the native Hebrew pronunciation: in some words k/b, in other kh/v, and in some other consistent or inconsistent mixture.


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## Abu Rashid

origumi said:


> I think that כ and ב in Arabic Hebrew accent follow the native Hebrew pronunciation: in some words k/b, in other kh/v, and in some other consistent or inconsistent mixture.



Todah. Is there a rule for when either pronunciation is used?


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> Is there a rule for when either pronunciation is used?


Native Hebrew speakers do not follow the formal pronunciation and consequently Arabs when speaking Hebrew. In cases where there's a fixed pronunciation in all conjugations, for example ב of כבוד _ka*v*od_ (= honor), it is unlikely to hear ka*b*od from either Hebrews or Arabs. In other cases such as the כ of כבוד when prefixed by ו (= and), I think that most Arabs follow the popular pronunciation, ve*k*avod in this case, although formally it's ve*kh*avod.

This is natural: when absorbing a language mainly in the street or from daily newspapers (including by those who learned Hebrew few years in school), historical development and formal grammatical rules are insignificant compared to practical experience.


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## Abu Rashid

origumi said:


> Native Hebrew speakers do not follow the formal pronunciation and consequently Arabs when speaking Hebrew. In cases where there's a fixed pronunciation in all conjugations, for example ב of כבוד _ka*v*od_ (= honor), it is unlikely to hear ka*b*od from either Hebrews or Arabs. In other cases such as the כ of כבוד when prefixed by ו (= and), I think that most Arabs follow the popular pronunciation, ve*k*avod in this case, although formally it's ve*kh*avod.
> 
> This is natural: when absorbing a language mainly in the street or from daily newspapers (including by those who learned Hebrew few years in school), historical development and formal grammatical rules are insignificant compared to practical experience.



It would also be interesting to know if they pronounce פ as 'p' in the cases native Hebrew speakers do. Because many Arabs who learn English as a second language cannot pronounce 'p' in English and usually confuse it with 'b'.


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> It would also be interesting to know if they pronounce פ as 'p' in the cases native Hebrew speakers do. Because many Arabs who learn English as a second language cannot pronounce 'p' in English and usually confuse it with 'b'.


Some can some cannot. Pronouncing "p" requires a lot of training (or talent?). I keep hearing both "p" and "b" for Hebrew "p", depending on the individual speaker. This yields sometimes funny results.


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## origumi

Another feature of Arabic accented Hebrew is vowel lengthening. This is most outstanding in the plural masculine suffix ים- (-im).


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## Abu Rashid

origumi said:


> Another feature of Arabic accented Hebrew is vowel lengthening. This is most outstanding in the plural masculine suffix ים- (-im).



Probably a result of Arabic retaining only the 3 short and 3 long vowels of proto-Semitic. So a vowel is either short or quite long, whereas I think the 'i' in -im is middle of the range, and is probably closer to kasrah (short vowel) in the Arabic vowel system, than to yaa-meem.


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## Abu Rashid

origumi said:


> Some can some cannot. Pronouncing "p" requires a lot of training (or talent?). I keep hearing both "p" and "b" for Hebrew "p", depending on the individual speaker. This yields sometimes funny results.



I would've thought they would just resort to pronouncing all פ as 'f'. Are there any Hebrew speakers who do this? or is 'p' always one of the pronunciations of פ?


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> I would've thought they would just resort to pronouncing all פ as 'f'. Are there any Hebrew speakers who do this? or is 'p' always one of the pronunciations of פ?


The story of p/f , b/v and k/kh is the same among native Hebrew speakers - mixing the two in some cases, keeping them correctly in other cases. Arabs that speak Hebrew follow the informal variant (that is, the more popular but not necessarily "correct" one), with the shift "p" -> "b" by many (not "p" -> "f" beyond what native Hebrews do, as far as I can tell), and more rarely "v" -> "b" or "v" -> "f".

The shift "p" -> "f" makes sense for an Arab that learns Hebrew mainly through reading. In reality most Arabs acquire the language by hearing and speaking.


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## arbelyoni

> I am not sure what you're saying. There are two questions:
> * Did the early Biblical Hebrew speakers pronounced [v] as part of the language (not for foreign words), in each period
> * Did the early Biblical Hebrew speakers, when hearing [v], interpreted it as *, in each period*


*
I was referring to the [v] sound resulted from a spirantization process in beged kefet letters.
I don't know if any other [v] sounds existed prior to medieval pronunciations…



The word original is a little hard to define when speaking about languages. What stage of Hebrew/Semitic language do you refer to when you say original? Clearly 'v' as an allophone of 'b' was not the situation in the earlier (more original?) stages of Hebrew, and certainly is not the situation in other Semitic languages. It's also pretty clear that a few other phonemes vanished from Hebrew, for which no distinct grapheme existed, cognates to Arabic غ & خ.

Click to expand...

I understand the word "original" is problematic.
My comment about the [v] sound in post #27 was a response to the presumption that Arabic accent is "more correct" than the Israeli one (post #4).
The [v] sound exists in Hebrew at least since the second century AD, and is found in the traditional pronunciations (including the "more Semitic" Yemenite and Sephardi pronunciations). Therefore, an accent in which [v] is pronounced [f] is by no means "more correct" than the Israeli accent in this respect.

Perhaps the question of "correctness" and "originality" of sounds deserves a more thorough discussion. I intended to present two examples in which the Arabic pronunciation of Modern Hebrew does not agree with older pronunciations.*


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## Abu Rashid

arbelyoni said:


> I understand the word "original" is problematic.
> My comment about the [v] sound in post #27 was a response to the presumption that Arabic accent is "more correct" than the Israeli one (post #4).
> The [v] sound exists in Hebrew at least since the second century AD, and is found in the traditional pronunciations (including the "more Semitic" Yemenite and Sephardi pronunciations). Therefore, an accent in which [v] is pronounced [f] is by no means "more correct" than the Israeli accent in this respect.
> 
> Perhaps the question of "correctness" and "originality" of sounds deserves a more thorough discussion. I intended to present two examples in which the Arabic pronunciation of Modern Hebrew does not agree with older pronunciations.



`The Semitic phoneme * was spirantised in certain cases in Aramaic and Hebrew a little over 2000 years ago. Prior to that, and in all other Semitic languages it is . Arabic is most definitely in agreeance with the "original" Semitic situation of this phoneme.*


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## arbelyoni

Abu Rashid said:


> `The Semitic phoneme * was spirantised in certain cases in Aramaic and Hebrew a little over 2000 years ago. Prior to that, and in all other Semitic languages it is . Arabic is most definitely in agreeance with the "original" Semitic situation of this phoneme.*


*
But I'm not talking about Arabic, I'm talking about the Arabic pronunciation of Hebrew, in which ב רפה [v] is pronounced [f], never .*


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## Albert Schlef

arbelyoni said:


> Perhaps the question of "correctness" and "originality" of sounds deserves a more thorough discussion.





Abu Rashid said:


> The Semitic phoneme * [...] a little over 2000 years ago. Prior to that, and in all other Semitic languages it is . Arabic is most definitely in agreeance with the "original" Semitic situation of this phoneme.*


*

I find discussions about "original" and "correctness" lacking perspective.

Why stop 2000, or 3000, years ago?

 The original language is the language of the primates. "Monkeys". We all come from there. I find it hard to believe they had more than 2 or 3 consonants. (Therefore, BTW, the more consonants we drop, the closer we come to the true original language.)

 Now, fast forward 4 billion years: Mototo sits by the fire trying to placate her crying baby, Koboto, by producing funny sounds. That's how the consonant ض is born. It could've been any other weird sound.

    Fast forward a few more billion years: a notion of "Holy Language" (synonymous with our "Original Language") is created in point(s) in time where a divine revelation(s) is/are recorded. Now the consonant ض is attributed to the Divine instead of to Mototo's gurgling. Linguistically, what importance does this point in time holds? Absolutely nothing: the language evolved before and after.

That's why, I believe, terms like "original" and "correctness" don't hold a real meaning.*


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## tFighterPilot

The [p] -> * phenomenon is so common that you're likely to find, in Arab shops, text where פ and ב are randomly switched. That means that not only can they not pronounce the difference, they can't hear it either.*


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## Abu Rashid

Albert Schlef said:


> I find it hard to believe they had more than 2 or 3 consonants. (Therefore, BTW, the more consonants we drop, the closer we come to the true original language.)



Semitic languages surprisingly show a completely opposite tendency.

The further we go into their past, the more consonants we find, the further come towards the present, the less we find.


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## airelibre

Albert Schlef said:


> I find discussions about "original" and "correctness" lacking perspective.
> 
> Why stop 2000, or 3000, years ago?
> 
> The original language is the language of the primates. "Monkeys". We all come from there. I find it hard to believe they had more than 2 or 3 consonants. (Therefore, BTW, the more consonants we drop, the closer we come to the true original language.)
> 
> Now, fast forward 4 billion years: Mototo sits by the fire trying to placate her crying baby, Koboto, by producing funny sounds. That's how the consonant ض is born. It could've been any other weird sound.
> 
> Fast forward a few more billion years: a notion of "Holy Language" (synonymous with our "Original Language") is created in point(s) in time where a divine revelation(s) is/are recorded. Now the consonant ض is attributed to the Divine instead of to Mototo's gurgling. Linguistically, what importance does this point in time holds? Absolutely nothing: the language evolved before and after.
> 
> That's why, I believe, terms like "original" and "correctness" don't hold a real meaning.



Human language wasn't originated from primates. It arose between 1,000,000 years ago and 40,000 years ago, much later than the various early stages between primate and Homo sapiens. (I can't exactly remember the evidence for this but I think it is something to do with jaw structure or cave paintings/writing). 

The phonology of languages is always changing and a language can gain or lose phonemes, hence why some languages have over 100 and the fewest have less than 20. It does not mean they are at different stages of development.


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## Abu Rashid

airelibre said:


> It does not mean they are at different stages of development.



Generally speaking with Semitic languages it does. Those which have evolved usually show a tendency to simplify and merge phonemes. Not sure if other language families have a similar phenomena.


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