X-Digest-Num: 273 Message-ID: <44114.273.1525.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 18:17:57 From: "Ben Webster" Subject: Re: x pronunciation from a french guy X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 1525 Content-Length: 1791 Lines: 44 On Sun, 31 Oct 1999 19:11:01 EST, BestATN@aol.com wrote... >From: BestATN@aol.com > >In a message dated 10/31/1999 10:57:23 AM Eastern Standard Time, >lojbab@lojban.org writes: > >> I believe the Arabic sound Romanized as q is a Lojban x. The >> voiced equivalent of x in Arabic is often Romanized as "gh", hence the >> spelling of the name of the leader of Libya is sometimes Romanized as >> Qadaffi or Ghadaffi. > >The Arabic letter qaaf , the 21st letter of the Arabic alphabet, has a >variable pronunciation depending on dialect, but it is usually >transliterated >as 'q'. The Modern Standard pronunciation of 'qaaf' is an uvular or back velar voiceless stop. Basically a 'k', with your tongue shoved even further back. It sounds a lot like a 'k' to an English speaker. My Arabic teacher told me that it is sometimes pronounced more like an "h" in the middle East. (yippee! yet another "h"-like sound in Arabic). I think what's causing the confusion, but that is not to be confused with "ghain", which sounds like a french "r", and sadly does not exist Lojban. >Most good English dictionaries have a table of alphabets under >'alphabet' that shows Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Greek, and sometimes >Sanskrit/Devanagari. Anyway, the Arabic letter to use as a model for Lojban >'x' would be khaa, the 7th letter, and it's transliteration is 'kh', >distinct >from 'q', 'k', 'h', '(dotted) h', "`", and 'gh'. Any ideas about what to do with wierd Arabic sounds ("`ain", "ghain", "qaaf") when Lojbanizing? The best I can come up with is to use . for `ain, r (or x) for ghain and k for qaaf. Also, what about emphatic letters? If you just collapse them into the normal stops an fricatives, dal, dhal, d.aad, and d.ha would all just become d.