Mail Archive sponsored by
Chazzanut Online
jewish-music
Consonantal Ayin
- From: SamWeiss <SamWeiss...>
- Subject: Consonantal Ayin
- Date: Wed 06 Mar 2002 19.11 (GMT)
This is a postscript to my posting on using the "ng" consonant to represent
the Hebrew vowel "Ayin."
In addition to Spanish-Portuguese Sephardic pronunciation, of course, other
dialects of Hebrew pronounce this letter as a guttural consonant. But
there appears to be a vestigial remnant of a consonantal Ashkenazic Ayin in
Yiddish pronunciation as well. The "n" in the name Yankl and "Yankev"
corresponds to such a consonant. There is also a nasalization on the long
"ah" vowel sometimes heard in the word for "story" ("maase") which can also
be pronounced with a real "n" ("manseh" or "maynseh"). Perhaps this also
corresponds to the letter Ayin in the Hebrew spelling (?and pronunciation?)
of this word.
---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+
- Consonantal Ayin,
SamWeiss