On Mon, 28 Jan 2002 07:59:27 +0200 Halupovich Ilana <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
writes:
> Steg wrote
> <<Well, i'm home for winter break between semesters right now, and 
> my
> parents don't have Arabic support on their computer.  If i was in 
> school i
> would actually have an Arabic-English dictionary to use.  The course 
> i'm
> taking is "modern standard arabic", the international kind that most 
> people
> who speak Arabic speak in addition to their local dialect.>>

> Ilana
> How do you deal with different r's and a's and h's ?
> Ilana, curious, unable to pronounce all of them right.
-
 
Hmm... i'm not sure what you mean.
The "r" that we're using is a tap/flap R, like the R that Spanish has. 
When it gets geminated (doubled), like in _udarris_ "i teach", we were
taught to use a trilled R like the RR in Spanish.  I took Spanish for
four and a half years, so i guess that wasn't hard for me because of
that.
The 'front' As like in _shams_ we were taught to pronounce like the
American English vowel in "cat"; around some letters, i think maybe it
was "H" "3" and "r" we pronounce it like a Spanish A, almost the same as
the NYC American dialect pronounciation of the A in "father".  For the
'backed' A that comes next to emphatic letters like "S", "D", "T" and
"Z", i just keep the back of my tongue in the same position (as far back
and down as possible) while i say the "a" and the emphatic letter.  Some
English dialects use a vowel close to that for the A in "father" or the O
in "hot".
I learned how to differentiate between the sounds khaa, haa, and Haa
already in highschool, when i knew many Syrian Jews who differentiated
their _hei_s, _khaf_s, and _hhet_s.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "OH CRAP! i woke up late"
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