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2:50 AM

@ktm5124 Don't forget samek and sin ... not sure which among those pairs were distinguishable in some phase of the language. Both of yours have one which is בגדכפת, so presumably at some point some instances were distinct. English q isn't a particular needful letter either. Nor c.

What I want to know is how the convention came about in modern Hebrew to use tet and samek (both relatively rare letters in regular Hebrew) for foreign words. They also use aleph as if it were an a-vowel. I switched my phone to Hebrew for a while and had פודקאסטים on there, which for some reason perpetually amused me.

6 hours later…

Dɑvïd

8:50 AM

@ktm5124 @Susan's samek and sin are more of a "duplicate" than the ones you list which, although perhaps similar to "our" ear, represent quite different "phonemes" and would be realized by different characters of the IPA.

OTOH, "chet" (ח) historically represents two different sounds that (classical) Hebrew no longer distinguishes.

@Susan "פודקאסטים" -- now that is amusing! :)

7 hours later…

Susan

3:44 PM

@Dɑvïd Though, TBF, Ezekiel (13:10) does (apparently) spell תעה as טעה. (DCH calls the former the by-form??) Many more of those pairs with ש/ס though, I imagine. Can't think of any with ק/כ. I recently discovered קוט / קוץ. Not a pair I think about sounding so much alike.

ktm5124

4:13 PM

@Susan You are right that q and c are not particularly needful letters, but they are useful in letter combinations like qu and ch. I wonder if qof and kaf, samek and sin might be the same? After all the placement of the dagesh or the dot does change them.

Dɑvïd

4:30 PM

@Susan Not forgetting the behaviour of sibilants and dentals in the Hitpael either, of course. ;)

@ktm5124 Seems to me you're into the territory where "phonemes" and "graphemes" intersect. Tricky business. Where's @curiousdannii when you need him.

Susan

@Dɑvïd oops, yes, forgetting, good point!

@ktm5124 David will correct me if wrong, but I thought the presence/absence of dagesh was never a phonemic distinction.

ktm5124

4:47 PM

@Susan Interesting. I don't know too much about phonemes and graphemes, apart from a guess about their meaning based on Greek (φονη=sound, γράφω=write).

Is it the sound of a letter versus its written representation?

I suppose Kaf has two phonemes. But would you say it also has two graphemes? How odd, that a single consonant could encapsulate multiple phonemes and graphemes. I suppose at least the former is true in English. The letter 'c' encompasses more than one phoneme.

@Susan I just read the Wikipedia pages on phonemes and graphemes. Never mind my previous comments, as I think that Wikipedia answered all my questions. But thank you for bringing up the subject of phonemes and graphemes - I learned something new this morning, and that's not something you can say about most mornings.

7 hours later…