Proto-Austronesian Hebrew/Phonology

Like all the languages fanning out from Taiwan approximately 3000 years ago, an intense flattening of the phonemic landscape slowly decimated the Semitic language in Oceania. By the time of they were living on Palau, many simplifications had taken place. Almost all the changes parallel the development of Proto-Austronesian (PAn) > Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP).

History

Attempts to reconstruct the origin and development of PAH are clouded, both by uncertainty of the phonetic environment they left and the one to which they went.

Paleo-Hebrew

PH Levantine Vowels
	Front	Near-front	Central	Back
High	i iː			u uː
High-mid		eː	ə	o oː
Near-low			a aː

All Possible PH Levantine Consonants
		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-A.	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal		m		n
Stop	unvoiced	p		t			k			?
	voiced	b		d			g
	ejective			t'			k'
Fricative	unvoiced	*f	*θ	s	*ʃ		*x	χ	ħ	h
	voiced	*v	*ð	z			*ɣ	ʁ	ʕ
	ejective			s'
	lateral				ɬ
Approximants		w		l		j
Trill				r

Before being carried off, the Ancient Hebrews of Canaan had a robust and diverse phonology, with nine places and ten manners of articulation. Tiberian Hebrew orthography utilizes 22 consonants with three diacritical marks (the dageš, sin-dot, and šin-dot) to notate 31 sounds, though it is a very recent rediscovery that two letters were homographs.. It is highly unlikely that the begadkefat letters had two sounds until well after 800 B.C. Also, šin and sin should be counted among the begadkefat letters, with /ʃ/ a mere allophone of /ɬ/.

Sounds changes

The amalgamated Semitic people who found themselves slaves in Southeast Asia had a phonology that largely overlapped with the surrounding PAn language(s). The sounds which were uniquely Afro-Asiatic seemed to have dropped off very quickly. The fricative “versions” of the stops (which had always been allophone) fell away almost immediately, , as did the “emphatic” versions (i.e. /k’/ became /k/ and /t’/ became /t/). PH *ɬ > PAH *ŋ. The addition of the velar nasal may seem strange, especially in the syllable onset, but is entirely predictable given the new surroundings in Southeast Asia and Oceania. The alveolar fricative ejective (Tiberian צ/ṣaḏé) may well have become the alveolar affricative before leaving the Levant. The Phoenician Helenization of ‘ayin into /a/ also seems to have started before the exodus.

Best-Guess PH Levantine Consonants
		Labial	Alveolar	Post-A.	Palatal	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Stop	unvoiced	p	t			k		?
	voiced	b	d			g
	ejective		t'			k'
Fricative	unvoiced		s				ħ	h
	voiced		z				ʕ
	lateral			ɬ
Affricate				ts
Approximants		w	l		j
Trill			r

Onset consonant changes

• PH *k',χ > PAH *q
• PH *ʁ > PAH *g
• PH *t’ > PAH *t
• PH *ɬ > PAH *ŋ
• PH *ħ > PAH *Ø
• PH *ʕ > PAH *a
• PH *z > PAH *s
• PH *s’ > PAH *ts

Coda consonant changes (the same but also)

• PH *? > PAH *Ø
• PH *ts > PAH *s

א

ב

ג

ד

ה

ו

ז

ח

ט

י

כ/ך

ל

מ/ם

נ/ן

ס

ע

פ/ף

צ/ץ

ק

ר

ש

ת

?

b

g

d

h

w

s

korØ

t

y

k

l

m

n

s

gora

p

c

q

r

ŋ

t

Consonants

PAH Consonants
		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ŋ
Stop	unvoiced	p	t		k	q
	voiced	b	d		g		?
Affricate			ts
Fricative			s				h
Approximant		w	l ɹ	j

After untold hundreds of year surrounded by the Lapitan empire, the Hebrew language had grown to sound like it neighbors in almost every respect.

Vowels

PAH Vowels
	Front	Near-front	Central	Back
High	i iː			u uː
High-mid		eː	ə	o oː
Near-low			a aː

The major change from PH to PAH in regard to vowels came not in what vowels were you, but how they were used. With uvular and pharyngeal fricatives changing into vowels, the tri-consonantal roots began to unravel, or just metamorphose into something different. A vast array of diphthong opened up, an array which would only expand.

PAH Diphthongs
	Front	Central	Back
High	iw		uy
Mid	ey		oy
Low		ay aw

Phonotactics

PAH syllables were CV, CVV, or CVC: every syllable begins with a consonant and may end with a short vowel, a long vowel, a diphthong, or certain consonants. A syllable cannot consist of more than two characters of katakana (unless the long vowel is written out and not simply an overline).

w.u.v. = with under-specified voicing

	"Gutterals"				"Sonorants"						← or →		"Begadkap̅at"
able to be...	h	'	q	r	w	y	l	m	n	ŋ	s	c	b	g	d	k	p	t
geminated	No	No	No	No	as uw	as iy	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	as t	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
in coda	Yes	No	No	Yes	as u	as i	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	as s	w.u.v.	w.u.v.	w.u.v.	w.u.v.	w.u.v.	w.u.v.

The consonants can be broken down into three easy categories: gutturals, sonorants, and the "begakepat" letters (s and c are somes times sonorants, sometimes begadkepat, with s more often sonorant and c more often begadkepat). Gutturals reject gemination, sonorants accept every process (except syllable-coda, word-medial n usually becomes gemination), and the begadkepat letters lose control of their voicing in the coda.

When c is geminated, only the t is in the coda of the previous syllable. Hence カッ̣ス゚ is pronounced /kat.tsu/. In the coda, it is an 's'.

Quiescing

The gutturals, w, and y typically quiesce, that is, go silent. This is universally the case with short 'e' vowels. For example, for to God one would expect バエロ゜ヒム /ba.?e.lo.'hi.mu/, but the glottal stop quiesces to make バロ゜ヒム /ba.lo.'hi.mu/.

The other uniform rule is that is two vowels are the same with a guttural, w, or y in between, then that consonant will quiesce and the vowel with lengthen. For example, the direct case of "land" should be ha + 'aretsu = ha'aretsu (ハアレス゚）, but the two A's "squeeze out" the glottal stop and it becomes hārestu (ハ̅レス゚).