Proto-Austronesian Hebrew/Phonology
Like all the languages fanning out from Taiwan 3000 years ago, an intense flattening of the phonemic landscape slowly decimated PAH. By the time of they were living on Palau, a wide array of simplifications had taken place. Almost all the changes parallel the development of Proto-Austronesian (PAn) > Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP).
History
Paleo-Hebrew
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 32 sounds, though it is a very recent rediscovery that two letters were homographs.[1]. It is highly unlikely that the begadkafat letters had two sounds until well after 800 B.C.
PH Levantine Consonants | ||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post-A. | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | ||||||||
Nasal | m | n | ||||||||||||||
Stop | unvoiced | p | t | k | ? | |||||||||||
voiced | b | |||||||||||||||
ejective | t' | |||||||||||||||
Fricative | unvoiced | f | θ | s | ʃ | x | χ | ħ | h | |||||||
voiced | v | ð | z | ɤ | ʁ | ʕ | ||||||||||
ejective | s' | |||||||||||||||
lateral | ɬ | |||||||||||||||
Approximants | w | l | j | |||||||||||||
Trill | r |
Vowels
Vowels | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Front | Near-front | Central | Back | |||||||
High | i | u | ||||||||
High-mid | e | o | ||||||||
Near-low | a |
- ↑ JBL 124, No. 2, Richard C. Steiner, p.229-267