Saadia Gaon

[Paul Younan]

Shlama Akhi bar-Khela,

(1) Does Aramaic have a six vowel system composed of three long vowels and three short vowel counterparts (a, i, u, _, _, _)?

Absolutely. Here is a picture of them:

(2) Does it have pharyngeal fricative consonants?

Absolutely. For instance, the letter Heh used in the word "ħal" ("give").

(3) Does it have utilization of the glottal stop as a phoneme?

Not only as a phoneme....but in Aramaic, the glottal stop is actually a dedicated consonant. The first letter of the Alphabet, Alaph, is actually vocalised as a glottal stop (especially when it starts a word, such as "Abba" for "Father"....it is really pronounced "'bba".) (see lesson 45 on http://www.assyrianlanguage.com)

Also, the Schwa is pronounced as a brief stop of speech in both Aramaic and Hebrew.

(4) Does it have inclusion of the semivowels (w) and (y) as consonants?

Yes. In Aramaic, in fact, the consonants Waw and Yudh serve a dual function (consonants as well as semivowels.) The consonant Yudh, written with the Khwasa diacretic, serves as the vowel "ee" (see lesson 33 on http://www.assyrianlanguage.com) The consonant Waw, written with both the Rwasa and Rwakha diacretics, serves as either the vowel "u" or the vowel "o". (see lessons 31 and 32 on http://www.assyrianlanguage.com)

(5) What about the existence of three classes of consonants: voiced, voiceless, and "emphatic" consonants?

Yes, yes and yes. Voiced consonants are just the regular consonants. Voiceless consonants are marked by the MbaTlana diacretic (see lesson 41 on http://www.assyrianlanguage.com).

Consonants are presented as Emphatic when a verb is conjugated in the PAEL form, in which case the second radical is doubled ("emphasized"). This is identical to the D-Stem of Akkadian (see http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/introdu...t_0058.htm).

(6) Does it have the "classical triangular {vocalic] system," _, _, and _, and the three types of consonants: voiced, voiceless, and emphatic?

The second part is answered above. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

The answer to the first part is, absolutely. The classical triangular [a, i, u] (short vowels) and [aa, ii, uu] (long vowels) are also joined by two more long vowels /ee/ and /oo/ to make the number of vowels eight in total. (EXACTLY the same number and distribution as in Akkadian, but not in Hebrew or in Arabic - see http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/introdu...t_0112.htm)

Finally, Aramaic has features of Akkadian that are not present in either Hebrew nor in Arabic. For instance, all these Semitic languages have the "Construct" noun state, but only Akkadian and Aramaic have the "Absolute" noun state. This has been lost in both Hebrew and Arabic. (see http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/introdu...t_0022.htm)

Akhi, it is impossible that a language that was born from Aramaic could possibly be more "proto-Semitic"....more "ancient" than the language that it sprang from. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s --> (think about it)