Inventing a new usage of the Latin Alphabet

Over the past decades, Jonathan Orr-Stav, language specialist and translator, set about to create a reliable Hebrew usage of the Latin alphabet using ASCII characters - those normal run-of-the-mill letters that we use every day. There are already multiple uses of the Latin alphabet - e.g.

English: And Yahweh said to Abram, Go for yourself from your land, and from your kindred, and from the house of your ancestors,
to the land that I will show you.

Czech: Hospodin Bůh řekl Abramovi: „Odejdi ze své země, ze svého příbuzenstva a ze svého otcovského domu do země, kterou ti ukážu.

German: Herren havde sagt til Abram: „Forlad dit land, dine slægtninge og din fars hjem, og tag af sted til det land, jeg vil vise dig.

French: L’Eternel dit à Abram : Va, quitte ton pays, ta famille et la maison de ton père pour te rendre dans le pays que je t’indiquerai.

Spanish: Dios le dijo a Abram:
«Deja a tu pueblo y a tus familiares, y vete al lugar que te voy a mostrar.

Italian: Il Signore disse ad Abram:
«Vàttene dal tuo paese, dalla tua patria
e dalla casa di tuo padre,
verso il paese che io ti indicherò.

And so on - You see immediately that many European languages have their own usage of our shared alphabet - and they all have differing rules for reading and pronouncing the letters. To read the French as if it were English would result in nonsense to a French speaker. Similarly for Italian, Spanish, and so on.

SimHebrew is likewise a reliable way of rendering the Hebrew directly using the Latin character set. (It is also useful for URLs, technical programming and so on.) In this series I want to derive the rules for the pronunciation of the Hebrew text - and I want to remember it somehow. If you are just starting, I also started late - with this same puzzle in front of me.

The SimHebrew for Genesis 12 the first verse: viamr ihvh al-abrm lç-lç marxç ummoldtç umbit abiç 
al-harx awr araç

And the music -- according to the hand-signals in the text, those marks of taste (te'amim) - so that we can judge the phrasing of each of these words in context. 

Genesis 12 verse 1 - to observe the phrasing of the whole.

You will notice that accents have differing roles in the pronunciation schemes of the Latin letters in the European languages. There are no such accents in the SimHebrew. With a few exceptions, the accents in the Hebrew text are music. The musical phrase reveals the shape and tone of voice in the Hebrew. Given the music, can we draw out the rules. The exceptions (the metheg) should be ignored but since it has the same shape as the silluq, this requires fuzzy logic. I have encoded this in the algorithm for the scores.

I outlined the letters in the previous post which I will take as having been read. I also mentioned one rule earlier - and I would like to see if it applies: Where there are two consonants together, insert a schwa between them. In fact this rule does not apply. A schwa also may have the effect of terminating a closed syllable - so there is more technical detail here than I can put into a guideline. Let's say there is a grunt between consecutive consonants but it may be an unaccented /a/ or /o/ or /i/ and we must learn the rules. Also some letters that are there - particularly aleph, may be silent. And some root letters disappear with the suffixes and prefixes attached.

I haven't bombarded you with incomprehensible grammar. I hope to approach this problem as a child would by hearing its parents speak the language. But I will make the speech visible. I may even be able to include a bit of solfege in the visual aid - some day.

You can see that the first word is viamr. The prefix v identifies this verb as being in its narrative form. This particular verb form with root amr, appears over 2000 times in the text as part of the narrative flow of the story, so it's a good one to memorize. The pattern for the word is _a-_o_e_ va-io-mer. How can we know this? It happens to be the narrative preterite -- it is signaled by the /v/ Much of the Bible is narrative as well as song, so the forms are common. But there are 5,544 distinct vowel patterns for roots of length three letters. This is not how to approach such a problem.

So here is the verse with the vowel pattern visible. a- is a lesser a, the : is schwa.

viamr _a-_o_e_  This is a stem a stem with aleph in the first position. In this form, the aleph is not pronounced at all. It's awkward to pronounce it. Note from the music that the stress is on the second syllable.

ihvh _:_a_ The divine name we have mentioned. There aren't enough vowels in the pattern. Substitute Adonai.

al _e_ The aleph in the preposition carries an /e/

abrm _a-_:_a_ Abram.

lç _e_: A command from the root hlc (walk). The h drops away in this form.

lç _:_a The preposition /l/ carries a schwa. The suffix /c/ (you) carries an a.

marxç _ei_a-_:_:_a The prefixed preposition /m/ carries /ei/. The aleph morphs into an /a-/ sound.

ummoldtç u_i_o_a-_:_:_a One long word - hard to merge with your eyes. The prefix vav becomes u before the second prefix mem (=from), The word mold is derived from ild. It is a noun form of birth - so signifying family or kindred. But I don't use family to avoid overlap with another stem. The /t/ is a connector to the suffixed pronoun (you).

umbit u_i_ei_ Same as above for the um, then the word for house with the vowel /ei/. The /t/ puts this in construct form and connects it (that's the real connector - not accents!) to the next word.

abiç _a_i_a Plural construct form of ab with suffixed c again. There are many passages in the Scripture that feature this drum-like 'you'.

al _e_ Same as above, word 3.

harx _a_a_e_ - again, the land arx with the prefixed definite article /h/ ha'arets. Here the aleph keeps its guttural presence.

awr _:a_e_ The :a is an even lesser a - more like a schwa.

araç _a-_:_e_a The hardest word for the last. The first aleph disappears into its lesser a. The second aleph carries an /e/ and the caf is as before - that word you again. The root is rah (to see).

This sort of thing could be hidden behind a click. I am still experimenting. I have only used a few grammatical terms: construct - the concatenation of nouns, suffix and prefix - all languages use them, but Hebrew uses them frequently, narrative, a form of verbs, schwa and variations on /a/ sounds. I refrained from naming any of the vowel names - because they are not the language. They are the names of the pieces of language - and they go in one ear and out the other.