[Tlhingan-hol] qaghwI'

[Mark E. Shoulson]

On 04/23/2012 01:00 AM, Qov wrote:
>
> So I'd have the same grumbling about it in Hawai'ian. Find me a 
> language with a native writing system and a phonemic glottal stop that 
> treats the glottal stop differently from t and k and q and I'll be 
> convinced. In Halkomelem, also with a linguist-imposed writing system, 
> the glottal stop is written as a 7. I like that better, as it at least 
> gives it the same weight as the other letters, and it doesn't get lost 
> as easily. Also makes it easier to tell that the road signs aren't in 
> Klingon!

Convinced of what?

Hebrew has a phonemic glottal stop, and it has its own letter (the very 
first in the alphabet, in fact). As a phoneme, it maybe isn't on 
completely equal footing with all the others; it is silent in word-final 
(syllable-final, really) position, has some restrictions and weirdnesses 
about its vocalization, many of which are shared by other pharyngeal and 
glottal phonemes like /h/ and /ʕ/. The letter is a perfectly fine letter 
with a perfectly fine name like all the others. Letter-names originally 
had a meaning in Phonecian (and Hebrew, which is closely related), so 
they weren't all "bay chay Day..."; Greek preserves them also. Aleph is 
an old (archaic in Hebrew) term for "ox". It was just a common word they 
had which started with the right sound. The other letter-names are similar.

Arabic also has a phonemic glottal stop, and while it also has the 
letter that Hebrew uses (Heb. Alef, Ar. Alif), it isn't considered to 
have a sound of its own, but mostly exists to lengthen vowels or for 
another letter (hamza), the one that really *does* make the glottal-stop 
sound, to sit on. Hamza can sit on other letters too, though, and 
sometimes even sits on the baseline all by itself. I think your question 
is regarding the name, is it also considered an "interrupter"? 
Unfortunately, I don't know what the word "hamza" actually means.

~mark