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Hebrew Consonants -The Hebrew Guttural Letters

The guttural letters Aleph, Hey, Chet, Ayinand Resh, are created in

the throat. Because of the movement of the tongue and throat

necessary to pronounce these letters, the normal flow of speech is

interrupted whenever these gutturals are spoken.

Grammatical Peculiarities (Advanced Information)

These letters have the following peculiarities:

Aleph is pronounced more or less like a pause, as in the the opening syllable of the

word o-clock.

Hey is the sound of a huff of breath.

Chet sounds like the German chas in Bach.

Ayin is pronounced in the back of the throat -- almost as if you were clearing your

throat.

Resh is also pronounced in the back of the throat, a little lower down than Ayin.

They will never take a dagesh forte(dot inside of them). You will learn more about

dotted lettersin Unit Three.

The gutturals prefer A-Type vowelsbeneath them (more on this in Unit Two).

The gutturals receive a composite sheva (chateph forms) beneath them rather than a

vocal sheva(however, they can (and do) take a sheva nach, or silent sheva). Yes, this

is confusing -- but it should become clear after you finish Units 2-3.

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The gutturals affect the conjugation of verbs by weakeningthe shoresh (root) of the

word. This will become clearer much later -- after Unit 10.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please do not be concerned if these concepts seem unclear to you at

this point. I list them here mainly for reference for your later studies.

Return to Unit One

Hebrew for ChristiansCopyright John J. Parsons

All rights reserved.www.hebrew4christians.com

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