Introduction to Israeli Linguistics, or: Welcome

Hello. My name is illan gonen, and I'm a linguist at heart and soul. I work as a "Hebrew" editor in Ma'ariv, Israel's second largest newspaper. My main interest is PHONOLOGY - the behaviour of language's sounds. what do you mean by that? Oh, this exact phrase is a good example! Most Americans will pronounce it: "wha'd'o you mean by that", and some Americans will rather say sth like that: "wha'chou mean by that", while Englishmen might utter it: "wha' do you mean by tha'", and so on. For a second example, take the word example: the "x" is pronounced as the sequence /gz/, unlike in the word extravagance, which then is uttered /ks/. That's phonology. This blog will mainly touch Israeli phonology, and Israeli MORPHOLOGY - the behaviour of the words' forms and components. ISRAELI is the language spoken by Israeli people as their mother tongue, usually refered to as "Hebrew". So actually this blog will deal "Hebrew" Linguistics (one of my future posts will describe some views on the Israeli/Hebrew subject). Here are some examples from Israeli phonology (apostrophe marks main stress on the following syllable):

• 'savta ("grandmom") --> 'safta (the voiceless /t/ affects its preceding /v/),
• mazki'ra ("secretary") --> maski'ra (the voiceless /k/ affects its preceding /z/),
• beyt-'sefer ("school", litterally "house of books") --> be'tsefer (the /y/ is omitted and the /t/ and /s/ are combined into one consonant /ts/),

and a more complicated example:

• ma zot o'meret (lit. "what this means?") is usually pronounced 'masto'meret.

what happened here?

1. The vowel /o/ in zot was omitted, to create 'mazto'meret
2. The voiceless /t/ affected its precedent /z/, to create 'masto'meret

This blog is actually a translated mirror-blog of my Israeli "Israeli Linguistics" blog here.

Here I want to share some ideas I have and points of view I hold on the Israeli lively, constanly-created language. It's happening all around Israel, native speakers are inventing, reusing and coining new words, phrases and structures - at home, in the newspapers, on TV, at work, in our minds. Fascinating phenomena just waiting for someone to lend his ear.

I want to document as many phenomena as I can, considering my limited resources. I write down a lot of ideas in my notebooks and post-its on my screen, just like every thinking person, isn't it? Some time ago I came to the decision that I can't study all of them myself, so I decided to take the "open code" approach and publish them here, so everyone with web access can find them and might take them and study.

This is our language, and I want to promote its research. Therefore, it will make me most happy and proud if Israeli/Hebrew Linguistics students would take ideas from here and use them as they please. No copyrights here :-)

hope you'll enjoy, and please feel free to discuss everything you want with me!