Question about Vowel Sounds

[AssyrianBahra]

Hi,

I have a question about the letter "yuut."  If yuut is at the end of a word, but does not have a vowel sound, how is it pronounced or aspirated?  Simple example of my question:

Conjugating the verb, "to be," for second person singular feminine: "Atee Eewat"

The way it's spelled out, "At" is spelled Alap ptakha, noon talkana, taw, and yuut with no vowel marker.  And Eewat is spelled yoot khwasa wow ptakha taw yuut with no vowel marker.  So do we pronounce the yuut at the end of eewat, or is that silent, even though there's not a talkana?  I just realized it's hard to ask a surit question when typing with English letters..

Thanks,

Julia

 

[Tambur]

Based on my understanding, the yod in the end should only be used for feminine, and it's the exact case for the word "Atee".

If we look at the word "At", we see that for masculine, it's Alap, Nun, Taw, but for feminine, it's Alap, Nun, Taw, Yod, so in reality the word "Atee" should only be used for females.

As far as Eewat goes, I suspect that it only has a Yod in the end if it's feminine just like Atee. An interesting point to look at is if we check out Arabic, we notice the sounds in the end of words depending on what we're dealing with, for example:

You wrote
Katabt - Male
Katabtee - Female

Keep in mind that with Arabic they don't put a Yod letter, they just put a vowel. You may also ask why I bring Arabic into this? well because our language (Our older dialect) and Arabic are very similar, and whenever we feel lost with our own language we can always go back to other semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew to check up.

 

[AssyrianBahra]

Ha...that makes sense.  I thought there might be a rule, like if yuut was at the end of a word, it'll automatically gets a long e sound.  But I see what your saying, in the case of Eewat, the yuut shows that the verb is conjugated for a female.

 

[Tambur]

Thats what I suspect, in fact if you read the Bible for example, we see a verse in Mark, chapter 5 verse 41 where Jesus says "Tleetha, Qoomee", and Qoomee is spelled Qop, Waw, Meem, Yod, but if you look at our modern dialects, you'll never hear people saying "Qoomee", it's always "Qoo".

Also if you read in John, chapter 5, verse 8-9, you'll notice he uses the exact word, but he says "Qom" rather than "Qoomee", and it's spelled Qop, Waw, Meem, but missing the Yod, that's because he was talking to a male, not a female.

Just my two cents

 

[Carlo]

Tambur is absolutely right, the yudh at the end (especially if it's not xvaca with the dot under it, the vowel "ee") is usually a feminine marker, probably to avoid confusion. It's the same thing with possessive suffixes:

-In the new language, we add -okh to words if we're talking to a male, and -ekh to a female.
-In the old language (for the most part), we add -akh for a male and -ekh for a female.

So "your hand" to a male would be eedhakh (ܐܝܕܟ), to a female eedekh (ܐܝܕܟܝ, note the silent yudh). Without the yudh, they would look exactly the same.