How to Pronounce the Israeli Hebrew Heh (ה) | UlpaNoya

Easily improve your Israeli Hebrew pronunciation
with this eye-opening tip!
To enjoy the 3 awesome benefits of pronouncing Heh (ה) like a native Israeli
watch this video and implement!
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[@erpollock]

These are real subtleties one wouldn't know even if you can speak Ivrit quite well.

[@florimarsanchez9729]

תודה רבה

[@evulka2012]

Noya it’s so fun to learn Hebrew with you!! please font stop, you are awesome💜💜💜

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

Thank you so much willow! ❤️

[@VladislavGluz-i5o]

Fantastic! Your explanations so clear, useful and extremely effective! Appreciate you so much! Please, continue this great job)❤

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

Thank you! I'm sure happy to hear!

[@mmkippod]

Thanks for this ה help! 🙌

[@amanzemene9656]

Hello there, what word can express how much you helped me... I know a lot of ulpan teachers but you are the bestest ❤❤❤ please do me, us more and more videos...about reduced words,how Israelis speak...

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

Thank you very much amanzemene!❤️🙏

[@jacksonamaral329]

Pretty good, your lessons with tips.

[@chaank1069]

Love your videos.

[@sarahsalama6314]

תודה רבה 😍

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

בבקשה 🙂

[@cesararaujjo6988]

You are awesome! I enjoy learning Hebrew with you!

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

Thank you Cesar! I'm happy to hear!

[@erpollock]

Also, when you actually live among Israelis with good native pronunciation, you automatically pick up the proper accent. To me, first concentrate on vocabulary and grammar - and the accent will follow naturally. This has been my experience.

[@erpollock]

This is very helpful. Leave off the H, like a Cockney accent. 'ow do you do? I didn't realize this, and I'm a pretty fluent speaker.

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

Hi Eileen! I'm glad you found it helpful! As to the cockney accent, just be careful not to turn the H into a glottal stop. :)

[@nuayt]

Please help learners to differentiate between khet ח and chaf כ (ך).

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

Hi Nuayt, In modern Hebrew ח and כ sound exactly the same, and are produced in the exact same place and way. They are velar unvoiced fricatives. Velar means that they are produced at the soft palate. Which is the muscular soft area at the roof of the mouth right behind the hard palate. (It's right before the uvula- that soft fleshy part that hangs down at the back of the mouth). They used to be different from each other in older Hebrew. ח was pharyngial (at the very back of the mouth. Where the pharynx is. Behind the uvula. Basically, the top part of the throat), and had a more guttural sound (something like a ה with more friction). It's a common sound in Arabic.

[@microchip470]

In the example בבית החדש wouldn't it be הֶחדש?

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

Yes, in proper Hebrew. Not how native Israelis speak 😊

[@shenzim4151]

What about at the beginning of a word? For instance השם ? Thank you!

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

If it's after another word, for instance: "barooch hashem", like I said in the video- slide smoothly from the end of the first word into the second word, by "moving" the vowel of the "ha" to the last sound of "barooch". So you get: "baroocha shem". If there's no word before the word that starts with "heh", you have to pronounce the "heh". But instead of using a lot of air and "voiceless friction", (like when you have something really cold in your mouth, and you're trying to warm it up by going: ha ha ha, like when you whisper), try to make a much less "airy" sound. Make sure it's a voiced sound. (Meaning: activate your vocal cords). Practice by going: ahhhhhhh like when a doctor wants to check your throat, and focus on how this loooong sound feels in your throat. It's not a glottal stop (-like for an "alef"). So make sure there's no obstruction of airflow in the vocal tract at any point. When you get how it feels, use the same production technique with a word that starts with "heh".

[@OkwudilichukwuIlokanazu]

What is pronunciation of the Hebrew name YEHOSHUA?

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

@@OkwudilichukwuIlokanazu exactly like you wrote it, and with the stress on the "shu". - That's the proper/correct Hebrew. The "Israeli" way is: YEoSHUA. Where the H consonant is gone, and only it's vowel is pronounced.

[@OkwudilichukwuIlokanazu]

@@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn What of the name YAHOSHUA?

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

@@OkwudilichukwuIlokanazu There is no such name. Only YEHOSHUA.

[@M.athematech]

I'm struggling to correctly technically classify how you are pronouncing it.The common wisdom is to say that Israelis drop the he, but I am consistently hearing an h sound when you say the Israeli he. However I am a first language English speaker from South African and one of the features of the South African English accent (the real South African English accent NOT the Hollywood made up supposed South African accent) is that we pronounce the h as a voiced glottal fricative whereas in say in a Texas accent or in an upper class British accent, it is an unvoiced glottal fricative. I am definitely hearing my South African voiced h for your he, possibly with weaker articulation due to grouping with initial syllable rather than being a clean start of the subsequent syllable. As you say , you are not changing it into an aleph - and yours and most Israelis aleph seems to vary from a null (absence of a consonant) to at most a pre-glottalization of a vowel when you want to emphazie. Often the Israeli aleph is called a glottal stop but a true glottal stop is the sound found in Cockney English that replaces a t between vowels say with an audible clenching and release of the vocal cords - which is not an Israeli aleph nor even a typical Arabic hamza contrary to what is often claimed in books! (Most varieties of English also pre-glottalize initial vowels unlike say Spanish and Italian which start initial vowels very cleanly). I reckon the Israeli he is a voiced glottal fricative with a tendency to group slightly with an initial syllable as its ending rather than merely starting a new syllable cleanly as its starting consonant, contrasting with an aleph that is start of a new syllable with at most a glottal contraction but no fricaive character.

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

So… the main issue on the table here, is how to produce the Israeli Heh. In modern / Israeli Hebrew, as I explain in the video, the Heh is normally produced like a vowel, and not like a consonant. This means that there is no friction and no glottalization. Vowels are produced with no obstruction of the airflow. Since the Israeli Heh is produced like a vowel, this applies to it as well. It is possible, however, to come across Heh productions that have some aspiration before the vowel, usually, when we are making an effort to speak with clear articulation. But again- this is usually not the case in normal, natural speech. So you can understand that your classification of Heh being a "voiced glottal fricative" is not relevant in modern Hebrew. In the past Heh was an unvoiced glottal fricative.

[@M.athematech]

@@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhornthe examples you give it's pronounced the same as the h in my pronunciation of the English word "rehabilitation" which isn't simply a vowel, but is also not the aspiration of say a Texan h, there is continual voicing but audibly different to simply dropping the h. Also in ancient Hebrew heh was voiced not unvoiced, it is grouped with vav, and zayin in the alephbet.

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

@@M.athematech You: "the examples you give it's pronounced the same as the h in my pronunciation of the English word "rehabilitation"". My answer: There is no way for me to know how you pronounce "rehabilitation", therefore I cannot respond to that. You: "Also in ancient Hebrew heh was voiced not unvoiced," My answer: I wasn't talking about ancient Hebrew. (Also, I would be very interested to know where you got this curious idea from, which you claim so decisively). You: "it is grouped with vav, and zayin in the alephbet" My answer: "I don't understand what you mean by that".

[@M.athematech]

@@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn I am going with Godfrey Driver's view that the arrangement of the alephbet was in groups based on type of articulation (according to ancient primitive understanding) and height (throat, lips, palate, teeth), this accords also with the tradition partly recorded by Ibn Ezra. The expressed sounds aleph bet, gimel, dalet, then the buzzing sounds heh, vav, zayin, then sighing sounds chet, tet (probably pharyngealized unvoiced) etc. This grouping and the fact that heh was adopted by the Greeks as the vowel letter E while instead it was the chet that was adopted as H denoting an aspiration, all point to ancient heh having been a voiced glottal rather than an unvoiced aspiration like in Arabic.

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

I'm not familiar with this arrangement/grouping, and I have to say it doesn't make sense to me. Furthermore, based on what you wrote, it really sounds to me like how you decided to classify the Heh is your own personal theory/conclusion. Finally, all of this is related to ancient Hebrew (if anything at all) and not to modern Hebrew, so it is irrelevant if what you're looking for is to understand the technical production of Heh, by native speakers today. If this is not what you're looking for, and you are actually interested in how Heh was produced 2000 years ago, I'm not sure you came to the right place...

[@SeanRhoadesChristopher]

This is why languages are no longer sounding like they are spelled. Shall we change the spelling to fit? There are some sounds I cannot make. Should we adjust the spelling to accommodate my inability? There are some sounds that I just don’t like to make, shall we adjust the spelling to accommodate my preference? We can leave the spelling the same and force everyone to speak like me! I don’t think so!

[@UlpaNoyaNoyaEinhorn]

I say we ban the use of: wanna, gonna, gotta etc. It's spelled: want to. Going to. Got to. Why are SO MANY PEOPLE ignoring the spelling and pronouncing it in a more comfortable way, that makes everything flow better? Also let's avoid: let's! And only say: Let us! And never say: Kinda. Because there's an f in- kind of. But as long as we're saying the "of", since it's SPELLED with an "f" let's pronounce it with a ffffff sound, and not with a "v" sound, so there's always complete agreement between the spelling and pronunciation! Also make sure to articulate the "t" in "let me see". And don't even think about saying it like: "lemme see". That's MADNESS! Of course we should start pronouncing the K in "know" (If it's spelled with a "k" the pronunciation should have a k!), we must pronounce the G in "daughter" and in "neighbor" and words like: "nation" shouldn't be pronounced with a "sh" sound. They're SPELLED with a "t". Sean, try to relax, take it easy and have some fun. There's a reason why written language and spoken language are very different. No catastrophe will happen if the spelling and pronunciation are different.

[@SajiSNairNair-tu9dk]

😩👉radha?