1.3 The handful that differ from English
1 · Pronunciation — how to say what you read · a plain-language guide to Assyrian (Sureth) grammar
kh — the big one. This is a raspy scrape at the back of the throat, the sound in Scottish loch, German Bach, or Hebrew challah. It is extremely common in Assyrian, so it's the single most important sound to nail. It's written kh everywhere in this guide (never a bare "k" for this sound):
- khaze "to see," akhel "he eats," khalta "aunt," yarkha "month," lakhma "bread"
Say a "k" but instead of a clean stop, let the air keep hissing at the back — like clearing your throat gently.
gh — the voiced twin of kh. Same throaty location, but with your voice switched on — the "growly" r of Parisian French, or Arabic ghayn. It's much rarer. Written gh:
- gham "grief, trouble"
v, not w. The Urmi dialect of Assyrian turned the old w sound into a plain v, and merged it with the v that came from an old b. In Urmi it is always an English "v" — you never round your lips into a "w":
- shvava "neighbour," iven "I am," vada "period of time"
Other dialects of Assyrian keep the w. On the Iraqi side "I am" is iwen, and a v here will usually be a w there. Neither is a mistake; it is the same word in two dialects of one language, and it is one substitution, not a different grammar. (A person from Urmi is an urmezhnaya — f. urmezhneta, pl. urmezhnaye.)
This guide writes v throughout, because it teaches the Urmi dialect and every form in it comes from a description of Urmi. If the people you speak with say w, read the *v*s as *w*s as you go and say it their way. Nothing else on the page changes.
The throat-catch (glottal stop). Classical Aramaic had a little catch in the throat — the sound in the middle of English uh-oh, or the Cockney "bo'le" for "bottle." In everyday spoken Assyrian it's mostly softened or dropped, so this guide usually just leaves it out. You'll occasionally hear it separating two vowels; you don't need to force it.
h is a plain English "h," said clearly wherever it's written.
k and g that used to be "soft." Some k and g sounds are historically "palatal" — made a touch further forward, sometimes with a faint y-glide before them (think of the c in "cute" = "kyute"). The scholarly spelling gives them special letters, but we just write them k and g and you'll be understood saying a normal k/g:
- ktava "book," malka "king"; gora "man/husband," gana "self"
"Hard" vs. "breathy" p, t, k (a polish point). Assyrian actually distinguishes two flavours of p, t, k, ch: a breathy one with a puff of air (like English pin, tin, kin) and a hard one with no puff (like the p in spin, or p/t/k in French and Spanish). We write both the same way, so you don't have to track it on the page — but if you want to sound native, notice that many Assyrian p/t/k are the crisp, unpuffed kind. This is an accent refinement, not a meaning-changer; leave it for later.
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