more pronunciations...

[Jennifer Piersol]

Linguist alert. ;)

IIRC (which is not 100%, be warned), the "ch" sounds in German are 
technically the same - though they may be pronounced differently in 
the mouth.  This has to do with "assimilation" - where your next 
consonant/vowel is going to be, and where your last one was.  Simple 
example: say "ping" and then say "pong".  the "ng" sound in Ping 
should be more towards the front of your palate than the one in Pong.

IIRC (see warning above), the "ch" sounds in Hebrew are pronounced in 
the same way as in German.

However (and I'm sure I remember this one correctly), Arabic in fact 
has *two* "ch" sounds... one is the same as in German and Hebrew, and 
the other is pronounced WAY back in the throat.  It's called a 
pharyngeal (sp?) fricative, meaning that the strident sound is made 
in the pharynx as compared to in the mouth area.  So if you think 
that Arabic and Hebrew sound alike, you're right... and if you think 
they sound different, you're right.  Btw, if you're interested, 
Arabic is the only language that I know of that uses the pharyngeal 
fricative - and you need to learn it VERY early (before age 7, 
ideally) in order to pronounce it correctly.  If you don't, it's 
almost impossible to speak Arabic... at least, without inadvertantly 
insulting someone. ;)

Jen (who really wishes she had an easy way to store her Linguistics 
books so that she had room in her house *and* could look stuff up)