Aramaic Vowels

[borota]

Based on how I hear Assyrians pronounce words this is my understanding thus far:
Pthakha - [?] - <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_front_unrounded_vowel">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_ ... nded_vowel</a><!-- m -->
Sqapa - [a] - <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_front_unrounded_vowel">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_front_unrounded_vowel</a><!-- m -->

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_alphabet">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_alphabet</a><!-- m --> has it different though:
Pthakha - [a] - <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_front_unrounded_vowel">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_front_unrounded_vowel</a><!-- m -->
Sqapa - [a:] - <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_unrounded_vowel">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_unrounded_vowel</a><!-- m -->

Sometimes Pthakha sounds like Sqapa, but the rules for when that happens are not too clear to me yet.

I am familiar with IPA a little bit, because that's how I learnt English back in my country. It would be of tremendous help to have Aramaic sounds spelled out using IPA. The English transliteration is not that helpful to me, not too clear and too approximate.

Note: MySQL here doesn't allow me to enter Unicode, so I posted the links to respective IPA symbols.