[b-hebrew] Phonetic Values in the Hebrew Alphabet
George Athas
George.Athas at moore.edu.au
Sun Feb 1 16:31:23 EST 2009
Hi Karl!
It's an interesting question to see how the alphabet was adopted and adapted by different people groups. The methodology you are employing is to attach Greek values to the graphemes and read these back into the pronunciation of Hebrew and/or Phoenician. Now, you may well be right in some of your estimation, but we have no sure way of knowing.
What I can say is that your reasoning with the pronunciation of teth is almost certainly wrong. While the Greek grapheme theta was pronounced as a /th/ sound by the turn of the era (and indeed is pronounced that way in modern Greek), in Classical Greek it most probably was not pronounced that way. Both the letters theta and phi were probably not aspirated to produce the softer sound, but were probably plosive sounds. This would make Classical Greek theta sound very much like the technically correct pronunciation of Hebrew teth. Hebrew has no equivalent for a plosive /p/.
Greek also had a couple of letters it adopted from the Semitic alphabet, but which dropped out of use: koppa (cf. Qoph) and digamma (a /w/ phoneme; cf. Waw).
Another thing to be aware of in assigning phonetic values is the regional differences. Even today one can discern markedly different pronunciation schemes amongst Arabic speakers. As best as we can determine, a similar phenomenon prevailed throughout ancient history. The classic "shibboleth" story in Judges is the most obvious case in point. Considering how Ugaritic was probably pronounced, we must be prepared for various phonetic shifts.
Finally, we have no way of verifying who first came up with the alphabet. Your post implied it was the Hebrews (however we can define that term). General consensus goes for the Phoenicians. However, when it comes down to it, we just don't know who it was.
Regards,
GEORGE ATHAS
Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
www.moore.edu.au
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