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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Beit/Veit
  • Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:18:23 +0300

Hi again,

That was exactly my point: as far as we can tell, Biblical Hebrew did not have a "v" sound. Not only doesn't Arabic, but neither did Ugaritc or Akkadian, which are much closer in time to Biblical Hebrew. So yes, Isaac's wife was something like "Reb'ka" (with what the Mesoretes called a Sh'va), which is how the Greek got "Rebekka".


The problem with D and Dh (Th as in "that") is just like B/V - since Greek does not have a Dh sound, we have no way of knowing whether when Greek wrote Delta, they heard Dalet or Dhalet or both. The only thing that we know is that in Biblical Hebrew the difference was not "regular" enough to warrent two letter-signs like in Ugaritic, but by the time of the Mesorets, they were able to include the differences in the BGDKPT rule. The same, BTW, is true for Gimmel, however it was "originally" pronounced.

Yigal Levin


----- Original Message ----- From: "Yodan" <yodan AT yodanco.com>
To: "'b-hebrew'" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 8:56 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Beit/Veit



Yigal, thank you and thanks to Karl and Kevin.



A question to you and to others:



Does the fact that Arabic doesn't have a "v" consonant support the
possibility that Hebrew too didn't have a "v" consonant (we know that VAV
was pronounced like WAW, and this is still the case in some Hebrew
"dialects")? If so, perhaps what later became VEIT was pronounced like BEIT?
(e.g. Ribka later became Rivka?).



A somewhat related question: Does anyone know if DALED is believed to have
been pronounced as an emphatic consonant, like in Arabic, perhaps in
addition to another pronunciation (like "d" or like "th" in "that", as do
Yemenite Jews)?



Thanks!



Rivka Sherman-Gold





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