Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Henry Churchyard <churchyh AT ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>]

> From: Peter_Kirk AT sil.org

> So what about the theory that there were two distinct pronunciations
> of `ayin and two of Het in ancient Hebrew?  Evidence for this in
> Hebrew includes the transliteration of `ayin as gamma in LXX (and
> "g" in English) in the names Gaza and Gomorrah - Gaza is spelt with
> gheyn in Arabic. Thus `ayin and ghayin, Het and khet would, like sin
> and shin, have been two letters written the same.  Is there anything
> in that theory?

There was a paper by Joshua Blau published in 1980 in the proceedings
of the Israeli academy of something that addressed this question (I'm
away from home now, and so don't have the exact reference handy).  The
general conclusion was that such a distinction could well have
persisted into Hellenistic times, but not all that much later (I don't
remember exact chronology offhand).

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       % Henry Churchyard      http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/