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  • From: "Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>
  • To: "Kevin L. Barney" <klbarney AT yahoo.com>, "Biblical Hebrew" <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: ghayin
  • Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 21:18:50 -0000


Almost certainly ayin, not ghayin. How do I know? Because the Azerbaijani
form of this name (oddly enough, a common personal name) uses an apostrophe
not a g breve. This implies that the underlying Arabic as `eyn not gheyn.

Actually this is implicit in BDB. BDB lists K.:NA(AN under the root KFNA(
for which it gives an Arabic cognate with an `eyn. If the BDB authors had
thought that K.:NA(AN used a ghayin, they would have conjectured a separate
root.

Peter Kirk

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin L. Barney [mailto:klbarney AT yahoo.com]
Sent: 13 March 2001 15:27
To: Biblical Hebrew
Subject: ghayin


I am trying to find out whether the ayin in Canaan (Kena'an) was
originally a true ayin or ghayin. Does anyone know? How would one go
about finding the answer to this question? Is there some notation in BDB
or something I should know about?

Also, I did not know until yesterday that there was such a thing as
ghayin. I take it this was originally a separate letter with a gh
pronunciation that merged at an early date with ayin, and is not
separately represented in modern transcriptions. If anyone would care to
offer any more background on ghayin, I would appreciate it.

Kevin L. Barney
Hoffman Estates, Illinois
klbarney AT yahoo.com




  • ghayin, Kevin L. Barney, 03/13/2001
    • <Possible follow-up(s)>
    • ghayin, Randall Buth, 03/13/2001
    • RE: ghayin, Peter Kirk, 03/13/2001
    • Re: ghayin, Joe Baker, 03/14/2001

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