Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

At 05:03 PM 7/8/2002 +0200, Ian Hutchesson wrote:
>
>It is in the change from one language (or phonetic 
>system) to another that we learn things about 
>pronunciation. We learn from the transliteration of 
>Caesar in Hieroglyphic (and others) that the initial C 
>was pronounced /k/ and not /s/ as we get from the 
>French, or /t$/ as the Italians insist.
>
>

This is also true of Talmudic (that is, Roman-Byzantine Period) Hebrew,
which always has a qoph for the latin "c" = qeisar, provinqiyah (=province)
etc.

The Hebrew spelling of the French "glosses" used by Rashi in his 12th
century commentaries is a key to medieval French pronunciation.



Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.