Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Cohen, Izzy" <Izzy_Cohen AT bmc.com>]

Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com> wrote:
>> 
  The second clue for me was the letter samech, written like the Greek
letter xi 
  in pre-exilic writing and in the same place in the alphabet, I believe it
had 
  the 'x' sound. However, that the second x in Artaxerxes was sometimes
written 
  with a samech and sometimes with a sin/shin in Ezra indicates that it may
have 
  been at that time that samech was changing its pronunciation from x to s 
  the first x is written with a combination of heth - sin/shin).
  ... Are there other sources that either back up or counteract my
interpretation? 
<<

The so-called "Rashi script" is one such source. 
The shape of its letters elicits an older sound.
Ergo, written (not printed) Rashi script is actually 
*older* than the standard square (Asheris meruba) script.

The substitution of a newer combination of letters 
in place of an older letter is another source. 
The newer letters tend to preserve the older sound.
This type of substitution can sometimes be found 
in words that seem to be just a little bit too long,
such as Hebrew XaSHMaL (color of amber, electricity) 
and N'XoSHeS (color of henna/sienna, copper).

Here's an item about Rashi script that I think is
relevant to this discussion:

On the Antiquity of the (so-called) Rashi Script
================================================

Dan "Moonhawk" Alford wrote:

> ... one Sanskrit tradition closer to the writing demands keeping 
> the sounds accurate in order to preserve their vibrational power 
> even if the verbal meaning fades; another, spoken, tradition demands 
> staying with the meaning while the regional sounds become variable. 

[This is easier to read with a Courier non-proportional font.]

I find both of the above "traditions" happening in (proto) Hebrew. 
When the sound of a letter changes, for example:

aleph - GHT/CHS --> T --> current glottal stop (written as ? below).
The Rashi aleph looks like a modern het plus a chupchik. This is 
evidence that the ancient aleph once had a somewhat het-like sound.

bet   - MB --> B
The Rashi bet looks somewhat like an M turned 90 deg clockwise.
Using 3 = aiyin, compare Latin mansio = abode & Hebrew BayiS; 
mausoleum & beis-3olam.

heh   - DH --> H
The Rashi heh looks like a modern taf/saf turned 90 deg clockwise.
It seems the ancient heh had a DH sound. This may explain why heh 
is the definite article in Hebrew while "the" has this function 
in English.

vav   - F --> V

het1  - W --> KH (written as X below) 
        Compare ancient Greek digamma and Germanic Wynn.

het2  - X = KS --> KH (compare English/Spanish Mexico)

yod   - G/K --> Y

mem   - a "lazy" mem (made with the mouth not fully closed) 
        sounds like a W in other languages. M and B often
        switch across languages, especially when a word is 
        reversed. The M starts with the mouth open and you 
        close it. The B starts witht he mouth closed and 
        you open it. Otherwise, they are quite similar.

aiyin - G/K --> almost soundless velar (written as 3 below)

tzadi - S --> TZ
The Rashi tzadi has a thin S shape.

shin  - D/T --> SH (note the T in English -tion and -tial suffixes).
The Rashi shin looks like a modern tet turned 90 deg clockwise.
This is evidence that the ancient shin had a tet-like sound.
SHeN = tooth. Compare TaN = jackal, TaNiN = crocodile. Giving the 
ancient shin a dental sound makes SHeN cognate with L dens and 
Sanskrit dánta; and LaTiN/LaDiNo related to LaSHoN = tongue.

sounds of resh/nun/lamed rotate. Often: lamed = N, nun = R, resh = L. 

Examples
--------

1 - The word retains its original spelling but acquires the new sound.
    Example 1: bet-aleph = come, come in
    BaCHS --> Ba? (where ? = glottal stop)
    Compare Bacchus, Gk god of wine/fertility; female body-part box.
    For semantic range, compare English "come on to" = sexual advance 
    and the noun "come" = semen.

    Example 2: "Fire, Women, and Other Dangerous Things"
    aleph-shin oCHSa:D --> ?a:SH = fire
    Compare oxid(ation), the essence of fire.

    *shin-heh-aleph D/T-[D]H-oGHT --> aleph-shin-heh ?iSHaH = wife, woman.
    Compare daughter/Tochter. In ancient times, the Hebrew wife went to 
    live with the tribe of her husband. For everyone else, she was like 
    another daughter. Only for her husband was she a wife.

    After the aleph lost its sound, it usually moved to the beginning
    of the Hebrew word, so most correspondences (today) have the form:
    aleph-C1-(C2) = C1-(C2)-GHT. 

    Examples, other: 
    bet-resh-aleph BR[GHT] = brought (forth), created
    aleph-mem [GHT]iM = may/might
    aleph-feh [GHT]aF as in XaRoN ?aF = anger, spirit (reversed) of fight
    aleph-vav(oh)-resh [GHT]-o-L = light
    resh-aleph-vav(oh)-sof L-[GHT]oS = OE lights ==> lungs, as in 
      "I'm gonna beat the livin' daylights outta ya" where 
      "livin' daylights" had been "liver and lights (lungs)". 

1b- Treating aleph as T (similar to GHT in current English):
 
    Examples: aleph-mem Ta:M = MuTter/MoTher
              aleph-vet Ta:V = VaTer/FaTher
              aleph-het-sof TWS = OE sweoster, OHG swester = sister
              aleph-resh-tzadi TRTS ~ Latin terrestrial
  
2 - The word retains its original sound but becomes respelled with 
    other letters that afterwards most nearly represent that sound.
    I call this the NBOW (new bottle, old whine) phenomena. This may 
    involve "borrowing back" the original sound from a neighboring 
    language in which that sound did not change.

    Examples: 
    het-shin replaces aleph. In Aramaic, het-dalet replaces aleph.

    *aleph-bet = 1,2 = *to count --> het-shin-bet KHaTaV --> KHaSHaV 
      = to count. Compare Latin abacus < Gk ábax = a counting board.

    *aleph-bet-lamed --> het-shin-mem-lamed=(color of) amber/electrum
      Ezekiel 1:4 --> XaSHMaL = electricity 
      electrum = an ancient amber-colored alloy of gold and silver. 
      Amber becomes charged with static electricity when rubbed.

    *nun-aleph-saf --> nun-het-shin-taf NaXoSHeT = copper.
     Compare het-yod-nun-heh XeNaH = henna (copper colored)

    *nun-aleph --> nun-het-shin = snake. Compare Eunectes murinus 
     = anaconda < anacandaia < Sinhalese henakandaya

    Another example: Hebrew has replaced the presumed *heh = DH with 
    a dalet. Greek and Latin lost the D in the DH and have an H-sound:

  DaM = blood                    Gk HeMo-/HaeMo- Gk HaiMa = blood
  DaMem = bleeds                 Gk HyMen = membrane (that bleeds when
                                            punctured)
?aDoM = red       compare earth (below) and Gk erythrós = red
?aDaM = Adam, man, mankind    Latin HoMo  = man, HuMman; but compare Gk
  DeMos = people, population
 ?aDaMah = ground, earth     = Latin HuMus ~ Gk cHaMaí = on the ground
   DiMooY = image              Latin  iMaGinem < imago=a copy, likeness
   DoNaG = (bees)wax              OE HuNiG = honey
   DVoRah = bee                   OE HyF = (bee)hive  [maybe]
   DaG = fish                     OE HaCa = hake
   DaG = fish                     MD HoK = hook, angle; OHG hako=hook
   DaGaR = hatch                            ME HaCchen; ~ MHG hecken = to
hatch
   DuR = circle, Talmudic: rim    Gk HáLos = circle, halo

   Greek retained the DH/TH sound in its word for fish: ichthos.
   In current Hebrew dalet-gimel DaG = fish. The dalet ~ th and 
   the gimel ~ ch in the Greek word.

3 - Both 1 and 2 occur, creating synonyms where 2 seemingly 
    different words have the same meaning. 
    Example:
    SHaD = breast   This word has the older letters but the newer sound.
                    Compare [T]Chad (an area south of Lybia < LeV = heart, 
                    south of the Gulf of Sidra = SHiDRa = spine, backbone
                    on an anthropomorphic body-part map of north Africa.
                    
    DaD  = breast   This word has the newer letters but the older sound.
                    Compare teat/tit; titer/titrate (drop by drop). 
                    
4 - Based on the ancient sounds suggested above, YH+VH becomes very
    meaningful. Compare Catholic = godly/godlike. Cathedral = 
    god + room and not "chair".

5 - It is well-documented that "Rashi" script was adopted by printers 
    as a convenient method to make a clear visual distinction between 
    Talmudic text and later commentary, especially that of Rashi. But 
    the script is *not* an arbitrary design. If the shape of a Rashi 
    letter significantly differs from the standard script, the change 
    represents an ancient difference in pronunciation.

    The pronunciation elicited by the Rashi script is OLDER. In other 
    words, it is as though the printers used an older script to represent 
    newer writings simply because the older script was (at that time) 
    still recognizable/readable and sufficiently "different" to accomplish 
    their goal. The Rashi script may have still been used by descendents
    of Jews who were not taken to Babylonia.

6 - Stan Tenen of the Meru Foundation also believes the Rashi script is
    older than the Meruba Ashuris. His analysis is based on letter-shapes
    generated by images of the hand and not on the analysis of letter-
    sounds. 

    By the way, the idea that hand/sign-language preceded written language 
    is not far-fetched. In a hunter-gatherer society, silent hand signals 
    would enable a group to communicate without alerting their prey. 
    American Indians were able to communicate coast-to-coast with a fairly 
    uniform sign language long after their spoken languages had become 
    mutually unintelligible. 

dosh kham,
izzy_cohen AT bmc.com