Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 19/02/2004 15:27, Karl Randolph wrote:

> Peter:
>
> I noticed that in Hebrew poetry, the two letters are treated as the same 
> letter. ...

If you are referring to acrostic poems, this is true, but tells us about 
the alphabet at the time those poems were written, and not about 
pronunciation - just as an English acrostic would have only one letter G 
for two pronunciations.

> ... Second, there are lexemes in Tanakh which have two different spellings 
> where the only difference is that one spelling has a sin, the other shin. ...

For example? You are not thinking in fact of those in which one spelling 
has sin and other SAMEKH, are you? There are a number of those. There 
are also some sin/tsade crossovers e.g. YIC:XFQ / YI&:XFQ. But I don't 
know of any sin/shin crossovers. Am I just ignorant? Of course one might 
expect some just because of various routes for borrowings. English 
"ship" and "skip" have the same origin, but this does not imply that H 
and K were originally the same letter.

> ... Third, there are words apparently from the same root, but in one form 
> written with a sin (e.g. ’siym‘ to place) and another form with a shin (e.g. 
> ’sham‘ there, that place). ...

Well, these have apparent cognates with distinct forms in Arabic and 
Aramaic, so your conclusion that they are from the same root seems to be 
premature.

> ... Fourth, the number of lexemes that have different meanings but the same 
> spelling, assuming sin and shin are the same letter, appears no more commonly 
> than for other letters, whereas if they had been separate phonemes from way 
> back, I expected to find more, many times more.
>  

Well, any such argument would have to be based on a careful statistical 
analysis and not a gut feeling - especially if you want people to 
believe you rather than a couple of centuries of scholarship.

> It is for these four reasons that I say that sin and shin were the same 
> phoneme, at least, in pre-Galut Babel Hebrew.
>
> Karl W. Randolph.
>
>  


--
Peter Kirk
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peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
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