Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 17/04/2004 03:42, Joel Nothman wrote:

> ...
> Also of note here is that a number of these communities also pronounce 
> vet  (bet without dagesh) as b. It was once likely a bilabial 
> fricative, which  is not so easy to pronounce and so seems to fall out 
> of languages - it  sounds somewhere between v and b. This sound also 
> accounts (in Latin  Spanish) for the spellings of Habana/Havana. It 
> may also account for  "Jacob" and "Job" and not "Jakov" and "Jov".


This last is more likely because Greek and Latin did not have a V sound 
and so used beta or B for the V sound when these names were 
transliterated from Hebrew.



--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/