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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Re: PS /g/
  • Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 12:17:04 +0000

On 16/11/2004 06:43, Yigal Levin wrote:

...

As far as Greek: the graphic similarity of Shin and Sigma and of Samekh to
Xi is quite apparent. Greek did not have a /sh/ sound, and so adopted the
21st letter of the Phoenician alphabet as /s/. Samekh was then superfluous,
but since Phoenician did not have a /x/, that sign was made into the Xi.
Other Phoenician letters that were not pronounced in Greek were the
gutterals Aleph, He, Het, and Ayin, as well as Yod; these became the vowels,
a function which Phoenician did without.


Vav, interestingly, was borrowed and then split into two letters, the consonant digamma, which was later dropped except as a numeral (although Latin F was borrowed from it, and still has sixth position in the alphabet), and the vowel upsilon, which was added to the end of the alphabet and remained there. Latin U, V, W and Y all derive from this, so that is five Latin letters from one Hebrew one!

So, it would seem that the distinction between Samekh and Sin, which must
have been pronounced at one time (otherwise there would not have been
separate letters in the first place) was lost by the time the Greeks
borrowed the Phoenician alphabet. ...


Nick Nicholas' explanation (and he is an expert on Greek) is rather different. According to him, some early Greek dialects had a /sh/ sound and xi was originally used for this, because those who borrowed the letters swapped round the sounds of samekh and shin, perhaps confused because some people pronounced shin as /s/. Only later did the /sh/ sound change into /ks/.

...

As far as Shin/Sin, obviously most Semitic dialects have both sounds.
However, the specific Canaanite dialect whose 22 letter alphabet was adopted
by everyone else did not, or at least, the way they pronounced Sin (which
was DIFFERENT than Samekh), was close enough to Shin so that they used the
same letter. The Hebrews, at least, and probably most Arameans as well, kept
the tradition of pronouncing both Shin and Sin, a tradition that remained
all the way down to the masoretes, who added the dot on the right for Shin
and on the left for Sin.


Or could it be that already at the time the alphabet was adopted sin had lost its distinct sound everywhere, but had merged with shin in Phoenician but with samekh in Hebrew and Aramaic? This would imply that when writing was borrowed from the Phoenicians or whoever, spellings were also borrowed, so that shin was sometimes written for words actually pronounced with samekh. Borrowing of spellings even when contradicted by pronunciation may sound strange, but it is well attested both with Latin and French words into English etc and with Arabic words into Persian and many other Arabic script languages. One would have to presume that the earliest scribes in Israel were Phoenicians, or had studied at the Phoenician scribal schools, and so wrote Hebrew as if it was badly pronounced Phoenician. There is after all very little difference between the written languages in the earliest periods.

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






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