Biblical Hebrew Forum

[MarianneLuban AT aol.com]

In a message dated 11/16/2004 9:54:19 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il writes:


> There is absolutely no proof that Samekh ever had anything other than an 
> /s/
> sound, though it was obviously different originally (in early Canaanite)
> than Sin.

In the orthography, samekh was written very many times with Egyptian /T/, a 
grapheme of unknown value, which later became interchangeable with Egyptian 
/t/ 
and lost its original sound.  I can't swear to the accuracy of this, but it 
may be that /T/ once had the value of the Castilian vocalization of the c in 
Barcelona as "Barthelona". Not quite the same as the English dipthong 
"th"--but 
something near.