Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

----- Original Message -----
From: <MarianneLuban AT aol.com>
> 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.

Makes sense. /s/, /t/ and /th/ are very close.

Yigal