Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>

> 
> ...
> 
> Yes, I was convinced by Faber's study even though it completely
> destroyed a line of theory I had.  I had to go back and try to work
> out a different line of argument.  But then, what is study?  Faber's
> study answers a whole lot of questions about this issue:
> 1) How come Arabic s and sh are apparently interchanged in
> other Semitic dialects.
> 2) Akkadian sh probably sounded originally like an s.
> 3) How come th was merged into shin in Hebrew, taw in Aramaic,
> but not into samekh.
> 4) How come shin and sin were merged in Phoenician.
> 
> ...
> 
> Yitzhak Sapir

And I want to ask one more question, which may throw this whole pronunciation 
question in the air:

What is the effect of orthography (correct spelling) on the pronunciations of 
the different graphemes?

For some background: when I looked at European languages using the Latin 
alphabet (not English, it is a mess), I noticed that those languages where 
the spelling remained fluid, the values and pronunciations of the graphemes 
tended to remain constant even as the language changed, with variation in 
spelling reflecting dialectual use and shifts in language pronunciation. But 
where there is an attempt to maintain a correct spelling, then as the 
language changed, the pronunciation of the graphemes changed, making it 
difficult to impossible to recognize when and where a language changed from 
looking at historic examples of writing.

As a result, the German pronunciation of graphemes is closer to the original 
Latin use of the same, than is French, even though French is descended from 
Latin.

To get back to Hebrew: the Greek theta is unquestionably derived from the 
Hebrew tet, xi from the samekh, sigma from sin/shin. Was there ever a time 
before quite modern times where Greek writing had its spellings frozen, 
thereby causing these letters to have a major change in pronunciations?

Yet Hebrew did suffer from a freezing of spelling, that lasted from the end 
of the Babylonian captivity to today, precisely at times when the language 
was under intense pressure to change.

As a corrolary to the above question: is it possible that the Greek 
pronunciations preserve more of the original grapheme pronunciations than 
does Hebrew?

Given the above history, I think it is not only possible, but probable.

Karl W. Randolph.
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