Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

> >>>... True, Greeks generally omit he, but, as I wrote to Peter, that
> >>>happens in the words that have other consonants. ...
> >>>
> >>Not only in such words. Remember King Jehu, who in Greek becomes EIOU,
> >>IHOU or IOU.
> >
> >But he is not omitted at all in these examples. It became iota or epsilon
> >that is sometimes assimilated into o, making Iou.
>
> No, EI is a unit representing the first vowel of Yehu, like the eta in
IHOU.
>

Not necessarily, but I don't want to argue about that side issue. In any
case, he is represented by a Greek sound, i, h, or o. In words that contain
other consonants, he is generally lost completely.

> >Iao, on the contrary, has nothing for the first he if alpha is for schwa.
If
> >alpha is for he, as I suggest, then the word is not the verb. In the verb
> >ihie, Greeks would not hear he as alpha, but as epsilon if light or
perhaps
> >as chi if heavily guttural.
> >
> Greeks would hear he as a consonant, not a vowel, because it is a
> consonant. But they had no way of representing it in their script, so
> they omitted it. Or perhaps they simply heard nothing. But they didn't
> hear it as a vowel, and never transcribed it as a vowel.
>

There is no way Greeks didn't hear the consonant in ihie, which we hear even
now when he is lost elsewhere.
As for your idea of omitting the sound which cannot be adequately
transcribed, it is evidently wrong. English speakers somehow transliterate
Chinese names.

Vadim Cherny