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  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ayin and Ghayin
  • Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2005 14:21:02 -0500


----- Original Message -----
From: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
>
> That's the one.
>
> Chris, without having read the article, my understanding is that Ayin and
> Ghayin, as well as the two Het's, were distinct phonemes in early Canaanite,
> and preserved in Proto-Canaanite script and in Ugaritic. ...
>
> Yigal

Yigal:

I'd hesitate to use either proto-Canaanite
or Ugaritic as evidence for this.

First, Ugaritic was a different language,
and it may have had phones that Biblical
Hebrew never had.

Secondly, proto-Canaanite apparently had
many variations.

I have looked for what were the original
glyphs for the Hebrew alphabet. What is
frustrating to me is that most books as well
as most internet sites that I have found
that discuss the subject provide mainly the
scholars' conclusions, and if an original
image is provided, with rare exceptions, it
is of such low quality that no independent
study from the image is possible.

That being as it is, I have seen two
variants for the lamed, ayin, and resh,
three for he, waw, mem and sin/shin, and
probably five for the beyt, and that's just
counting what I can remember off the top of
my head. Do you claim that each difference
in glyphs refers to different phones, or are
they merely variations along the same lines
as our modern difference between cursive
handwriting and printed Bodini, for example?
I think the latter is more likely.

>From the historical record (which many
doubt) Moses wrote in the 15th century BC,
so he probably used "proto-Canaanite" glyphs
while David and the united kingdom used
"Phoenician" glyphs (did the Phoenicians
learn the alphabet from the Hebrews? Why
not?). At a time when alphabets, when they
were adopted by different languages, they
regularly added and subtracted glyphs to fit
the phonetic patterns of their languages,
Ugaritic being an example of this, it makes
no sense that Biblical Hebrew did not do so,
except that the original 22 glyphs
represented the 22 consonantal phonemes
extent in the Hebrew language of the time.
Then the ayin/ghayin and sin/shin
bifurcations are additions caused by the
Babylonian Exile when, to a large extant if
not totally, native speaking of the Hebrew
language died out.

Oh, and I also don't buy the common line
that only a small portion of the population
were literate. While it is true that
individual ownership of libraries was rare,
I suspect that the majority could read.
References to illiteracy were rare, and most
references to the written word took for
granted that people could read it.

Karl W. Randolph.

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