Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 9/18/05, Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote:
> Re:
> 
> > [...] all the letters which are both Hebrew shin and Aramaic shin,
> > are sin in Arabic. [...]
> 
> Interesting indeed.  Can someone recommend a good and accurate history
> of Arabic.

I suppose you are curious why there is a change between Arabic and Hebrew
as to which root letter represents an $ sound and which an s sound.  Well, my 
understanding is that originally $ and & were very similar to an /s/ sound,
and in fact, Samekh was not an /s/ sound.  The three similar s sounds 
simply merged differently, and in each case a different branch developed
to an $.  I'd suggest you look up the following:

Hetzron, Robert, ed. The Semitic Languages

and

John Huehnergard, Afro-Asiatic, in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Ancient Languages

and a whole bunch of articles by Alice Faber.  You might want to read
the article
by Woodhouse that I referred to in the following link:

https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2004-November/021353.html

Yitzhak Sapir