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  • From: "Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>
  • To: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>, "b-hebrew" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ayin and Ghayin
  • Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 15:21:12 +0100


Sorry about the ambigous use of the word 'split'. I was referring to the
evolution of
the common semitic ancestral language into its daughter languages. It is
evident that
this 'split' happened long before moses day and your observations show that
we have to
consider three distinct possibilities:

a)The sin/shin were originally phonetically distinct in proto-semitic and
this has
cascaded into all the daughter languages (very likely)
b)The sin/shin was not originally phonetically distinct in proto-semitiv and
the
occurence of distinct phonemes in their cognates is the product of
coincidental
parrallel evolution of all the cognates except for hebrew (very unlikely)
c)Hebrew is as close as damn it to proto-semitic and sin/shin originally
represented
one phoneme which developed into two phonemes in a sister dialect which
became the
mother of all cognates (possible but unlikely)

All things considered, it looks like you have a good case Yitzhak. As the
hebrew of the
torah is evidently a direct descendent of the hebrew that Abraham spoke and
the testimony
of the torah shows that Egyptian was already a distinct language at this
stage it would
seem that the only reasonable possibility is possibility (a), although I am
open to hearing
any more evidence.

-----Original Message-----
From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Yitzhak Sapir
Sent: Fri 10/7/2005 2:59 PM
To: b-hebrew
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ayin and Ghayin

On 10/7/05, Read, James C wrote:
>
> Sorry for the confusion I probably caused here. I was thinking of another
> document written in hebrew but not the Massorah. What do they call the
> oral torah? I can't remember. Does that begin with 'm' as well?

Mishnah.

> Anyway, while I agree that the massoretic pointing represents what was
> traditionally held to be the original pronunciation, it it highly unlikely
> that this is the case. In particular, I would be wary of the vowels.

We're not discussing vowels. But both vowels and consonants shift their
values
through time in all languages.

> Your observation that different roots in the cognates gives strong evidence
> that
> the sin/shin were already considered separate phonemes before the split.
> The only
> question that remains is when this split actually happened.

I am not sure what you mean by "split" here.

> Can you unequivocally demonstrate that these cognates were in circulation
> before
> the early 16th century?

I had brought evidence from the Execration Texts regarding the sh/th
difference:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2005-September/026221.html

As for Shin/Sin, Daniel Sivan's and Ziporah Cochavi-Rainey's "West Semitic
Vocabulary in Egyptian Script of the 14th to the 10th centuries BCE" notes:
Semitic & is represented in Egyptian by signs with s' and s, eg:
(a-s'-bu in GN [39, cf Heb (es'eb, Arabic (u$bu].
s'a'-(a'-ru' "hair" [187, cf Heb &e(ar, Arabic $a(r, $a(ar]
For further information and Bibliography see Sivan "Grammatical Analysis and
Glossary of the Northwest Semitic Vocables in Akkadian Texts of the 15th-13th
centuries BC from Canaan and Syria", AOAT 214.

Semitic $ is expressed by Egyptian with $, eg.
ma-$:-)ab "scoop" (117) from *$)B
Ma-$a-)-la GN (Thut III, 39) Heb Mi$)al < Canaanite *Ma$)al
(a'-$a-q "to oppress" (40), Heb (a$aq, Arabic (a$aqa.

Does this suffice?

Yitzhak Sapir
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>From kwrandolph AT email.com Fri Oct 7 15:42:29 2005
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From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
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Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:42:27 -0500
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Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ayin and Ghayin
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Yitzhak:

I have already answered the problem with the
execration texts, I will go into more detail here.

First of all, we are dealing with the situation that the
last native speaker of Biblical Hebrew died 2500 years
ago, so the only clues we have are the writings they left
behind, and modern practices (unless you claim that
ancient Hebrews were somehow different from modern
humans).

>From the written record, we see no evidence that the
ancient Hebrews, i.e. native speakers who lived before
the Babylonian Captivity, differentiated sin from shin.
However, they differentiated both sin and shin from
samekh.

The counter-argument is that loan words and names
sometimes introduce new phones and phonemes into
languages. Did that happen that way with these city
names into Hebrew? Or did the ancient Hebrews
mangle their pronunciations according to phonemes
already in Biblical Hebrew in the same manner as
modern speakers mangle foreign words and names?
We have no proof either way.

To give some examples where we have documentation
or can ask native speakers: while the German "ch"
sound is now found in English, the O Umlaut is usually
mangled by most American speakers as "er" sound.
German long ago lost the theta sound, so Germans
usually mispronounce it as an "s" or "t". Norwegian
didn't have the soft "g" sound, so they mispronounced
"garage" as "garash" with the Norwegian spelling as
"garasj". Ancient Greeks had one unvoiced sibilant, so
they tended to transliterate samekh, sin and shin as
sigma. And all westerners going to China need to watch
out that they learn the correct tones which have
phonemic import, or they risk calling a man not a
"lord" but a "pig". Many, many, many more examples
can be presented. From surveying modern practices, it
is far more prevalent that loan words and names are
mangled in pronunciation than that they introduce new
phonemes into a language.

Were pre-Exile Hebrews different from modern man?
Or did they mangle the pronunciation of loan words
and names to make them fit within their phonemic
structure, as is the usual practice today? That is why I
find neither the execration texts nor cognate languages
as proof that Hebrew had these phonemes.

But I do find as evidence the common practice that
when an alphabet is devised for a language, that one
letter usually stands for one phoneme. Thus the 22
letters stand for the 22 consonantal phonemes that
Hebrew originally had. Again I assume the common
humanity of ancient Israel.

Now why would Hebrew pronunciation as preserved by
the Masoretes follow the same patterns as found in
cognate languages? Again, looking at the same patterns
as above, when Hebrew ceased to be spoken as a native
tongue, people, when they read Hebrew, mangled the
pronunciation of Hebrew according to their native
tongue, which was overwhelmingly Aramaic for a
thousand years before the Masoretes recorded it. In
working with immigrants, where I see children, while
they yet speak their parents' language fluently, mangle
the pronunciation of that language according to
American phonemic practices; the thought that the
Masoretic points preserved the original pronunciations
from a thousand years earlier boggles the mind. Again I
assume a common humanity.

Finally, concerning the times that sin and shin are used
in modern practice to indicate words from different
roots: when I looked at the data, I was impressed by
how rarely that occurs. I didn't quantify it because I
was doing research not directly connected with this
question, but it seems to be no more prevalent than for
any other letter (assuming the sin/shin is one letter).
Further, it needs to be taken in context of the several
words written once with a sin, and another time with a
shin as well as those cases where words from a
common root are sometimes spelled with a sin and
sometimes with a shin. The latter two examples are
evidences that the sin/shin originally was one letter.
Already I covered this in greater detail before.

What I need from you is documentation, documents
written before the Babylonian Exile, in Hebrew, that
show the developments that you claim occured in
Hebrew. For reasons given above, I accept neither
cognate languages nor post-Exile developments as
proof, unless accompanied by such documentation. So
far you have refused to provide such documentation.
Therefore, I conclude that such documentation does
not exist, or that which exists contradicts the
hypothesis you so strenuously defend.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yitzhak Sapir" <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>
> ...
> I had brought evidence from the Execration Texts regarding the
> sh/th difference:
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2005-September/026221.html
>
> As for Shin/Sin, Daniel Sivan's and Ziporah Cochavi-Rainey's "West Semitic
> Vocabulary in Egyptian Script of the 14th to the 10th centuries BCE" notes:
> Semitic & is represented in Egyptian by signs with s' and s, eg:
> (a-s'-bu in GN [39, cf Heb (es'eb, Arabic (u$bu].
> s'a'-(a'-ru' "hair" [187, cf Heb &e(ar, Arabic $a(r, $a(ar]
> For further information and Bibliography see Sivan "Grammatical Analysis and
> Glossary of the Northwest Semitic Vocables in Akkadian Texts of the
> 15th-13th
> centuries BC from Canaan and Syria", AOAT 214.
>
> Semitic $ is expressed by Egyptian with $, eg.
> ma-$:-)ab "scoop" (117) from *$)B
> Ma-$a-)-la GN (Thut III, 39) Heb Mi$)al < Canaanite *Ma$)al
> (a'-$a-q "to oppress" (40), Heb (a$aq, Arabic (a$aqa.
>
> Does this suffice?
>
> Yitzhak Sapir

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