Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Read, James C" <K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk>]

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
_______________________________________________
b-hebrew mailing list
b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew

This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email
Security System.


This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email
Security System.
>From kwrandolph AT email.com  Fri Oct  7 15:42:29 2005
Return-Path: <kwrandolph AT email.com>
X-Original-To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Delivered-To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: from webmail-outgoing.us4.outblaze.com
        (webmail-outgoing.us4.outblaze.com [205.158.62.67])
        by lists.ibiblio.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 113A64C00C
        for <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Fri,  7 Oct 2005 15:42:28 -0400 
(EDT)
Received: from unknown (unknown [192.168.9.180])
        by webmail-outgoing.us4.outblaze.com (Postfix) with QMQP id
        CA1491800365
        for <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Fri,  7 Oct 2005 19:42:27 +0000 
(GMT)
X-OB-Received: from unknown (205.158.62.55)
        by wfilter.us4.outblaze.com; 7 Oct 2005 19:42:27 -0000
Received: by ws1-3.us4.outblaze.com (Postfix, from userid 1001)
        id B6EC0101D9; Fri,  7 Oct 2005 19:42:27 +0000 (GMT)
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:42:27 -0500
Received: from [69.226.228.119] by ws1-3.us4.outblaze.com with http for
        kwrandolph AT email.com; Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:42:27 -0500
X-Originating-Ip: 69.226.228.119
X-Originating-Server: ws1-3.us4.outblaze.com
Message-Id: <20051007194227.B6EC0101D9 AT ws1-3.us4.outblaze.com>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Ayin and Ghayin
X-BeenThere: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.6
Precedence: list
List-Id: Hebrew Bible List <b-hebrew.lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew>,
        <mailto:b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew>
List-Post: <mailto:b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Help: <mailto:sympa AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=HELP>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew>,
        <mailto:b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 19:42:29 -0000

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

-- 
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm