Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On 11/3/05, Karl Randolph wrote:
> Peter, Yitzhak, Kevin et al:
>
> spent centuries or more as an
> official language with a frozen spelling as the language
> changed under the radar (Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew).

Aramaic, in the oldest surviving inscription, the Tell Fekherye
inscription, which is a bilingual inscription, is written in a 22
letter script which from the correspondences between the
Aramaic portion and the Akkadian portion is suggestive of
a non-phonetic script in which "s" represented both the /s/
sound and the /th/ sound.  Aramaic had at the time yet to
become an official language.

> and Ugaritic from the
> 14th century BC if the earlier dates are correct.

Ugaritic may not have been phonetic.  It has a sign for "dh" even
though dh seems to have been lost in Ugaritic.  It also has an $ sign
that represents both original Semitic Shin and Sin.  Although we have
Akkadian transcriptions of some words, I think Akkadian did not
distinguish Shin/Sin in its syllabary so we can't come to a conclusion
from those transcriptions.  Some scholars think that the g' (ghayin)
sign represents both /g'/ and /z./  In any case, in view of the fact that
you don't know and have refused to learn Ugaritic, I suggest you
don't bring evidence from Ugaritic.

Yitzhak Sapir