Biblical Hebrew Forum

[joel AT exc.com]

>BTW, one will find more such irregularities in the modern hebrew,
>e.g. a geminated "f" (and not "p") in ??? ("jaff?").

Maybe.  While it's true that MH does not adhere to the Masoretic rules
of Hebrew, we don't know that Biblical Hebrew did, either.

The almost universal observation that ancient languages had fewer
irregularities that modern ones do (Classical Latin vs. Italian,
Biblical Hebrew vs. Modern Hebrew, Classical Greek vs. Modern Greek,
etc.) probably simply refelct our poorer knowledge of the ancient
languages compared to the modern ones.

(And even in Tiberian Hebrew, we find such anomalies as BIRKAT, which
properly ought to be BIRXAT.)

-Joel


Joel M. Hoffman, PhD
http://www.lashon.net/JMH
http://caje33.lashon.net