Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu>]

Vadim,

1. I tend to think that the dgeshim [and also possibly the  
diacritical sin dot] are very ancient markings added to school texts  
long before the rest of the nikud, and are mostely independent of it.  
The first dots to be placed were, I think, the word separators. A dot  
was used as it is the very minimal graphical mark, and was judged not  
to interfere with the text. Dots placed inside a word for mere  
scribal purpose, to mark, for instance, the first radical letter,  
could have turned into what we call today a dagesh, like the one  
following HA-, WA-, MI-, $E-, or the one in the initial BGDKPT.
Then, more points were added for other purposes and the whole thing  
got, I think, muddled up, which some people have hard time accepting  
or admitting.
For example, some grammar textbooks suggest that the dagesh in the  
letter following the conjoined preposition MI-, 'from', as in the Z  
of  MI-ZOB of Leviticus 15:30, is for complementing the lost N of the  
full word MIN. But this is curious. Why should a dot be placed, and  
the text marred, to convey information that is obviously irrelevant  
and uncertain? At most, it is to the contrary, that the dot (dagesh)  
was added to caution the hasty pupil of ancient times [who actually  
rarely directly looked into a book] AGAINST adding an N and reading  
MIN-ZOB, as he is possibly used to speak. The standard explanation  
that the point in the letter past HA- is due to it being a shortened  
HEN-, is awkward as well. In any event, now, by dint of this dot a  
soft B, K, P becomes, by no fault of its own, hard.
For some reason [because of their remote antiquity?] there is no dot  
following W-, B-, L-. This causes an initial hard B, K, P to turn  
soft as it is shifted into second place. The Hebrew Academy in  
Jerusalem, consisting mostly of purists who consider the dots as  
sacred as the bare text itself, insists on this softening, and its  
Hebrew commissar at the Israeli National Broadcasting Service makes  
sure that they are indeed so pronounced, but the population as a  
whole [I. F. including] overwhelmingly flouts this rule in daily  
speech, excepting some biblical idiomatic expressions.
1. One thing is clear, which is that Hebrew has but one shin. It is  
possible that the sin-shin differences were, as you say, dialectical  
--- that some shins were pronounced differently,  intentionally or  
unintentionally, out of pure phonetic reasons, or with a semantic  
purpose in mind. The bottom line is that, even though sin [S'] is  
universally pronounced now indistinctly of samek, it is still a  
useful VISUAL discriminator between similarly sounding and  
semantically affiliated words such as S(AR-AH, 'srorm', S'A(AR-AH,  
'hair', and S'(OR-AH, 'barley'. Looking at sin-shin-samek words I  
fail to see any phonetic exigency for turning a shin or a samek into  
a sin.
3. As I said before, I think the editor(s) of the HB could not bring  
himself to write the matriarchal name S'ARAH with a samek, so he  
resorted to a lame shin.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

On May 17, 2008, at 3:30 PM, Vadim Cherny wrote:

> Hello Isaac,
>
> Your letter was missed in my overzealous spam filter, sorry for  
> late reply.
> I cannot imagine Hebrew grammarians just introduced an alternative  
> samech out of thin air. Note that the Masoretes always use a dot  
> consistently as some kind of stop. You also have a shibbolet/  
> sibbolet problem: it is clear than shin/sin is just a phonetic  
> variation. I can see the shin/sin difference clearly from the  
> Russian pronunciation of [sh] which can be both very soft, sin- 
> like, and hard.
>
> Vadim Cherny
>
> Isaac Fried wrote:
> > Vadim,
> >
> > It is indeed worthwhile giving the Hebrew dagesh problem a fresh,  
> > unbiased and unfettered consideration, free of past dogmatic  
> > encumbrances.
> > It is possible that sin evolved from shin by some dialectical  
> > pronunciation differences, but I tend to think it is rather an  
> > intentionally introduced visual discriminatory device --- the  
> > editor needed an extra letter in the D, Z, T, Y, S, C, $, T group.  
> > The name SARAH, for example, with a sin LOOKS good because it  
> > calls to mind SAR, 'nobleman', but it obviously looks bad with a  
> > samek.  Isaiah plays on this in 1:23, saying
> > שָׂרַיִךְ סוֹרְרִים
> > " Your princes are rebels ".
> > Occasionally this interchange is accompanied by an interchange of  
> > the filler letters, for example, SB), 'drink to excess', and SB(,  
> > 'eat one's fill'.
> >
> > Isaac Fried, Boston University
> >
> > On May 8, 2008, at 5:59 AM, Vadim Cherny wrote:
> >
> > > Dear all,
> > >
> > > As some of you might remember from the previous discussions on this
> > > list, I advocate the theory that dagesh (both kal and hazak) is a  
> > > stop.
> > > Specifically, dagesh hazak is a post-tonic geminative stop, and  
> > > dagesh
> > > kal is interconsonantal stop meant to force syllabification. Both
> > > dageshes are designed to prevent jamming: hazak prevents jamming  
> > > of the
> > > post-tonic vowel (mitlAb'sh - mitlA.bbesh) and kal prevents  
> > > jamming of
> > > first consonant in the cluster (ni-zcar - ni-'car, but niz.car).
> > >
> > > With that in mind, I'd venture an explanation for shin-sin  
> > > difference
> > > which I haven't seen before. Dot in shin-sin functions like soft- 
> > > hard
> > > signs in Russian. A {she} syllable, for example, would be pronounced
> > > with the soft sign like sh[ee].  The point is, shin and sin is  
> > > the same
> > > letter, the difference being purely environmental.
> > > Sameh, then, is [s] while sin is softened [sh]. It is possible  
> > > that in
> > > some words with harsh meaning sameh evolved into sin due to hard
> > > pronunciation (e.g., savah with sameh - svah, bars, with sin).
> > >
> > > I'd like to welcome your opinions.
> > >
> > > Vadim Cherny
> > > _______________________________________________
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