Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yitzhak Sapir <yitzhaksapir AT gmail.com>]

On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 7:11 PM, Peter Bekins wrote:
> Or there was a consistent sound change so that in Akkadian all
> laryngeals - ), h , ḥ, (, and ġ were reduced to aleph which wasn't
> indicated in the orthography when word initial.
>
> Your example of )QR) is attested in Syriac, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic
> and Mandaic, all eastern dialects, where the change of ḥ > ) is also
> common, most likely because of Akkadian influence (See Kutscher,
> "Aramaic", in Linguistics in South West Asia and North Africa
> (Current Trends in Linguistics 6), 373). In contrast, XQR) is
> attested in Jewish Literary Aramaic which is a western dialect. There
> is no attestation of QR for citadel, nor are )QR) and XQR)
> "interchangeable" in any given dialect.

Moshe Held's article in Erets Israel 16, p. 78-79 with notes (Hebrew),
to which Victor Hurowitz referred me, makes the conclusion that
xbr derives from the semitic root of x.br "to bind by magical force"
and which appears in Akkadian as ubburu, rather than x_br "to make
a lot of noise" which appears in Akkadian as xabaru.  I recommend
that those interested read it up.  You would need to learn Hebrew first,
though, which I think is a good idea anyway :)
Victor's message: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ANE-2/message/9900

Yitzhak Sapir