Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Rivka:

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Yodan <yodan AT yodanco.com> wrote:

> Shalom!
>
>
>
> I don't know if this question was discussed in this group, but I'm curious
> to know if anyone knows (and, hopefully, has a reference for it) if Veit
> (that's Beit without dagesh) was pronounced in "ancient times" (say at the
> time of the Septuagint or later, during the first millennium CE, say at the
> time of the Masoretes) as a V or as a soft B (like the Spanish B which is
> also used by some Sephardi Jews).
>
> It is my understanding that during Biblical period, Hebrew had only one
phoneme for the letter, namely “B”.

As far as I know, the ancient Greeks did not have the “V” sound, so that
even if Hebrew at that time had acquired the sound, the Greeks would still
have transliterated it as “B”.

>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Rivka Sherman-Gold
>
> Karl W. Randolph.