Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

Hi again,

That was exactly my point: as far as we can tell, Biblical Hebrew did not 
have a "v" sound. Not only doesn't Arabic, but neither did Ugaritc or 
Akkadian, which are much closer in time to Biblical Hebrew. So yes, Isaac's 
wife was something like "Reb'ka" (with what the Mesoretes called a Sh'va), 
which is how the Greek got "Rebekka".


The problem with D and Dh (Th as in "that") is just like B/V - since Greek 
does not have a Dh sound, we have no way of knowing whether when Greek wrote 
Delta, they heard Dalet or Dhalet or both. The only thing that we know is 
that in Biblical Hebrew the difference was not "regular" enough to warrent 
two letter-signs like in Ugaritic, but by the time of the Mesorets, they 
were able to include the differences in the BGDKPT rule. The same, BTW, is 
true for Gimmel, however it was "originally" pronounced.

Yigal Levin


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yodan" <yodan AT yodanco.com>
To: "'b-hebrew'" <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 8:56 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Beit/Veit


> Yigal, thank you and thanks to Karl and Kevin.
>
>
>
> A question to you and to others:
>
>
>
> Does the fact that Arabic doesn't have a "v" consonant support the
> possibility that Hebrew too didn't have a "v" consonant (we know that VAV
> was pronounced like WAW, and this is still the case in some Hebrew
> "dialects")? If so, perhaps what later became VEIT was pronounced like 
> BEIT?
> (e.g. Ribka later became Rivka?).
>
>
>
> A somewhat related question: Does anyone know if DALED is believed to have
> been pronounced as an emphatic consonant, like in Arabic, perhaps in
> addition to another pronunciation (like "d" or like "th" in "that", as do
> Yemenite Jews)?
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> Rivka Sherman-Gold