Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Mark:
You have leapt feet first into a debate where speculation outweighs solid
evidence.

One thing that seems pretty certain is that the pronunciation of the ayin
was different from that of the alep during Biblical times.

Other people speculate that the ayin is a combination of two letters written
with one grapheme, one of which had a soft “g” sound. Right now that is the
majority belief of Hebrew scholars.

My 2¢—I suspect that the ayin originally was a hard glottal stop that was
either sometimes mistaken for a soft “g” sound, or in some dialectal
pronunciations may actually have had a soft “g” sound. Hence the LXX “Gaza”.

Karl W. Randolph.

On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Mark Spitsbergen <awakesd AT mac.com> wrote:

> Is there any reason to believe that ayin may have ever had a gamma or
> gimel sound as in (azah? How does one explain the transliteration in
> the LXX(Gaza)?
>
> Mark Spitsbergen
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>