Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Yitzhak Sapir:

Regarding your most helpful analysis of the pronunciation of sin and ssade
in the Bronze Age, please take a look at this interesting, very short
article by a student linguist:

_http://lughat.blogspot.com/2006/07/mountains-of-lebanon-some-etymologies.ht
ml_
(http://lughat.blogspot.com/2006/07/mountains-of-lebanon-some-etymologies.html)

First, it appears clear that in the beginning, the first letter in the name
Tyre was definitely  n-o-t  a Hebrew ssade.

But then what happened to that initial letter in Tyre late in the Bronze
Age?  This student linguist argues that when the archaic initial sound of the
first letter in Tyre dropped out, only the  s-e-c-o-n-d  best guess for the
new initial sound in the name for Tyre in the Bronze Age was a Bronze Age
ssade, that is, an S with a dot underneath it, being an emphatic S.  Per your
post, that would be the same as the Hebrew ssade in the Bronze Age (and the
Akkadian ssade):  an emphatic S.

But please explain what he says is by far the  b-e-s-t  guess for the first
sound in Tyre (after the original sound dropped out forever).  Does he see
it as being S’ [S-apostrophe], meaning alveolar ejective fricative?  [Or am
I misunderstanding, and he’s really saying it was an emphatic affricate?
Pardon my confusion.]  Perhaps there was no Hebrew letter that was a direct
equivalent to that?  You said that the Bronze Age Hebrew sin was a lateral
fricative, and if I can guess what the symbol is that you typed in your 
earlier
post (which does not show up clearly on my computer, unfortunately), I
think you’re saying it was a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative.  That is 
not
the same as an alveolar ejective fricative, but how close is it (if that’s
what the student linguist is referencing)?

On  a more general level, if in the Bronze Age the first letter in Tyre was
 n-o-t  a Hebrew ssade (per the article referenced above), then perhaps the
oldest Hebrew textual reference to Tyre might not necessarily begin with a
ssade?  Would a Bronze Age Hebrew sin be closer to an alveolar ejective
fricative than any other Hebrew letters in the Bronze Age, such as ssade,
samekh, shin or zayin?  [Or if the student linguist is meaning to reference an
emphatic affricate, would that be closer to a Bronze Age samekh than a Bronze
Age ssade, with a sin later having the same sound as samekh?]

Perhaps it was only in the Iron Age that Biblical Hebrew developed CWR [or
CR] as the standard spelling of Tyre?  Is there any objective reason why %WR
couldn’t have been the original, Bronze Age Hebrew spelling of Tyre?  If
the first letter in Tyre in the Bronze Age was  n-o-t  a Hebrew ssade, then we
cannot be sure that the oldest Hebrew spelling of Tyre would necessarily
begin with a ssade, can we?

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

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