Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud AT wanadoo.fr>
To: "Will Parsons" <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>
Cc: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 5:30 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] T-SADE


> > > In addition, it's well known from Egyptian hieroglyphic that tsamekh was
> > > nearly doubtless an affricate [ts] (S p r scribe => t_ p r and not **s p 
> > > r
> > > as is expected)
> >
> > I would disagree about samekh being "nearly doubtless" [ts], certainly
> > not on the basis of Egyptian transcriptions, seeing that Egyptian
> > phonology is quite uncertain.  (That Egyptian /t_/ indicated an affricate
> > seems quite unlikely considering its development in Coptic.)
***

I forgot to address that point in the previous mail.
That Egyptian /t_/ becomes /t/ in Coptic proves nothing.

At first sight, it would seem that the changes t > ts > s are a kind of 
one-way path. But there are plenty of examples showing that these changes 
can happen in the opposite direction.
1. For example Indian loanwords into Vietnamese now have t where Indo-Aryan 
had s < PIE *s.
2. In Uralic some dialects of Vogul-Mansi have -t- for Uralic *s.
3. And closer to us maybe, tea or the reflects the Min Chinese equivalent of 
BeiJing cha [t$ha]
4. Not to mention American English the > da

So Coptic t < /t_/ proves nothing. There are very good chances /t_/ was an 
affricate with an articulation very close if not identical to /ts/.

Best
Arnaud Fournet