Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

From: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>

> The discovery that at least one modern South Arabian language still has a 
> lateralised sound as an allophone of sin might be taken as evidence for 
> the usefulness of the comparative method.  If you start with one sound 
> rather than two, you do have to explain why not only Hebrew and Aramaic 
> developed sin for mostly the same words, but why both ancient and modern 
> South Arabian languages show a sin in over 80% of those same words.  It is 
> rather odd that 3 languages who develop 3 's' sounds distribute them in 
> almost identical ways.

> Even if we accept Karl's hypothesis that Hebrew borrowed sin from Aramaic, 
> you still have to explain why there is such a high degree of agreement 
> between Aramaic and South Arabian.  Unless there is some strong connection 
> between Aramaic and Southern Arabia which we don't know about, borrowing 
> would seem unlikely.
>
> Kevin Riley
***

After you explained this "chance coincidence",

you'll have to work on:

Hebrew Sapah "lip"
Proto-Semitic SLap

Latin lab-ia
English lip
Hausa leBe

How come these languages have -l- where Proto-Semitic has a lateralized 
consonant?

Arnaud Fournet