Biblical Hebrew Forum

[fred burlingame <tensorpath AT gmail.com>]

Hello Isaac:

Your proposal is interesting.

But does any evidence exist to support it? Is there any actual instance of
any ancient scroll or inscription or writing fragment actually utilizing
the letter ב (bet) in the manner the letter ו (vav) is commonly used, as a
conjunction at the beginning of a "sentence" or clause? or the stand alone
verb בוא  (boh) for that purpose?

I also gather that you don't see the original pronunciation of ו "waw" as
"waw;" but rather the correct pronunciation of this letter was "vav?"

I suppose I would observe by way of extension and analogy, that you would
also see the pronouns attached to verbs, such as third person singular י
(yod); as representing a contraction of an earlier stand alone pronoun?

regards,

fred burlingame

On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 3:11 PM, Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu> wrote:

> It is not clear to me what you mean by or why you insist on "vocalization".
> Nowadays, as soon as we see a dot in the Hebrew letter bet we instinctively
> vocalize it as an English B, otherwise, we vocalize it as the English V, to
> wit: BA-U, yet, U-VA-U. I think that this change of sound in the presence of
> a dagesh is a mere historical coincidence, that came now to bedevil the
> Hebrew language. We can safely ignore it here.
> In Deu. 1:28 it is, indeed, VA-RAM, translated as "and ('and' being from
> the Latin ante, 'opposite', and of the same sense as 'end') taller". It
> stands to reason that this attached VA used to be a separate word with a
> meaning of its own within the Hebrew language. What is it, then? I think it
> is BA (read it VA) in disguise, and meaning 'be' in the sense of 'is' or
> 'are', namely: "AM GADOL (is) RAM from us".
>
> Isaac Fried, Boston University
>
>