Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kevin Riley <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

You might notice, just in passing, that all the Semitic languages except 
Akkadian start words with a consonant.  Therefore only Akkadian has an 
initial A.  Does that not suggest, especially when you take into account 
everything known about Akkadian, that perhaps there was no initial 'true 
vowel A', but in fact an ) ?

Kevin Riley

On 10/05/2011 12:23 AM, JimStinehart AT aol.com wrote:
> All Semitic words and names in the Hebrew Bible that start with )YL are
> plays on “mighty”.  One theory would be that there is an unused Hebrew verbal
> root )YL, which means “to be mighty”.  Although that is a tempting theory,
> it does not seem to be borne out by a comparison to cognate languages.  ’al’
> iy = “strong” in Ugaritic.  allallu = “strong” in Akkadian. Assyrian for “
> stag”, being a “mighty” adult male deer, is ailu.  One begins to suspect
> that )Y in Hebrew was used to represent the initial true vowel A in these
> cognate languages.  Perhaps there is a somewhat similar phenomenon in Aramaic,
> where HaYLaA = “power, mighty work, strength”.  The archaic 2-letter root,
> being the true root of Semitic words that mean “mighty” or “strong”, may
> have been AL.  Hebrew of course has no true vowel A, so that usually comes
> out in Hebrew as )YL, where )Y represents the true vowel A, but sometimes it
> comes out in Hebrew as )WL or )L, where )W or ) represents the true vowel A.
> Most Hebrew words that start with )WL or )L have nothing to do with “mighty”
> , whereas all Hebrew words and names [other than non-Semitic names] in the
> Hebrew Bible that start with )YL are plays on “mighty”.
>
> Jim Stinehart
> Evanston, Illinois
>
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