Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Will:

On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 5:52 PM, Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu> wrote:

Karl,

This will *probably* be my last post on this subject, since I fear
that we risk the wrath of the moderators for writing too much on Greek
and Coptic, and not enough on Hebrew...

Yes, we are getting into the theoretical side of other languages, and not concentrating on those factors that are germain to the question.

On Sat, 8 Dec 2012 12:42:03 -0800, K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com> wrote:
> Will:
>

> On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 10:59 AM, Will Parsons <wbparsons AT alum.mit.edu>wrote:
>...

> Just because Dionysios Thrax who was trying to make a description of
> classical Greek for a Koiné speaking audience claimed that “ks” was not a
> phoneme, did the man on the street who was writing phonemically agree with
> him? Or even the man on the street writing pre-classical Greek agree with
> him? I think not.

I haven't been offered a trip back in time in the tardis to interview
the "man in the street" in ancient Greece, so Dionysios Thrax is my
best approximation.  Speculating that the ordinary ancient Greek would
have seen things differently is, well, speculation.

The important thing for this discussion, how was it pronounced? Even Dionysios Thrax indicates that it was the same as the English phoneme “X”.

>
> But it does represent a change in pronunciation, which argues against your
> claim.

A change in pronunciation - how so?  There was no change in
pronunciation in going from /k/ + /s/ to /ks/.

Then why did you bring up this side argument in the first place?

Then this whole argument whether the Greeks considered this a phoneme or not is irrelevant to the question of whether or not Samekh was originally pronounced as an “X”. I thought the whole reason you brought up the question of whether or not the ancient Greeks considered Xi a phoneme was because you were making an argument that the pronunciation was changed. But if the pronunciation is unchanged, then that question is irrelevant.

The same with the other letters representing sounds that were never found in Biblical Hebrew.

--
Will Parsons
μη φαινεσθαι, αλλ' ειναι.

Karl W. Randolph.