Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jonathan Mohler <jonathan.mohler AT gmail.com>]

George:

This is not something I would die for of course,  but a study of universal eye words shows the yodh is generally dropped.  The most important consonants are the ayin and nun.  Although the French oeuil, preserves the yodh in pronunciation: uhy.  The L is a shift from the nun, a common shift across languages.  It occurs in words like ocular, ogle, look.  The Swahili 'ogle' word is angalia, look.  Also, the word for vision (dream, not physical) is maono.  Primitive words like these suggest to me that the double nun is simply gemination to intensify the derivitive meaning.  I speak here somewhat blindly, no pun intended, since I have no experience dealing with how BH handles gemination.  In Bantu languages gemination functions much like the piel binyan.  For example, kata, cut and katakata, dice; or palilia, sweep, where the two L's reflect the repetitive nature of sweeping.

Jonathan E. Mohler

Baptist Bible Graduate School

Springfield, MO

Not quite so simple as that, Jonathan. First, your take is possible, but certainly not easy or obvious. The connection with עין is not obvious—in fact, it's rather tenuous. There are two nuns in the root, not one, nor a single doubled nun. This makes it vastly different to the noun עין ('eye'), which requires the yodh in it and only one nun. There is no indication whatsoever of a yodh or a vestige of one in ענן. Furthermore, the information from HALOT needs to be dealt with if your view is correct. I'm not sure how you would counter those details with your theory on this one. I have no idea about the Swahili connection, so I can't comment on that, but the עין connection seems a stretch.