Peter:
I noticed that in Hebrew poetry, the two letters are treated as the same
letter. ...
... Second, there are lexemes in Tanakh which have two different spellings
where the only difference is that one spelling has a sin, the other shin. ...
... Third, there are words apparently from the same root, but in one form
written with a sin (e.g. ’siym‘ to place) and another form with a shin (e.g.
’sham‘ there, that place). ...
... Fourth, the number of lexemes that have different meanings but the same
spelling, assuming sin and shin are the same letter, appears no more commonly
than for other letters, whereas if they had been separate phonemes from way
back, I expected to find more, many times more.
It is for these four reasons that I say that sin and shin were the same
phoneme, at least, in pre-Galut Babel Hebrew.
Karl W. Randolph.
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