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Also of note here is that a number of these communities also pronounce vet (bet without dagesh) as b. It was once likely a bilabial fricative, which is not so easy to pronounce and so seems to fall out of languages - it sounds somewhere between v and b. This sound also accounts (in Latin Spanish) for the spellings of Habana/Havana. It may also account for "Jacob" and "Job" and not "Jakov" and "Jov".
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