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As to English [ch], I first noticed how many languages do not have it. Then I noticed that, outside of the Far East (China, etc.), the only languages featuring it that I yet knew of were Slavic, except for Latin - as in [c] before [i] or [e] - Italian - in the same manner as in Latin (though with some exceptional additional occurences), - and English.
I soon noticed how Teyth could be seen as a Taw leaning in the direction of English [ch]. It is cut too short of the degree of morphing (away from Taw) that characterizes English [ch], perhaps, for this phonetic kinship to at once be seen. I wonder to what degree the breath in Teyth might originally have differed from that in Taw. As I have found with all alphabetical characters in general: each character was originally assigned its own exclusive phonetic value, and the pairing of two characters to a single sound point to the antiquity of the lettering system, and to changes in speach without a parallel alphabet reform.
This got me wondering (if not actually expecting) whether the greater degree of breath in Sin than in Samek (=[s]), might not properly signify a possible root of the [s]-morpheme in English "measure". Interestingly enough, this sound, too, I found missing from many languages' phonology, but present in French, English, and Slavic languages.This is an interesting sound and probably rarer than English ch. Interestingly, it is present as a distinct phoneme, but extremely rare, in languages as diverse as English, Turkish and Persian/Farsi. It is I suppose possible that this was the original sound of sin (it is after all a voiced variant of the sound of shin), but I don't know of any evidence for this. Do you?
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