...
And I want to ask one more question, which may throw this whole pronunciation
question in the air:
What is the effect of orthography (correct spelling) on the pronunciations of
the different graphemes?
...
To get back to Hebrew: the Greek theta is unquestionably derived from the
Hebrew tet, xi from the samekh, sigma from sin/shin. Was there ever a time
before quite modern times where Greek writing had its spellings frozen,
thereby causing these letters to have a major change in pronunciations?
Yet Hebrew did suffer from a freezing of spelling, that lasted from the end
of the Babylonian captivity to today, precisely at times when the language
was under intense pressure to change.
As a corrolary to the above question: is it possible that the Greek
pronunciations preserve more of the original grapheme pronunciations than
does Hebrew?
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