On 9/18/05, Dr. Joel M. Hoffman wrote:
> Re:
>
> > [...] all the letters which are both Hebrew shin and Aramaic shin,
> > are sin in Arabic. [...]
>
> Interesting indeed. Can someone recommend a good and accurate history
> of Arabic.
I suppose you are curious why there is a change between Arabic and Hebrew
as to which root letter represents an $ sound and which an s sound. Well, my
understanding is that originally $ and & were very similar to an /s/ sound,
and in fact, Samekh was not an /s/ sound. The three similar s sounds
simply merged differently, and in each case a different branch developed
to an $. I'd suggest you look up the following:
Hetzron, Robert, ed. The Semitic Languages
and
John Huehnergard, Afro-Asiatic, in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Ancient Languages
and a whole bunch of articles by Alice Faber. You might want to read
the article
by Woodhouse that I referred to in the following link: