Hello Isaac:
Your proposal is interesting.
But does any evidence exist to support it? Is there any actual instance of any ancient scroll or inscription or writing fragment actually utilizing the letter ב (bet) in the manner the letter ו (vav) is commonly used, as a conjunction at the beginning of a "sentence" or clause? or the stand alone verb בוא (boh) for that purpose?
I also gather that you don't see the original pronunciation of ו "waw" as "waw;" but rather the correct pronunciation of this letter was "vav?"
I suppose I would observe by way of extension and analogy, that you would also see the pronouns attached to verbs, such as third person singular י (yod); as representing a contraction of an earlier stand alone pronoun?
regards,
fred burlingame
On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 3:11 PM, Isaac Fried <if AT math.bu.edu> wrote:
It is not clear to me what you mean by or why you insist on "vocalization". Nowadays, as soon as we see a dot in the Hebrew letter bet we instinctively vocalize it as an English B, otherwise, we vocalize it as the English V, to wit: BA-U, yet, U-VA-U. I think that this change of sound in the presence of a dagesh is a mere historical coincidence, that came now to bedevil the Hebrew language. We can safely ignore it here.
In Deu. 1:28 it is, indeed, VA-RAM, translated as "and ('and' being from the Latin ante, 'opposite', and of the same sense as 'end') taller". It stands to reason that this attached VA used to be a separate word with a meaning of its own within the Hebrew language. What is it, then? I think it is BA (read it VA) in disguise, and meaning 'be' in the sense of 'is' or 'are', namely: "AM GADOL (is) RAM from us".
Isaac Fried, Boston University
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