Assalamu aleikum Abu Thanks for the quick and thorough response. I am enlightened by it and can see I have far to go.
Toda l'cha chaver sheli Rollin Shultz Mechanical designer Allentown, Pa 18104 Motto: Ask for help when needed, help others when asked, and remember where you came from. Happy moments, PRAISE GOD, Difficult moments, SEEK GOD, Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD, Painful moments, TRUST GOD, Every moment, THANK GOD ________________________________ From: abur1924 <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, May 20, 2010 11:16:22 AM Subject: [ancient_hebrew] Re: Edenics, Ugaritic & Arabic > Assalamu alaikum Abu > Your welcome and my thanks to you as well. Wa alaikum assalaam Rollin, Thanks for the warm greeting :) > I do not know how qualified I am to answer your questions as I am only a > student of Hebrew for about 14 weeks and only know a litttle of Arabic picked > up from Syrian friends and Persian music. We are all students, always more to learn. By your name I would say by birth you are closer to the se languages than I and as such have a decided advantage. Quite the opposite actually. I am a native English speaker, who began learning Arabic (and later other Semitic languages) in my mid-20's. My name is merely a kunyah (metonym) which signifies my son's name is Rashid. > I do not see anything to convince me of Hebrew or Ugaritic phonemes and how > anyone can do anything but guess at them especially in the case of the > cuneifornm Ugaritic. I think the Ugaritic alphabet is pretty well understood. Although it uses cunieform shapes it is actually a proper alphabet (abjad actually) and it matches quite perfectly as a Semitic language into the Canaanite group of dialects, apart from the fact that it has not undergone the phonemic merges the other Canaanite dialects (like Phoenician, Hebrew etc.) did. There is little dispute over the fact that Ugaritic proves the merges occurred, even though it was already known before Ugaritic was deciphered anyway. But with Ugaritic and now the Old South Arabian languages it is quite clear. To give you an example: The letters thaa (Arabic: ث), Khaa (Arabic: خ), thal (Arabic: ذ), Zaa (Arabic: ظ), ghayin (Arabic: غ) all exist in Ugaritic, and they exist in the exact same places that those sounds exist in Arabic. So for instance the common Semitic word meaning "new" is H-d-th (Arabic: Hadatha, Ugaritic: H-d-th, again vowels unknown). The words for Ox and plow I already mentioned in a previous message also agree in Ugaritic and Arabic, and hundreds of other words all agree. They use a separate letter than the one used for S-l-m (the common Semitic word for peace). Yet in Hebrew, the first letter of the "peace" root (shin in Hebrew) is the same one which appears in the words for "new", "ox" and "plow". The same relationship exists between Hebrew with regards to Phoenician and Akkadian. Akkadian and Phoenician both further merged sin and shin into one phoneme, whilst Hebrew did not. So all the words with sin and/or shin in them in Hebrew, use just the one phoneme in Akkadian and Phoenician. It's quite clear that Hebrew retained the original 2 phonemes in this case, whilst Akkadian and Phoenician did not, since when we compare those words with Arabic, we find they're split along the same lines as Hebrew. It's pretty much impossible for both Arabic and Hebrew to have separately distinguished those words (thousands of words) exactly the same. Likewise Arabic merged sin and samek, so the words in Hebrew, Ugaritic, Phoenician etc. which have samek and/or sin are spelled with the respective letters, and they all agree on the distinction, yet Arabic just merged them into a single phoneme and they're all spelled with sin. The only way we can know their original root is to look at Hebrew or Akkadian etc. The idea that they could've been one phoneme which then split into two, yet split the same way separately in all those separate languages is just not realistic. The only known abjad which exhibits the full array of Semitic phonemes (29) is the Sabaic (Sheba) abjad, next is Arabic (28), then Ugaritic (27), then Ge'ez (26), then Hebrew (23), then Phoenician (22). Some Semitists and Middle Eastern archaeologists suggest this could also be the original/oldest abjad, and possibly the source for the others. Since it contains everything the others contain and more (which the others have since lost) and it also contains many letter shapes which are the basis for the other alphabets/abjads. Sabaic and Arabic agree on the etymological makeup of all known roots (except for the occasional oddity), with the exception Arabic merged sin and samek, so roots with those two phonemes in them just exhibit sin in Arabic, and actually in late Sabaic the same merger began to happen. Likewise for Ugaritic, except in the case of sin/shin and sod/dod there are mergers. In all other roots, they match with Arabic and Sabaic. It's extremely unlikely that this could occur by coincidence and the only likely explanation is that in Hebrew and some other languages those merges took place at an early date. In the case of Arabic I will asssume the knowedge comes from an unbroken usage through the last 3,000 years history. I think much could be borrowed then from Arabic in the case of Hebrew to come up with Hebrew phonemes but I still think it is guesswork. This isn't necessarily about how the sounds were originally pronounced, that's a secondary issue, and not one which really leads anywhere, I agree. Since unless you hear it spoken, then there's no real way of telling. I'm just talking about how the phonemes match up etymologically. The phoneme which the word for "peace" begins with (which is shin in Hebrew) is etymologically linked to words which in other Semitic languages use separate letters. Regardless of how they were pronounced, they are distinct, whilst in Hebrew they are merged and the distinction has been lost. So taking into account how they were pronounced is not even necessary. > I am unconvinced the name Hebrew comes from the lengthening of the name Eber. > Its first mention in the Torah is after Abraham moves to the valley of the > Oaks of Mamre and establishes or absorbs the city of Hebron. It is more > likely surrounding residents tagged them as Hebrews for living in Hebron than > anything else. Although the word Hebron is once spelled with an ayin, the only time it appears in the Tanakh speaking about the inhabitants of Hebron (ie. the Hebronites) it's spelt with Haa (Chet I think is the Hebrew letter name). So whilst it is pronounced Hebron with a 'H', the word Hebrew doesn't have that 'H'. So I doubt that would be the case. Another interesting point is that Hebrew and Arabic are spelled almost identically in both Hebrew and Arabic. Just two of the letters are switched around. So it is ayin-baa-raa- yaa-taa (Hebrew) and ayin-raa-baa- yaa-taa (Arabic) just the baa and raa being switched. > Since I am just starting out on the semitic language path I have much > catching up to do. I will always just as in the hard physical sciences use > the Torah as my "frame of reference". I wish you luck in your studies, and hope they are beneficial to your understanding. Regards, Abu Rashid.
