Re: Jewish names

On 29 July, BP Jonsson wrote:

>At 19:57 28.7.2000 -0400, Steg Belsky wrote:
>
>>"Moishe" is a distinctively Ashkenazic form.
>
>I wonder if it is, since it is Moisé in Italian.  Last time this was up Ray
>said the Septuagint spelling is Mo:yse: (mu-omega-upsilon-sigma-eta)!
    Please excuse my inexpertise in Greek phonology, and correct me if
I am wrong, but dosen't upsilon correspond with [u] or [u:]?
In which case, shouldn't the spelling  be Mo:se or Mouse or Mou:se?
Given omega (= [o:]) and upsilon (=[u] or [u:]), where does the "y" come in?
In the standard Hebrew Bible, the vowel orthography is based
upon the Masoretic formulation, from the time of the Romans.
The name "m-sh-h" is vowelled with a "cholam" and a "segol":
mem-cholam-shin-segol-heh. The, earlier,  Septuagint version,
as I understand it, seems to always have "omega-upsilon"
where the Masoretic formulation uses "cholam".
In today's Israeli Hebrew, the "cholam" is pronounced [o], but that
doesn't negate the possibility of an earlier dialect which used a dipthong
[ou].
I agree with Steg, that pronounciation of "cholam" as [oi]
was a development of the Ashkenazic dialect of Hebrew.
I think what happened was that the ancient dipthong  itself was retained,
but the second vowel was switched: from [u] to [i].
    Regarding the _use_  of the name these days, let me assure you all
that kids , here in Israel, are still called Moshe; in fact, this past
year I treated two kids by the name of Moshe, both of whom learned in the
same class!

Dan Sulani

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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.