Re: Jewish names

At 9:20 pm +0200 1/8/00, BP Jonsson wrote:
>At 13:13 01.8.2000 -0400, Vasiliy Chernov wrote:
>> >
>> >Yonah is spelled with a hholam-malei (carrier "vav" with a hholam /o/ dot
>> >on top).
>> >Yoseif is also spelled with a hholam-malei.
>> >Avshalom as well.
>>
>>Very interesting!
>>
>>That is, hholam-malei (AFAIK mostly representing earlier diphthongs
>>in -w, contracted by the Mazora times) becomes <o:>, while single
>>hholam (mostly from Semitic [a:]) is rendered as <o:y">...
>>
>>If Coptic is an evidence of <y> > [@] in Egyptian Greek, the above
>>could mean that the vowel corresponding to Mazoretic simple hholam
>>was pronounced as some diphthongal [o@] in the Septuagint epoch.
>>
>>A little bit untraditional... ;)
>
>But very interesting!  As far as Koine' pronunciation itself is concerned
>short upsilon may have been [ø] (i.e. front mid rounded) in some places --
>i.e. was lowered --, which of course could be identified with [@]!
>
>(I'm CC-ing this to Ray, who surely will have something to say! :-)
Thanks.

I imagine Koine pronunciation varied quite a bit & was colored by the
native language of speakers of Koine, just as in the modern world
international English is modified by those to whom English is not their L1.
Yes, it's not improbable that short upsilon could be [ø] among those who,
like the Romans apparently, habitually gave a laxer pronunciation to short
vowels.

But I'm guessing that we're speaking about the diphthong omega-upsilon
which occurs in, e.g. the Greek version of the Hebrew Mosheh (Moses).  I
suspect that at the time of the Septuagint, the Ionic diphthong, presumably
pronounced something like the 'ol' in Cockney 'old' (or 'ou' in Dutch
'oud') still survived & I'd guess that this was the sound intended at that
time.

Of course later, when the sound had died out, spelling pronunciations came
in the two vowels were given their separate pronunciations.

Ray.

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