Re: Consonant diacritics (was: Optimum number of symbols)

On 22 May, Josh Roth wrote:

> ...delurking...
>
> In a message dated 5/22/02 12:51:38 AM, dnsulani@ZAHAV.NET.IL writes:
>
> >From a non-Latin-orthography point of view,
> >Hebrew also uses dots --- both over and inside
> >of letters.
> >    Over: one dot over the "shin/sin" (three pronged letter);
> >if it's over the letter on the right, it is pronounced  (in Israeli
> >Hebrew) [S], if on the left, it's [s].
>
> I thought this holds for all versions of Hebrew - where is it different?
Or
> are you thinking of the possible ancient lateral fricative pronunciation?

    Something like that. I was actually thinking that there are two
different-looking letters which, in today's Israeli Hebrew are
pronounced exactly alike: "sin" and "samech", both pronounced
as [s]. I recalled reading that that in ancient times, they were
pronounced differently from each other, and from "shin".
And yet one is written exactly like "shin" with only a variation
in diacritics ("sin"), while the other has a totally different
orthographic form ("samech").
Sadly, my knowledge of Semitic historical linguistics
isn't deep enough for me to venture further comment on the subject,
so I decided to play it safe and emphasize that I was describing
the situation as I hear/see it today.



Dan Sulani
-------------------------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.

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