# History of the pronunciation of Hebrew צ



## tFighterPilot

*Moderator note: Split from here.
*


OCH said:


> Thanks, origumi. I've always noticed how the original pronunciation of Hebrew words are preserved in its plural, so I got excited when I read about it, lol. I have a friend from Israel and she explained to me how she was aware of some of the letter's original sounds, such as "Tsade" originally being pronounced as an emphatic S NOT "Tz/ Ts". I was just unsure if she knew from research or if Israelis are taught that in school. So thanks again for answering


That is not entirely true. The original pronunciation of צ was quite likely /ts'/


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## OCH

As for tFighterPilot and arielipi, maybe you two should do some extensive research. I tried to post some links but I'm not allowed. Perhaps you should check out sites referring to Proto-Semitic such as, Wikipedia, adath-shalom, ancienthebrew.org, etc.


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## tFighterPilot

OCH said:


> As for tFighterPilot and arielipi, maybe you two should do some extensive research. I tried to post some links but I'm not allowed. Perhaps you should check out sites referring to Proto-Semitic such as, Wikipedia, adath-shalom, ancienthebrew.org, etc.


With all due respect, I know about the history of Hebrew at least as much as you do, and that's being modest.


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## OCH

tFighterPilot said:


> With all due respect, I know about the history of Hebrew at least as much as you do, and that's being modest.



Then you should know that צ is not pronounced the way you Modern Hebrew speakers pronounce it, right?


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## Ihsiin

tFighterPilot said:


> That is not entirely true. The original pronunciation of צ was quite likely /ts'/



I've never been very convinced of the idea that צ was realised such. Could you summarise the arguments in favour for me, please? Thanks.
(This might be veering off-topic- I'm not sure, since the topic itself seems rather vague-, so, if it is, mods, please correct me.)


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## origumi

Ihsiin said:


> I've never been very convinced of the idea that צ was realised such. Could you summarise the arguments in favour for me, please? Thanks.
> (This might be veering off-topic- I'm not sure, since the topic itself seems rather vague-, so, if it is, mods, please correct me.)


Discussing old realization(s) of צ requires a previous consideration of the proto-sounds. It seems that Hebrew צ is actually a merger of 3 Semitic sounds at certain times and places: one is similar to ט (Hebrew קיץ = Aramaic קיט), another to ע (Hebrew ארץ = Aramaic ארע) and the last one is צ that sounds like צ. Each has it's own story. See for example the Phoenician towns of צור and צידון, whose Greek realization *T*yre and *S*idon demonstrates two different צ values. In some documents צ was also transliterated to Greek psi Ψ. Investigation of the "lost" Greek letter Sampi may also yield some interesting conclusions.

According to Wikipedia (Tzade): _Historically, it likely represented a pharyngealized /t͡sˤ/_, but no mention of what period they describe. As discussed in other threads here about the letter ח (and similarly ע) - some old pronunciations (two ח sounds, two ע sounds) may have survived until the Gemaraic period (3rd-5th centuries AD) or at least the Mishnaic (2nd century BC to 2nd century AD), and certainly until early LXX (3rd century BC). This could be the case of צ as well.

I saw in the past several different ideas about the "original" realization. If I remember correctly most of them claim that the Jewish Yemenite / modern Arabic pronunciation is the historical Hebrew one. I am not convinced. It is usually agreed that the modern Hebrew צ is heavily influenced by European languages.

See a short yet interesting description (with references) here: http://www.balashon.com/2007/01/tsade.html.


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## tFighterPilot

Ihsiin said:


> I've never been very convinced of the idea that צ was realised such. Could you summarise the arguments in favour for me, please? Thanks.
> (This might be veering off-topic- I'm not sure, since the topic itself seems rather vague-, so, if it is, mods, please correct me.)


First of all, there's no sense in /s'/ to /ts/ transition when /s/ can be pronounced. /ts'/ to /s'/ transition could happen due to Arabic influence (which didn't have /ts/). Secondly, in the 9th century AD the Glagolitic alphabet (which later turned into the Slavic alphabet) was created and it burrowed two letters from Hebrew, Tsi and Sha, which means that by then צ was already pronounced /ts/.


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## origumi

tFighterPilot said:


> Secondly, in the 9th century AD the Glagolitic alphabet (which later turned into the Slavic alphabet) was created and it burrowed two letters from Hebrew, Tsi and Sha, which means that by then צ was already pronounced /ts/.


But this requires understanding of how these two were realized in 9th century Slavic. Not sure that the same as today (well, I have no knowledge of the Slavic sound system development).


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## tFighterPilot

origumi said:


> But this requires understanding of how these two were realized in 9th century Slavic. Not sure that the same as today (well, I have no knowledge of the Slavic sound system development).


Well, it's the same in all Slavic languages, so I think it's pretty safe to say that's the only pronunciation it have had.


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> Well, it's the same in all Slavic languages, so I think it's pretty safe to say that's the only pronunciation it have had.


And even if this were so, it would only mean that [ts] was already the pronunciation in early Ashkenazi pronunciation, the oral tradition of Hebrew St. Cyril and St. Methodius were most likely in accustomed to. This is hardly surprising and doesn't tell us anything new about the pronunciation of letter in Biblical Hebrew.


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## OCH

Bottom line: The best evidence of the original pronunciations of ALL the letters of the Hebrew alphabet lie in SEMITIC languages and SEMITIC languages only.


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## tFighterPilot

berndf said:


> And even if this were so, it would only mean that [ts] was already the pronunciation in early Ashkenazi pronunciation, the oral tradition of Hebrew St. Cyril and St. Methodius were most likely in accustomed to. This is hardly surprising and doesn't tell us anything new about the pronunciation of letter in Biblical Hebrew.


By that time the Ashkenazim, as a separate community from the Sepharadim, were still forming and were still restricted to western Europe. It's unlikely that Cyril and Methodius, who were from Greece, had contact with them. More likely that they had contact with the local Greek Jews.


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## tFighterPilot

OCH said:


> Bottom line: The best evidence of the original pronunciations of ALL the letters of the Hebrew alphabet lie in SEMITIC languages and SEMITIC languages only.


So you also think that ג was originally pronounced /dʒ/ and that פ was originally pronounced /f/?


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## Ihsiin

I remain unconvinced. That צ had three sounds (corresponding to Arabic ص, ض, and ظ) sounds sound and fine. I fail to see the step from there to "therefore an ancient realisation of צ as 'ts' is likely".
I don't think a transition to a "ts" sound is all so senseless. As I understand it, the modern realisation derives from Germanised pronunciation conventions. It's possible that the German speakers (long ago) detected a distinction between the emphatic and non-emphatic consonants and mapped it on to their own distinction between the affricate and the sibilant.
I'm interested here in the native pronunciations in colloquy, not European pronunciations 1000 or so years after the death of the language. I don't think 9th Century Slavic is relevant, in this case.


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## OCH

Arabic isn't the only other Semitic language out there. Everybody (who have studied Semitic languages extensively, such as I) knows that ג is a "g" and פ is a "p". There are three sounds for צ, two for ח, two for ע, and so on (I'm not explaining the entire Semitic alphabet. There are several books and internet sites out there that can do the explaining). Some other Semitic languages out there that you can refer to are Aramaic, Ge'ez, Ugaritic...


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## tFighterPilot

Ihsiin said:


> I remain unconvinced. That צ had three sounds (corresponding to Arabic ص, ض, and ظ) sounds sound and fine. I fail to see the step from there to "therefore an ancient realisation of צ as 'ts' is likely".
> I don't think a transition to a "ts" sound is all so senseless. As I understand it, the modern realisation derives from Germanised pronunciation conventions. It's possible that the German speakers (long ago) detected a distinction between the emphatic and non-emphatic consonants and mapped it on to their own distinction between the affricate and the sibilant.
> I'm interested here in the native pronunciations in colloquy, not European pronunciations 1000 or so years after the death of the language. I don't think 9th Century Slavic is relevant, in this case.


Problem is, there is nothing in the middle east that was not affected by Arabic. The only surviving Semtic languages which weren't affected by Arabic other than Hebrew are the Ethiopian languages, which have /ts/ as well.


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## OCH

Many Samaritan Hebrew speakers pronounce Hebrew similarly to its original sound such as saying "lu" לו for "to him" instead of "lo" and "la" לא for "no" instead of "lo". They don't pronounce צ as /ts/ but as an emphatic "s" as do other Semitic speakers.


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## tFighterPilot

OCH said:


> Many Samaritan Hebrew speakers pronounce Hebrew similarly to its original sound such as saying "lu" לו for "to him" instead of "lo" and "la" לא for "no" instead of "lo". They don't pronounce צ as /ts/ but as an emphatic "s" as do other Semitic speakers.


They also pronounce פ as /f/ and שׂ as /​ʃ/ Samaritan Hebrew is hardly an example for a language unaffected by Arabic.


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> By that time the Ashkenazim, as a separate community from the Sepharadim, were still forming and were still restricted to western Europe. It's unlikely that Cyril and Methodius, who were from Greece, had contact with them. More likely that they had contact with the local Greek Jews.


The Glagolitic alphabet was developed for use in the Moravian empire during their mission there. The centre of the realm was Bohemia and Sorbia (modern Germany). The mission was under the supervision of the bishop of Passau.

But I re-read Cyril's biography and it seems he learned Hebrew during his stay in the Khalifate. So, he must have been familiar with Tiberian pronunciation.


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## OCH

tFighterPilot said:


> They also pronounce פ as /f/ and שׂ as /​ʃ/ Samaritan Hebrew is hardly an example for a language unaffected by Arabic.


I think I'm beyond aware of that which is why I gave you specific examples.


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## Ihsiin

tFighterPilot said:


> Problem is, there is nothing in the middle east that was not affected by Arabic. The only surviving Semtic languages which weren't affected by Arabic other than Hebrew are the Ethiopian languages, which have /ts/ as well.



This is true, though I would say that in the Ethiopian languages the emphatics are realised as ejectives, which I think rather disposes the sibilant to affricatisation (if affricatisation can be construed as a word). I believe Ethiopian has no non-emphatic "ts", nor is there any evidence for a non-emphatic "ts" in proto-Semitic, and I think we sort of need one if we're going to connect the two "ts" realisations of sadi in Ethiopian and modern Hebrew.

It's also certainly true that Arabic has dominated the Middle-East and greatly influenced all the speech therein, but I don't think this needs to be such a massive problem. If Hebrew weren't a liturgical language and had no modern pronunciation traditions, we'd be looking to Arabic (and heavily Arabic-influenced Aramaic), as its closest living relatives, to determine the phonology (as well as transliterations of Hebrew words made during its age of colloquy). If we're saying that Hebrew resembled either Arabic or Ethiopian (which we needn't say, but you know what I mean), then it's more likely that it resembled Arabic, unless there is substantial evidence to the contrary.

I guess what I'm trying to drive at here is a question: do we know of any ancient Greek transliterations of Hebrew words that render צ as τς?


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> This is true, though I would say that in the  Ethiopian languages the emphatics are realised as ejectives, which I  think rather disposes the sibilant to affricatisation (if  affricatisation can be construed as a word).


You seem to assume that PS emphatics wern't ejective. Many scholars believe they were. What is the basis for your assumtion?





Ihsiin said:


> ...nor is there any evidence for a non-emphatic "ts" in proto-Semitic...


We have some evidence that Phoenician s3 (samek) may have been an affricate: The rendition as _ksi _in Greek.


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## tFighterPilot

Ihsiin said:


> This is true, though I would say that in the Ethiopian languages the emphatics are realised as ejectives, which I think rather disposes the sibilant to affricatisation (if affricatisation can be construed as a word). I believe Ethiopian has no non-emphatic "ts", nor is there any evidence for a non-emphatic "ts" in proto-Semitic, and I think we sort of need one if we're going to connect the two "ts" realisations of sadi in Ethiopian and modern Hebrew.


Yes, sorry, I meant /ts'/ not /ts/. No one's claiming that צ was originally non-emphatic.



> It's also certainly true that Arabic has dominated the Middle-East and greatly influenced all the speech therein, but I don't think this needs to be such a massive problem. If Hebrew weren't a liturgical language and had no modern pronunciation traditions, we'd be looking to Arabic (and heavily Arabic-influenced Aramaic), as its closest living relatives, to determine the phonology (as well as transliterations of Hebrew words made during its age of colloquy). If we're saying that Hebrew resembled either Arabic or Ethiopian (which we needn't say, but you know what I mean), then it's more likely that it resembled Arabic, unless there is substantial evidence to the contrary.


This is sort of an evidence by itself. What are the odds of /s'/ coincidentally turning into /ts'/ in Ethiopian and /ts/ in Ashkenazi Hebrew?



> I guess what I'm trying to drive at here is a question: do we know of any ancient Greek transliterations of Hebrew words that render צ as τς?


It was transliterated differently in different times by different people, some of them having Aramaic as their primary language. What should be noted is that (as far as I know) Latin or Greek /s/ was never transliterated to צ (unlike Arabic which transliterated Caesar's name to قيصر)


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## rayloom

Regarding the preservation of the צ sound as ص in Temanite Hebrew. Although it might arguably be due to influence of Arabic, perhaps so, but in an indirect way, that probably the Arabic environment kept the sound from disappearing or changing (maybe), as opposed to the changes for example in Ashkenazi Hebrew. 
Remember Temanite Hebrew also kept the /p/ phoneme, while Arabic had /f/, that means it quite resisted such an influence from Arabic, no?


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## tFighterPilot

rayloom said:


> Regarding the preservation of the צ sound as ص in Temanite Hebrew. Although it might arguably be due to influence of Arabic, perhaps so, but in an indirect way, that probably the Arabic environment kept the sound from disappearing or changing (maybe), as opposed to the changes for example in Ashkenazi Hebrew.
> Remember Temanite Hebrew also kept the /p/ phoneme, while Arabic had /f/, that means it quite resisted such an influence from Arabic, no?


But not the /g/ sound (at least in some dialects)


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## rayloom

tFighterPilot said:


> But not the /g/ sound (at least in some dialects)



I find the change from g to dj in Temanite Hebrew really interesting. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that that change happened independent of Arabic influence!
Yemeni Arabic has no dj, ج is pronounced g. And it's actually the historical pronunciation of the ج in Yemeni Arabic, attested in works by Arab grammarians dating as far back as the 10th century.
And as far as I'm aware, this is the case for all the major Yemeni Arabic dialects, excluding Hadhrami Arabic where the ج is pronounced as a y (palatal approximant)!


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## clevermizo

If the original emphatics were ejective, then I agree that even s' (and by apostrophe, I mean ejective) would predispose the sound to becoming [ts], even were it not originally [ts']. Isn't [ts'] the cognate phoneme in Ge'ez?

As to European influence, I don't know. I used to assume that was the case, but if the sound were [sˤ] (ص in modern Arabic), then wouldn't it make more sense to simplify it to plain [s]? Quite like tˤ/t'(?) > t (ט)?


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## berndf

OCH said:


> I think I'm beyond aware of that which is why I gave you specific examples.


Then I don't understand why you gave these examples and what they are supposed to prove.


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## OCH

My point was that original Semitic peoples still use the original צ sound. My point for the entire thread was that Modern Hebrew is barely Hebrew at all due to European influence. I'm not sure if it's official yet but many linguists consider Modern Hebrew to be a western language, not a Semitic one. They consider other forms such as Mizrahi, Sephardic, Tiberian (Biblical) to be Hebrew.


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## berndf

La instead of lo goes back beyond the Canaanite shift and can therefore not be "original Hebrew". This means a Hebrew dialect where לא is la and not lo is probably influenced by a non-Canaanite Semitic language, probably Aramaic or Arabic.


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## Ihsiin

berndf said:


> You seem to assume that PS emphatics wern't  ejective. Many scholars believe they were. What is the basis for your  assumtion?



It's rather the other way 'round; the assumption here is that the emphatics _were_ realised as ejectives  in proto-Semitic, and I see no substantial basis for this assumption. If  it were plainly established that proto-Semitic emphatics were ejective,  then I think it become a lot more plausible that Hebrew צ was realised  as an affricate.



> We have some evidence that Phoenician s3 (samek) may have been an affricate: The rendition as _ksi _in Greek.



Well, the obvious question arises, why is Ξ  "ks" and not "ts"? And the obvious answer is that, in this instant, the  Greeks weren't transliterating Phoenician, but adapting the alphabet for  their own language, and they had the need for a letter representing  "ks" not "ts". But then the further question arises, why bother with the  idea of a Phoenician affricate at all? 



tFighterPilot said:


> Yes, sorry, I meant /ts'/ not /ts/. No one's claiming that צ was originally non-emphatic.



No, yes, I understood what you meant.  What I meant was, well, all the emphatic consonants in proto-Semitic  have non-emphatic counterparts. If we're going to say that the "ts"  realisations of sadi in Ethiopian and modern Hebrew are related, then  they must necessarily both be descended straight from proto-Semitic, in  which case we'd need a non-emphatic "ts".



> This is sort of an evidence by itself. What are the odds of  /s'/ coincidentally turning into /ts'/ in Ethiopian and /ts/ in  Ashkenazi Hebrew?



There have been bigger linguistic coincidences. I don't think the odds are oh so high.



> It was transliterated differently in different times by different  people, some of them having Aramaic as their primary language. What  should be noted is that (as far as I know) Latin or Greek /s/ was never  transliterated to צ (unlike Arabic which transliterated Caesar's name to  قيصر)



Well, we've already established that, at some point, צ  had several sounds and of course it would have different  transliterations accordingly, and it's perfectly natural that at  different times and by different people it would have different  transliterations. I just think that, if it were, for any significant  period of time during the colloquial life Hebrew, realised as a "ts", it  would have been transliterated as "τσ" in at least some Ancient Greek  texts. A few instances of such transliterations would pretty much settle  the issue in my mind.
As for transliterations in Hebrew of foreign words, I have next to no knowledge on the matter, so I can't really say much.


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> It's rather the other way 'round; the assumption here is that the emphatics _were_ realised as ejectives  in proto-Semitic, and I see no substantial basis for this assumption.


What else? pharyngeal? For this we have only Arabic as an example for that and may well and most probably is an innovation in Arabic. I think the question should rather be if there is a basis not to assume PS emphatics were ejectives.


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## Ihsiin

Could be pharyngeal. It could be that pharyngealisation is an Arabic innovation. Could be that it's a central-Semitic innovation. Could be that it was there in proto-Semitic. Or it could have been something else.
The things is, all our living central-Semitic languages realise the emphatics as pharyngeals, all our south-Semitic languages (correct if I'm wrong with my "all") realise them as ejectives, and all our east-Semitic languages are dead. So what do we say?


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> But then the further question arises, why bother with the  idea of a Phoenician affricate at all?


If this doesn't interest you, why are you participating in this discussion then?


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## Ihsiin

No, no, no, my dear fellow, you misunderstand me. I'm not saying this discussion doesn't interest me; on the contrary, it intrests me immensly. My point was this:
If we say that Greek Xi has a different sound from Phoenician Samek, we might as well say that Samek was a sibilant, rather than an affricate. We could say that it was an affricate, and the Greek adopted it for their, different affricate, but we could equally say that Phoenician had two sibilants (Samek and Shin), and since Greek only had one, it adopted the other for an affricate. Samek as an affricate isn't necessitated by this line of thought. That's all I was trying to say.


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## berndf

Well, you said there was no evidence for an affricate Samek, and I gave you an example of such evidence. It might convince you or not. But there is evidence, and that is my point.


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## Ihsiin

I appreciate that, I was simply explaining why I don't find this idea convincing. I hope I haven't been misunderstood.


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## berndf

My own interpretation is "not compelling". If you browse through the academic literature of the last, say, 50 years you hardly find anyone supporting the pure-sibilant-theory of s3. Opinions range from "we don't know" to "most likely affricate".


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## tFighterPilot

berndf said:


> My own interpretation is "not compelling". If you browse through the academic literature of the last, say, 50 years you hardly find anyone supporting the pure-sibilant-theory of s3. Opinions range from "we don't know" to "most likely affricate".


So if Samekh was and affricate and Sin was /ɬ/, does that mean that there was no /s/?


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> So if Samekh was and affricate and Sin was /ɬ/, does that mean that there was no /s/?


The pronunciation of s1 is unclear, could have been /s/ or /ʃ/ or maybe both (allophonic variants). Unfortunately, neither Greek nor Latin differentiation between them, hence transcriptions don't help much.


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## tFighterPilot

berndf said:


> The pronunciation of s1 is unclear, could have been /s/ or /ʃ/ or maybe both (allophonic variants). Unfortunately, neither Greek nor Latin differentiation between them, hence transcriptions don't help much.


It's interesting in that regard to look at the different translations of judges 12:6 (The Shibboleth story). The KJ version translates it as it is now (שיבולת-Shibboleth, סיבולת-Sibboleth). The Latin version translates it quite strangely (שיבולת-Sebboleth, סיבולת-Tebboleth). I tried finding the Greek terms in the Septuagint, but couldn't find anything resembling it. http://www.septuagint.org/LXX/Judges/12


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## tFighterPilot

I asked about in the Greek forum http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2391146

Apparently they translated it to σύνθημα (Sinthima) and στάχυς (Stakhis). Kinda seem like it ruins the whole point, but oh well.


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## berndf

That is exactly the problem. People translating the story into a language lacking the distinction will replace it by something they can spell and that has nothing to do anymore with the original pronunciation. BTW: סיבולת might be a similar kind of misrepresentation as _tebboleth _because the original distinction may have been between /θ/ and s1, a distinction that probably still existed in some Canaanite dialects of the time but which cannot be represented in Hebrew.


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## Abu Rashid

clevermizo said:


> As to European influence, I don't know. I used to assume that was the case, but if the sound were [sˤ] (ص in modern Arabic), then wouldn't it make more sense to simplify it to plain [s]? Quite like tˤ/t'(?) > t (ט)?



This is sound reasoning, but it neglects the fact that  צ is not just a single phoneme, it's 3 of them merged together, and therefore the way those 3 collapsed into one another has definitely had a great effect on the "final product".

I always consider it like this, if Arabic were to undergo the same mergers (some dialects already have done part of it):

ظ +  ض = ظ
ص +  ظ = ظ

Each time the merge occurs, the sound value of ظ (a 'z' like sound) is effected, so that eventually it sounds something like 'tz' (with a bit of IE phonology thrown in to boot).


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## clevermizo

Abu Rashid said:


> This is sound reasoning, but it neglects the fact that  צ is not just a single phoneme, it's 3 of them merged together, and therefore the way those 3 collapsed into one another has definitely had a great effect on the "final product".
> 
> I always consider it like this, if Arabic were to undergo the same mergers (some dialects already have done part of it):
> 
> ظ +  ض = ظ
> ص +  ظ = ظ
> 
> Each time the merge occurs, the sound value of ظ (a 'z' like sound) is effected, so that eventually it sounds something like 'tz' (with a bit of IE phonology thrown in to boot).



I see, so you think that a [ts]-like sound in Hebrew (or Canaanite in general) is the result of the merger? So regardless, you think [ts] or a ts/z/dz-like sound could be the original phoneme _ in Hebrew _ (though not necessarily in PS).


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## berndf

clevermizo said:


> ...you think [ts] or a ts*/z/dz*-like sound could be the original phoneme _ in Hebrew _ (though not necessarily in PS).


I don't think we have any indication of a voiced sound for צ. If we had, it would be very significant, because it would mean that early Canaanite emphatics where pharyngeal rather than ejective which is by no means a trivial assumption.


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## Abu Rashid

clevermizo said:


> I see, so you think that a [ts]-like sound in Hebrew (or Canaanite in general) is the result of the merger?


 
Firstly I don't think we can say too much for sure what it sounded like in Canaanite in general.

As for Hebrew, I just think it's wrong to view it in terms of tsade being the descendant of proto-Semitic ṣ, and that ẓ and ḍ just disappeared from Hebrew. In reality all 3 of them combined together to make tsade, how it evolved after that is another story, and I'm sure the IE influence also has something to do with it.


P.S I give up trying to properly format this message (I already lost my entire post due to the ridiculous reformatting that strips out unicode characters it doesn't like). For a language forum, this forum has frustratingly poor support for unicode.​


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## Abu Rashid

tFighterPilot said:


> So you also think that ג was originally pronounced /dʒ/ and that פ was originally pronounced /f/?



ג is obviously better preserved in Hebrew than Arabic (for most dialects anyway, Egyptian and Yemenite still preserve it), but פ is by no means as clear cut. In fact I'd say the evidence supports /f/ more than /p/. Most living Semitic languages, with the exception of Aramaic & Hebrew seem to have /f/, And even in Aramaic and Hebrew it is part of the lenition series where /f/ is in fact the unmarked form, indicating it's probably the more regular case (I'd think).


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> ...proto-Semitic ṣ, and that ẓ and ḍ...


I take it you mean "proto-Semitic _predecessors of _ṣ, and that ẓ and ḍ", right?


Abu Rashid said:


> and I'm sure the IE influence also has something to do with it.


The loss of emphatic pronunciation (however it was originally realized) most likely has.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> I take it you mean "proto-Semitic _predecessors of _ṣ, and that ẓ and ḍ", right?



It's irrelevant what their sound values originally were, I'm merely referring to the 3 distinct phonemes. As far as I'm aware there's no agreed upon notation, and these 3 symbols are quite identifiable for what they represent, are they not? If I'd surrounded them with // then I would see a point to your question, but I did not.



berndf said:


> The loss of emphatic pronunciation (however it was originally realized) most likely has.



I've also seen it suggested that the 'tz' sound is quite common in IE languages in regions that Ashkenazim lived, and therefore it's quite likely the influence came from those languages.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> It's irrelevant what their sound values originally were, I'm merely referring to the 3 distinct phonemes. As far as I'm aware there's no agreed upon notation, and these 3 symbols are quite identifiable for what they represent, are they not? If I'd surrounded them with // then I would see a point to your question, but I did not.


I thought, you meant it this way, just wanted to be sure.  (The usual symbols are *ṱ (>ظ), *ṣ (>ص), *ṣ́ (>ض).)


Abu Rashid said:


> I've also seen it suggested that the 'tz' sound is quite common in IE languages in regions that Ashkenazim lived, and therefore it's quite likely the influence came from those languages.


Quite possible, though it isn't Ashkenazi phenomenon, Sephardi pronunciation is also [ts] which is either coincidence or an indication that an affricate pronunciation existed already before the split.

Woodard agrees with you, arguing that, as a result of the merger of the PS consonants, the original affricate emphatic had completely disappeared at some stage in ancient Hebrew. He writes that the entire affricate triad had been lost as a result of the merger with the interdental triad, i.e. the affricate emphatic had been lost for the same reason as the voiced and unvoiced affricates are lost ([dz] and [ts]). If this is correct, then even if [ts'] existed in earlier Canaanite dialects before the merger was completed the modern [ts] cannot be a reflex of this [ts'] but must be a later innovation.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> I thought, you meant it this way, just wanted to be sure.  (The usual symbols are *ṱ (>ظ), *ṣ (>ص), *ṣ́ (>ض).)



Well that's the one now used in Wikipedia, but previously I've seen another system there I'm sure. In most books I've read, the 3 symbols I used are most common, hence my use of them.



berndf said:


> Quite possible, though it isn't Ashkenazi phenomenon, Sephardi pronunciation is also [ts] which is either coincidence or an indication that an affricate pronunciation existed already before the split.



Both were in close proximity to European languages.



berndf said:


> Woodard agrees with you, arguing that, as a result of the merger of the PS consonants, the original affricate emphatic had completely disappeared at some stage in ancient Hebrew. He writes that the entire affricate triad had been lost as a result of the merger with the interdental triad, i.e. the affricate emphatic had been lost for the same reason as the voiced and unvoiced affricates are lost ([dz] and [ts]). If this is correct, then even if [ts'] existed in earlier Canaanite dialects before the merger was completed the modern [ts] cannot be a reflex of this [ts'] but must be a later innovation.



Interesting.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> Both were in close proximity to European languages.


That's why I said "...is either coincidence or ...". If it isn't coincidence then it must be older than both traditions which still doesn't exclude IE influence but then probably not in Europe but still in the Middle East.

EDIT: Having said that, it should be noted that there was in influx if Jews from other parts of Europe after the Arab conquest of the Iberian peninsula since the Muslim rulers where much more tolerant towards Jews than Christian ones. So, the [ts] pronunciation of צ could be a later import into Sephardi Hebrew.


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## Abu Rashid

tFighterPilot said:


> So if Samekh was and affricate and Sin was /ɬ/, does that mean that there was no /s/?


I'd say there's a good chance s1 was /s/, as it still is today in most surviving Semitic languages. Also the fact that /θ/ merged with s1 in Hebrew and many other Semitic languages tends to suggest they had /s/ as the value of s1 at the time of that merger, since /s/ & /θ/ are much more likely to merge than /ʃ/ & /θ/.


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