Hebrew Alphabet missing letters

[Sheppy]

I don't understand why śin doesn't have its own letter. It was written as λσ in Greek translations and it is even mentioned in the Bible in the Shibboleth incident. I also don't understand why the phonemes /ʁ/ and /χ/ don't have their own letters. These are also reflected in Greek translations which were obviously made long after the Bible was written. We also know that at least some of the Bible was first written in the Hebrew (Phoenician) script because the name of God is sometimes found in Hebrew script in the middle of a manuscript using the Aramaic script. Did whoever wrote the Bible just have an unusual accent where they merged earlier than for everyone else?

 

[entangledbank]

'Whoever wrote the Bible' is at least two people (at least!) - there's the person (or people) who wrote the consonant text, and the person a few years later (or people a few centuries later) who dotted it with all the Masoretic points. Clearly the consonant text represents a dialect where the lateral fricative sin or lhin had merged with shin, but the Masoretes had to undo this because they used a dialect where sin was the same sound as samekh. So their dialect is not just a direct descendant in time from the consonant-text dialect.

 

[berndf]

The Phoenecian script was not designed for Hebrew. The Canaanite dialect for which the script was created must have had a merger of Sheen and Seen but a separate pronunciation for Samekh. The merger between Samekh and Seen in Hebrew must have had completed only after the script started to be used for Hebrew. Otherwise we would see more unetymological spellings.

I don't understand what you mean by Hewlett not having a letter for /ʁ/. Hebrew had and has the rhotic letter Resh; just the way it was realised had changed over time.

Or do you mean why Hebrew doesn't distinguish between Ghayn and `ayn and between Khet and Ḥet as Arabic does? This is because Ghayn merged into `ayn and Khet into Ḥet in all Canaanite dialects. At a much later stage, [ɣ] reemerged as an allophone of /g/ and [x] as an allophone of /k/ under Aramaic influence. But this was long after the 22 letter script was firmly established. There are however indications that early forms of Hebrew had maintained some distinction between Ghayn and `ayn and Khet and Ḥet, respectively, even though those differences were never expressed in writing; again because Hebrew was written in a script not designed for it.

The old Hebrew and and the Aramaic scripts only differ in letter shape. They consist of the same 22 letters. The Canaanite dialect for which the script was originally designed must have distinguished exactly these 22 consonants and all language of the region that adopted this script somehow managed to live with this, even though the had different sets of consonants they distinguished.

 

[Sheppy]

I thought there were some Canaanite scripts that had a letter ghayn and khet. So Biblical Hebrew was an unusual Canaanite dialect that through pure coincidence had the exact same consonant inventory as Aramaic whose alphabet would later be used to write it? Honestly, the example they gave to prove Hebrew distinguished these consonants seem kind of spurious.
יִצְחָק - [jisˤħɑːq] --> Ἰσαάκ [isaak]
רָחֵל - [rɑːχeːl] --> Ῥαχήλ [r̥akʰɛːl]
I could see how the sˤ and ħ just blended together, and how else were they supposed to transliterate cheth in Ancient Greek? I don't see how that proves that it was χ and not ħ. I guess there was the breathing sign but they may have been hesitant to use that in the middle of a word, they probably would have used it for he, and it was already silent in many dialects of Greek and this was actually written in Egypt.

 

[entangledbank]

In fact Arabic doesn't distinguish between ain and ghain, or between ħa and kha, if we just look at the 'consonant script'. It also derived from a script from some Semitic dialect that didn't distinguish these, then pointing was used to create different Arabic letters.

 

[berndf]

In fact Arabic doesn't distinguish between ain and ghain, or between ħa and kha, if we just look at the 'consonant script'. It also derived from a script from some Semitic dialect that didn't distinguish these, then pointing was used to create different Arabic letters.

The Arabic script developed out of the Nabatean script which in turn developed out of the Aramaic script. The Nabatean script had lost some distinctions and only distinguished 15 letters. Arabic later added the dots (in early Islamic times, about 200 years after days of Muhammad) to adapt the script to the larger consonant inventory of Arabic.

that through pure coincidence had the exact same consonant inventory as Aramaic whose alphabet would later be used to write it?

Early Aramaic probably distinguish 28 consonants. The 22 letter script was not developed for Aramaic either. The "Aramaic script" used to write Hebrew today developed out of the Imperial Aramaic script, the script used by the Babylonians to write Aramaic which is essentially the Phoenecian scripts with changed latter shapes, much like black letter scripts are essentially the same script as the original Roman one, just with letter shapes that changed over time.

 

[Ectab]

Arabic later added the dots (in early Islamic times, about 200 years after days of Muhammad)

Actually, the person who invented the dots for the Arabic letters is Nasr bin 'Asim al-Laythi, who died in 708AD. That is only 76 years after Prophet Mohammad's death. But the dots were added much earlier before his death, during the reign of Caliph Abdulmalik bin Marwan (685-705).

 

[WadiH]

There are Nabataean inscriptions with dots, and also very early Islamic inscriptions (from 'Umar and Uthman's time) and papyri with dots. So clearly dotting was used in Arabic from at least the beginning of Islam, and probably from before Islam as well, but only systemized in the form we use today in the Marwanid period.

Also, it seems that some of the letters that look identical today and are distinguished with dots were not quite identical in Nabataean and early Arabic script (e.g. ف vs ق and ج v ح and خ): Thread by @PhDniX on Thread Reader App

 

[Ihsiin]

There are however indications that early forms of Hebrew had maintained some distinction between Ghayn and `ayn and Khet and Ḥet, respectively, even though those differences were never expressed in writing; again because Hebrew was written in a script not designed for it.

Is it not more likely that Hebrew maintained the distinction completely, and that this was subsequently lost under Aramaic influence?

I thought there were some Canaanite scripts that had a letter ghayn and khet. So Biblical Hebrew was an unusual Canaanite dialect that through pure coincidence had the exact same consonant inventory as Aramaic whose alphabet would later be used to write it? Honestly, the example they gave to prove Hebrew distinguished these consonants seem kind of spurious.
יִצְחָק - [jisˤħɑːq] --> Ἰσαάκ [isaak]
רָחֵל - [rɑːχeːl] --> Ῥαχήλ [r̥akʰɛːl]
I could see how the sˤ and ħ just blended together, and how else were they supposed to transliterate cheth in Ancient Greek? I don't see how that proves that it was χ and not ħ. I guess there was the breathing sign but they may have been hesitant to use that in the middle of a word, they probably would have used it for he, and it was already silent in many dialects of Greek and this was actually written in Egypt.

There is more evidence than that - for example, חוה Eve is rendered as Εὔα in the Septuagint, not as Χευα. There are also words like Gaza and Gomorrah, that come from עזה and עמרה. The nice thing about words like יצחק and רחל and חוה is that they have obvious cognates in Arabic where the distinction between /ħ/ and /x/ corresponds with the transliterations in the Septuagint, with /x/ being rendered as χ and /ħ/ as Ø.

Actually, the person who invented the dots for the Arabic letters is Nasr bin 'Asim al-Laythi, who died in 708AD. That is only 76 years after Prophet Mohammad's death. But the dots were added much earlier before his death, during the reign of Caliph Abdulmalik bin Marwan (685-705).

I always thought it was أبو الأسود الدؤلي - we used to joke that this was nominative determinism, because he's the one who put the do's in.

 

[berndf]

Is it not more likely that Hebrew maintained the distinction completely, and that this was subsequently lost under Aramaic influence?

You are probably right. The fact that the LXX still contains different transcriptions depending on etymology indicates that the original pronunciation was still known quite a bit after the end of the exile; probably some kind of spelling pronunciation after Hebrew had ceased to be used as an every day language; much like we read Latin today with little regard how the Romans pronounced it.

 

[Ectab]

I always thought it was أبو الأسود الدؤلي - we used to joke that this was nominative determinism, because he's the one who put the do's in.

I see. It is ad-do'ali for do's.. Funny. Abu al-Aswad did invent the dots decades before al-Laythi, but ad-Do'ali's dots indicated the short vowels -harakat (a, u, i), they were later confused with al-Laythi's dots which marked consonants therefore they were reshaped into today's vowel shapes.

 

[fdb]

In Arabic there are two types of pointed letters. First, there are cases like ع and غ where the points compensate for the fact that Arabic has more consonant phonemes than the 22-letter West Semitic alphabet can represent. But there are also pairs like ب and ت or ر and ز where two Aramaic letters have merged purely graphically. Already in Imperial Aramaic d and r are identical, and this sort of graphic merger can be observed in other Aramaic languages.