Re: Bethel?

On Aug 4, 5:11 pm, mi...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Micha Berger) wrote:
Amitai <chr0...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Leaving Z in place and replacing C with G, and leaving gaps between H
and I, N and O', and P and Q, yields:
A B G D E F Z H... I K L M N... O P... Q R
S T V X
The first four letters of the Hebrew alphabet: "aleph - dalet" clearly
correspond to A - D.

The evolution of western written language is generally believed to be
hierogliphics to semitic abjads to Greek, which then influenced Latin, and
Greek and Latin were consciously used to make Cyrillic, etc... Linguistics
consider Greek to be from the Phoenician abjad (the technical term for
"alphabet"s that only have consonants, from the first four letters
assuming they are: alef, bet, jimmel, dalet). Both Phoenicia and Greece
had major trading fleets in the same parts of the Mediterranian. IOW,
Greek /is/ ultimately semitic in origin, but not necessarily Hebrew.

Tangent:
    In India, each symbol in the abjad was given an ammendation for the
    vowel, producing a syllabary (one symbol per syllable). If you've ever
    seen Indian writing, with that dark line across the top that connects
    (nearly) ever letter in a word, there is a parallel (predecessor) in
    how the Torah is written.

    In order for the line of text to be straight, Jewish scribes historically
    etched a line across the parchment. The tops of the letters (minus the
    head of the lamed and tags) are drawn as hanging from this line. Think
    also how many letters have "heads" meant to go along the bottom of the
    etched line, from the top curved off the vav, to the head on a gimel,
    that aren't scrictly needed for identifying the letter (like the beis
    or kaf, where it's clearly a defining feature) but emphasize that dotted
    line across the top of Hebrew text.

E, a vowel, is not needed in Hebrew, so it is used for the aspirated
"heh".
F is not needed either, as its sound is produced by the undotted
"peh", so it is used for the related, softer sounding "vav".

Which means these two are causally reversed. Hebrew and Phonecian had
semivowels in those position that Greek didn't need, therefore they used
the semivowel to represent the nearest full vowel.

But the mapping you provide is generally accepted, with that caveat that
you're pointing the transitions between pairs in the wrong way.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

--
Micha Berger             It's nice to be smart,
mi...@xxxxxxxxxxx        but it's smarter to be nice.http://www.aishdas.org ;                 - R' Lazer Brody
Fax: (270) 514-1507


My approach was logical rather than chronological, so I adopted
(loosely) the precept of Rav (or should it be Rabh) "ayn muqdam
umeu`har batorah" (in study there is no earlier and later). My intent
was to explore the correspondence between the Latin and Hebrew
alphabets (or, if you prefer, the Latin alphabet and the Hebrew abjad)
for the purpose of transliteration. Therefore, I began by matching
Latin with Hebrew, called in the Greek alphabet for the missing three
Hebrew characters, and ignored the Phoenician after noting that it was
the granddaddy of them all.

Parenthetically, I am less interested in transliteration of Hebrew in
Latin characters than in the reverse process: the spelling of terms
introduced into Hebrew from western languages. This too was a mess.
For example, when my home institution, the Technion was founded in
1924, Bialik recommended - quite correctly -that the first letter
should be "tav". This was reversed by the Academy for the Hebrew
Language, who ruled that t="tet" and th="tav ", presumably because of
the way the undotted "tav" was pronounced by Eastern Jews, Yemenites
in particular, or because it was closer to the Ashkenazi s. Similarly,
chemistry was translated as either "`himia" with a "`het" or "khimia",
with a "khaf". The latter finally won out - correctly - in view of the
fact that it is spelled with "chi" in Greek and a dotted "ha" in
Arabic. This raised the question of how to pronounce it: "k" or "kh";
the the latter was decided, despite the grammatical rule that "kaf" in
an opening syllable requires a "dagesh"..

Amitai






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