[Avodah] Ancient Ashkenazi Hebrew

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 10:40:00AM -0400, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: In Avodah Digest, Vol 28, Issue 176 dated 8/26/2011 RMB wrote:
:> Ayin in  particular was likely not the Sepharadi sound. The evidence
:> of the nickname  Yankl points more to the /ng/ of the Italkim.

: How did Aza and Amorah become Gaza and Gemorrah?  Was there originally  
: some kind of nasal G sound to the ayin that could be pronounced at the 
: beginning  of a word? ...

The people who named those cities not only had some kind of /ng/ like
ayin, but at least in the case of `Azza, they had two ayins! `Azza was
Pelishti. But the cities of the plain were vassals of Melekh Chedarlaomer
of Elam. Not much is known about Elamite language. Too many theories for
me to make sense of. So, I'll stick to `Azza:

Proto-Canaanite had `en and ga, which evolved into Arabic's `ayn and gayn
(which looks like an `ayn with a dot above it). Early Aramaic may have
had both sounds, although using the same ayin for both. Hebrew, Ugaritic and
Phoenician (which is a later Canaanite) only have one ayin sound.

:                The "ng" sound is natural in the middle or end of a word but  
: would be hard to pronounce at the beginning of a word.

I don't find that to be true. Perhaps you're overly influenced by being
an English speaker, where "-ng" is only used to close syllables.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A person must be very patient
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