[Mesorah] Gao- gaa

[Mandel, Seth]

The ‘ayin vs aleph is very different from the shin vs sin.  It is clear both from the story of b'nei Ephraim in M'lakhim 12 that in Northern Israel, the sounds /sh/ and /s/ were pronounced differently in the North.  That is also evident from the alphabet, where words with shin and sin are spelled with the same letter, but samekh is spelled differently.  That is also true in Arabic: words with a historical shin are pronounced with /s/ (e.g. salaam), words with historical sin as /sh/ (e.g ‘ashara, 10), and words with historical samekh also as /s/ (e.g. 'sf).  So the story of B'nei Ephraim should not be taken to mean that they could not pronounce the /sh/ sounds like the Greeks, but rather that some words pronounced in the South with /sh/ were pronounced in the North with /s/.

The ‘ayin getting confused with the 'aleph is a much later phenomenon, and again does not mean that they could not pronounce the ‘ayin. It means like the Shomronim, who, till this day, pronounce both the ‘ayin sound and the 'aleph sound, but not in accordance to the way the words are written in the Torah. Because it is not true that every word with a het is pronounced with an ‘ayin sound (although some are) and not every word with an ‘ayin is pronounced as an aleph ()although some are), Chazal said that such a mixup passels one from dukhaning or being the sh'liach Tzibbur or reading the Torah.

So, Chazal did play on similar words with ‘ayin and 'aleph, but you do not find a "al tiqre.. ella" with them.

However, the mixup was also normal in Bovel.  After all, Assyrian and Babylonian apparently could not pronounce the ‘ayin at all, and so you find such words as "digest" from the root "eat" spelled with an ‘ayin in the Talmud Bavli, and so in modern Hebrew people think it is a different root,since it is spelled as in the Bavli, להתעכל.



Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330     Fax (212) 613-0718     e-mail mandels at ou.org


________________________________
From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of Gershon Dubin via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 8, 2018 8:23 AM
To: mesora at aishdas.org
Subject: [Mesorah] Gao- gaa

One option on today’s Daf has the paros pulling the Aron saying shiras hayam. Bach brings a girsa that the limud is due to the similarity of gaa (ayin) referring to the paros and gaa (Aleph) from the shira. While the limud in the Gemara is itself difficult my question is a mesora question:

Is there any other such limud comparing an ayin word to the same word with an Aleph.

If not (they are too different to invoke “al tikri”) why do we find instances of shin/sin such as ruach shtus of a sitar?

Sent from my iPhone
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