[Mesorah] Hoshanot: Samech vs Sin

[Mandel, Seth]

In the Hebrew tradition handed down by the G'onim, sin and samekh are two forms of the same consonant, and function identically, just as they are pronounced identically according to the Tiberian and Babylonian reading traditions.
It is also clear that in Phoenician, sin and shin were pronounced identically and differently than samekh.  It is likely that that was the reason for the northern tribes pronouncing sibboleth and shibboleth the same, not because they could only pronounce one s- sound like the Greeks and Romans.
But the northern pronunciation was abandoned in the Hebrew tradition, and so words with samekh and sin were treated as identical, in Hebrew as well as in Aramaic.  So the root s'-t-h with a sin in the Tanakh was almost always written with a samekh in the time of Chazal, and so the Masekhta in the Mishna was written Sota with a samekh, even though the word has a sin in all places in the T'NaKh,(full disclosure: some mss. of the Mishna do use the sin, as does the Rambam in his Perush haMIshnayot).

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel

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From: Mesorah <mesorah-bounces at lists.aishdas.org> on behalf of Henry Topas via Mesorah <mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2019 1:36 PM
To: Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org <Mesorah at lists.aishdas.org>
Subject: [Mesorah] Hoshanot: Samech vs Sin

Moed Tov,

One of my congregants has asked me why in the sequence of this morning's hoshanot, phrases in the position of samech have been replaced with phrases beginning with the letter sin in the last 4 of the 7 beginning paragraphs and again in many of the later "Hoshana Rabba only" paragraphs?

Thank you and a Git Kvitel,

HT


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