Shin is also used as a sort of prefix on verbs to create a שפעל form. This is more common in other Semitic languages such as Aramaic.
Examples in Hebrew include:
שחרר
שעבד
שחוה (השתחוה)
שחזר
From the latter meaning, it seems, it has taken on the understanding of "re-" (as in repetition of a previous action), but historically it seems to have been an emphatic form.
As to cognate letters in Arabic, Aramaic, etc, there is a good table comparing Semitic consonants across languages in the Joüon-Muraoka grammar (as I have mentioned previously with incorrect spelling of the former's name).
but many words that have sin in Biblical Hebrew are regularly spelled with samech in Medieval Hebrew.
Does this explain why many a piyyut has a line beginning with sin where we'd expect a samekh? I'm not sure why it would--e.g., "semeh.im" (in El Adon) begins with a sin in both Biblical and Medieval Hebrew.
In Greek there was no "sh" sound, so many proper names were translated with "s": Moshe / Moses, Shlomo / Solomon, Shmuel / Samuel.
I've noticed this. The mystery to me is those biblical proper names that do have "sh" in English: e.g., Asher, Ishmael, Jehoshaphat, Joshua, Shiphrah (which are all I can think of off hand).
That "she" coming before "asher" surprises me - I always assumed that "she" was a shortened version of "asher," and not the opposite. Are there other times when a prefix is lengthened into a whole word?
"According to Klein, the word shen derives from the root שנן - "to sharpen". Is the tzade in the same 'family' as the shin? If so, the word "tzayn," barb/thorn (from Proverbs 22:5) might be related.
Another bit of shin-trivia: In the Cyrillic alphabet which was developed from Greek (that's an over-simplification but I don't know the whole explanation) there was initially no letter which represented the sound "sh"(as in Greek), which was necessary for the languages which it was meant to write (such as Russian), so they borrowed the letter shin from Hebrew. And indeed if you look at the Cyrillic alphabet you will find a "shin" (called, if I am not mistaken, "sha").
Ehret, in "Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic," argues, based on the pronunciation of the corresponding phonemes in a wide variety of Afroasiatic languages (a group that includes the Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic language families), that Hebrew shin was originally pronounced like an "s" (as indeed the Bnei Ephraim still pronounced it in Biblical times), while Hebrew sin was originally something like a silent L. As evidence for the latter, I note (although this is not mentioned by Ehret) that the English word "Chaldean" comes, via Greek, from the same Semitic (Aramaic?) source as Hebrew "Kasdim," which is spelled with a sin. Evidentally the Chaldeans (Aramaic-speaking Babylonians) themselves pronounced sin something like an L, which led the Greeks to transliterate it as an L.
By the way, you might consider adding Ehret to your "not (yet) on the bookshelf" list. It is full of all kinds of good stuff like this.
>In Greek there was no "sh" sound, so many proper names were translated with "s": Moshe / Moses, Shlomo / Solomon, Shmuel / Samuel.
I suppose that explains why Yeshua is Jesus in Greek.
Joel - Good point about the שפעל construct. Steinberg points out that תפעל is likely another version of שפעל.
Mike Koplow - I'm not sure about the sin / samech substitution in Medieval Hebrew. It always seemed strange to me, for example, that in the long vidui, there are no sins beginning with samech, only sin (pardon the pun).
As far as names like Asher, Ishmael - I'm also not sure. I think that in Joel Hoffman's book he might talk about it. Very good question.
Toby - I agree, it's an unusual proposition. Steinberg suggests the opposite. I don't know of any other cases like this.
Phil - It could be, but none of my sources make such a connection.
Lonnie - Interesting, didn't know that.
Mike Gerver - Very interesting about Chaldean / Kasdim. Are there other examples of s / l in Hebrew words that we may be familiar with?
JFT - Good point, but it adds to Mike Koplow's question as to why we have both Joshua and Jesus.
Mike K: In Greek, Asher is ασήρ (Asér), Ishmael is Ισμαήλ (Ismaél), etc. The English is not always a good reflection of the Greek transcriptions. While Joshua is Joshua in English, we know the Greeks heard an s: if not by the name Jesus as mentioned by JFT, then by the Septuagint's Ιησού (Iésou).
As to piyyutim like El Adon, one could guess that the people who composed these things didn't necessarily know how to spell all the words they were using, although they did know that /s/ came after nun and before ayin (because they recited alphabetic prayers daily). Poetry is a primarily spoken genre and only secondly written.
Mike G (and Dave): On the sound of "the original Sin", I noted at that another good example of its laterality is found in the word 'balsam' (from בֹּשֶׂם). As noted in the article, shin once had two sounds. But yes, one may have been /s/.
Toby: I have also heard before the proposition that אשר came from ש and it seemed a little confusing at first. If nothing else, that would make it tricky to account for the doubling that occurs after ש is prefixed to a word. Also, the latter's use in later-Biblical-Hebrew texts in place of the former would have to be explained by a matter of dialect, rather than something diachronic. I can't think of any GOOD reasons for it off my head.
Joel - Do you know why Yehoshua became Joshua in English instead of Jesus?
Dave: the forms "Jesus" and "Joshua" come from different Hebrew forms of the name, "Yeshua" and "Yehoshua," respectively. "Yeshua" is found in some of the later books of Tanach (Ezra, Nechemiah, Divrei Hayamim) as a hypocoristic (shortened form) of Yehoshua, and I guess that's the form of the name by which Yoshke was known in his lifetime.
Dave: The question is more a matter of what is the basis of the English transcriptions of proper names in the bible? Clearly they did not all come from the Greek or Vulgate versions, which agrees with "Iosue".
Many other languages transliterate Joshua with the same 's' sound as Moses. This can be seen by sampling Joshua 1:1 in different languages (alternatively here). How many of these have 'sh' sounds I'm not sure, but certainly Hungarian (Józsuénak), Russian (Иисусу 'Iisusu'), etc do but do not use them. Some use the same word as Jesus, it seems.
The use of the Hebrew rather than Greek as a basis for proper names may have been part of a reversion to using the Hebrew text as the source, as was the King James Version(1610). Conjecturing that this was a King James initiative would be easily verifiable (I just haven't done it). To be sure, the earlier Douay/Rheims (1589) version translated from the Vulgate and used by the Roman-Catholics, uses "Josue". Nonetheless, common names like Moses would have been retained (just as Artscroll does for instance in its translation, using the more common names at times, and giving Hebrew transcriptions for less familiar cases).
It may be notable that names like Moses, Jesus, Elijah, Isaiah, etc are mentioned extensively in the New Testament (which is usually translated from Greek), but Joshua is only mentioned once (Luke 3:29), and then not the son of Nun. Asher, too, is mentioned once in Luke (2:36).
[PS: I have tried on some occasions to get an ATOM feed of your blog comments. Annoyingly, though, they come out with subjects like "Thread: 5121195073571322268. Post by Joel". It would be a lot clearer with the correct post name under "thread". Indeed it once was like that (many moons ago), then suddenly changed overnight to numbers. Is there something in your Haloscan configuration that can be fixed?]
Joel -
Thanks for the comments on Joshua etc, but I still haven't found a definitive answer.
As far as Haloscan - it's an issue with Haloscan itself, not my configuration. They said it's being worked on:
http://www.haloscan.com/forum/in...indpost&
p=25787
i watched avshalom kor himself say that 'asher leh' came first (as in shir hashirim asher leshlomo), and eventually contracted into 'sheleh'.
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