Is there any discussion anywhere of how the aspirated form of the letter ("th") became "s" in Ashkenazic Hebrew?
1) The letter's name is often pronounced taf by Ashkenazim, devoicing the last consonant. By Orientals that use the letter waw it sounds quite close to the Greek τ (tau).
2) Is there a chance that the word תו is related to אות by some form of metathesis?
3) In many instances where ת is used as a prefix to a hollow root, it sometimes later becomes part of a root, for instance: רוע >> תרועה
Alex: basically, the Ashkenazi countries where Hebrew words were spoken (1) did not have a sound like 'th' ([θ]) (2) pronounced their stops like /t/ and /d/ on the alveolar ridge rather than on the teeth like Hebrew seems to have, and therefore when made fricative, this became an [s].
There might be a connection between אות and תו.
Klein says אות derives from the root אוה - "to sign, mark".
Kaddari says that the verb תוה comes from תו, and in his entry for תוה refers us to תאוה - "border" (in Bereshit 49:26). However, in the entry for תאוה - he says it derives from אוה - "to mark" (as in Klein).
From the development of the Tav symbol, it looks like the ancient Hebrews were averse to drawing a cross!
there is a very interesting discussion of the sav/tav issue, within the context of a discussion of Judeo-Provencal...
http://www.jochnowitz.net/
Essays...oProvencal.html
Shalom, the article mentioned (http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/
JudeoProvencal.html)links the Sav to the Greek influence within Europeans. Thus, the the letter "Theta" is the influence behind the Sav. But how does this explain the pronounciation of the Ancient Aramaic Sav?
No, it doesn't connect it to Greek influence at all. θ is a phonetic symbol in this context, referring to "th" in "thing". All he points out is that the Greeks maintained this sound for tav, whereas other European Jews, who lacked this sound in their local languages, did not.
But he does imply that from this we know that even in Europe, "Sav" was pronounced "th" (θ). We already know that it was elsewhere because a number of Eastern Hebrew dialects pronounce it so. And hence it is likely that it was also the pronunciation of the letter in Ancient Aramaic.
I had noted some parallel words that had in one case a z for what was a v in the other. Then there is the whole s'ibboleth/shibboleth thing. The sound that standard French has for Latin J is a voiced version of the sound of Hebrew Shin. It has long been my firm observation that a single sound in both a voiced and unvoiced form was represented as s'in or shin. By s', I mean the French J sound as in je, or the mid position English s in measure. It is likely that the use of both sh and s' for French J, in differing dialects reflects the S'ibboleth/shibboleth phenomenon, in which some automatically gravitate to just one of two versiopns of the same sound, while others easily switch between the voiced and unvoiced.
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