Question on the name Samuel from 1 Sam 1:20

[kwrandolph]

3. They can even can have markers they tell you they are borrowed

Not always.

The reason I mention this is natural cognates as opposed to borrowed words have had more time to undergo phonological change (shifting), such as a stop/plosive slipping into a fricative, or as in our current discussion a sibilant dropping the lateral feature (/ś/-->/s/). (I'm not even sure there's a need to attributing such a phenomenon to pressure from another language. I do think it's entirely plausible to posit the /ś/-->/s/ shift during the Babylonian exile since the data shows Aramaic did not have/ś/ as a phone. It is the best expansion for the sameq-sin puzzle.)

From clues within Ezra and Nehemiah, the ס in Hebrew still had the “X” (KS) phone, though Hebrew was losing it.

Back to the point, when establishing whether a word is a natural cognate of a borrow, consider the cognates zahav and dhahab. At some point in Ancient Hebrew the/dh/ shifted to a /z/. If at some later point in the development of Hebrew a /dh/ word came into the language by way of borrowing I would make the prediction that we would find that word being pronounced with a /d/, not a /z/.

Where do you get the idea that ancient Hebrew had a “dh” that shifted to a “z”? To what observed phenomena are indicated?

4. A language may have synonyms, one a cognate, the other a borrowed word.

That’s what I suspect happened here—שער being the native word referring to storming, סער being the imported word referring to wind that’s also used for blowing away chaff. But that’s speculation, as we don’t have evidence.

We are all speculating here; that is the job of linguistic science,…

It is not the job of linguistic science to speculate. The job of linguistic science is to work from what is observed. What has not been observed, cannot be used as evidence in science.

I can just picture what the sailors with Jonah experienced, probably not too much different from what I experienced on the North Atlantic once—wind a force 10 gale, waves over 100 feet high, but no rain. During the short times we were on top of a wave, we could see all the way to a lumpy horizon. Then the ship nosed down to the trough between waves, we could feel the vibration and hear the sound of the engines revving while the propellors pushed air, then we were back to watching the dark grey, foam-splotched next wave towering over us. Can you imagine the terror the sailors with Jonah experienced facing something like this?

Storm is definitely appropriate in Jonah 1:4. Notice the parallel
רֽוּחַ־גְּדוֹלָה֙ ----> סַֽעַר־גָּד֖וֹל
Have I ever told you, I love the book of Jonah

A lexicographic principle is that one does not recognize a word’s meaning as being different in each isolated example. Rather, as many examples as possible are taken together and then see if the recognized meaning fits all examples.

In English apple and pear are both cognate of each other, as well they are both cognates of the borrowed French fruit.

I don’t know from where you get your English examples, as all the words you mention have Germanic roots. Even though “fruit” presently has a French spelling, it also has a Germanic root. The ancestors to “apple” and “pear” are found in Old English, referred to specific fruits and the Old English words are closer to modern English than the French words are to English.

No. These two words were "fruit" words, they were dialectical, and split English in two, North and South. This is well established by English historical linguists. Native speakers borrowed fruit from their interaction with the French speaking nobles.

This is getting off topic, other than to mention that from cognate Germanic languages, there is a word for “fruit” that sounds very similar to the French word but that has nothing to do with interaction with French speaking nobles. Further, it has the same meaning. It’s one of those words that point to a common ancestor for both Germanic and Romance languages. Further, the Germanic cognate languages have uniques words for “apple” and “pear” referring to the specific fruits, the same as English, words that are cognate to English. Therefore the claim that you say comes from English historical linguists sounds fishy at best. At worst, it’s speculation without observation. And the lack of observation can be from the limited corpus of surviving literature from Old English.

The reason I mentioned the English example as long as I did, is because we have the same problem with Biblical Hebrew—a limited corpus of literature from a limited time period, where even a document as short as the Gezar Calendar can have vocabulary not found elsewhere in the surviving literature.

And so we find unrelated languages that have ancient cognates.

Those can be just coincidence.

It's undeniable that several hundreds of words across language families are very ancient cognates suggesting an original tongue. Not on the biblical timeline of course.

Yes, there was an original language, but God “mixed them up” so that for some, the conjugations of verbs referred to tense, for others they had no conjugations. For some, the verb is at the end of the sentence, others directly following the subject, others yet the verb can be anywhere in the sentence. God even made language families, yet far enough apart that people speaking one language in a family, could not understand others speaking another language in that language family.

I thought shaken, Disturbed might be better than "blown away."

Translation may come out better that way. But within Biblical Hebrew language itself, this looks like an idiomatic use for a term meaning “blown away”.

The problem with that is blown away is itself an idiom that means something different in English, something like "wowed".

I had not known this meaning of the English idiom. This is a good example of why translation is not evidence for purposes of this forum. Sort of like אבד “to be(come) lost” being used as a euphemism for “to die”.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Refael Shalev]

Hi Karl,
Where do you find that "samekh" had the sound "ks"?

I find it hard to believe because of adjacent consonant limitation like in the word כסל (KeKseL?).

[kwrandolph]

Hi Karl,
Where do you find that "samekh" had the sound "ks"?

My first clue was how the ס was taken up in Greek and Latin when they borrowed the Hebrew alphabet. In both of those cases, they borrowed it as a “X” (ks) phone. In Greek, it’s not only in the same place in the alphabet, but its written shape Ξ is almost identical to its shape in archaic Hebrew font.

A second clue is in the name Αρταξερξης where the Greeks heard חש as the first ξ while they heard the second ξ from the ס. An example is found in Nehemiah 2:1.

I find it hard to believe because of adjacent consonant limitation like in the word כסל (KeKseL?).

Why not? There’s a vowel between them. No different from the many times ככל is found.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Refael Shalev]

I don't take this like a hard evidence.

There isn't a root ככל. The hard majority of roots in hebrew don't suffer identical first and second radicals, moreover we can find more of such limitations between groups of consonants.
Even first and third identical radicals are rare.

Therefore I disagree with your observation.

[kwrandolph]

I don't take this like a hard evidence. … Therefore I disagree with your observation.

You don’t have to agree. That’s your choice. But what you can’t deny is that there’s some evidence. Whether you consider that evidence convincing or not is your choice according to your biases.

As for me, I came to the question with an open mind. The more I studied Biblical Hebrew, the more I realized that there is much that we don’t know about the language. We don’t know its original pronunciation. Scholars disagree on its grammar. Word definitions are sometimes all over the place. There are places where traditional translations are way off in left field, if even in the ballpark. It’s a wonder that we understand as much as we do when we read the text.

And yes, I find your argument unconvincing.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Jason Hare]

You don’t have to agree. That’s your choice. But what you can’t deny is that there’s some evidence. Whether you consider that evidence convincing or not is your choice according to your biases.

I just find this shocking. You're willing to speculate in one direction, but not in any other direction. This statement opposes everything you've said about whatever other people suggest here on the forum. I'm sitting here shaking my head.

[Refael Shalev]

First, there isn't any evidence for the pronunciation of ס as x. I don't understand why the greeks needed to translate אחשורוש or ארתחשסתא from hebrew and not directly from persian. Moreover Xerxes doesn't have two ס so why in greek we find two x?
ארתחשסתא is written also as ארתחששתא.

It's o.k to come with open mind and question everything, but if you don't understand the difference between the word כסף and the combination of כ+כל or don't recognize that there are limitations of adjacent consonants and therefore the combination of k+ks is very doubtful, you building your point of view on mountain of sand.

No offense Karl, but there isn't real advantage in your claim.

[Jason Hare]

Yeah, I don't see how either אחשורוש or ארתחשסתא demonstrates that ס = Ξ. I'm lost by that argument.

[kwrandolph]

You don’t have to agree. That’s your choice. But what you can’t deny is that there’s some evidence. Whether you consider that evidence convincing or not is your choice according to your biases.

I just find this shocking. You're willing to speculate in one direction, but not in any other direction. This statement opposes everything you've said about whatever other people suggest here on the forum. I'm sitting here shaking my head.

What I describe is not speculation, rather evidence.

That the Hebrew alphabet has been in use since the 15th century BC if not before is evidence.

That other languages adopted the ס as the “X” (ks) phoneme when they adopted the Hebrew alphabet, is evidence. I didn’t know what to make of that evidence when I first noticed it, but I recognized it as evidence.

That the Greeks transliterated the ס as Ξ as late as Ezra and Nehemiah, is evidence.

Is that enough evidence to be convincing? That’s up to you to decide.

Is there any evidence from Biblical times within Hebrew that the ס didn’t have the “X” phoneme? I know of none. That too is evidence.

So what I do here is to present the evidence that I know, and let you make up your own minds.

Karl W. Randolph.

[Refael Shalev]

A name of a ruler is not an evidence because it's more likely that the greeks knew his name without the hebrew language.

You don't mention that the greeks attached the vowel o to the consonant ע or in another words the greeks use the alphabet in a way that maximizes their language and not for the use of translation from hebrew.

I urge you to consider consonants limitations as a clue if the ס pronounced like ks.
You can compare with arabic in the words: סתר, סבב that indicates s.