ZETA (was Hebrew=Aramaic?)

Randall Buth ButhFam at compuserve.com
Fri Aug 30 03:32:23 EDT 2002


CAIRETE

Ward's explanation is nice for the history and development of the language.
I would prefer changing the tense: 

>There is a very real practical advantage in pronouncing Zeta as "d-z", and

>teaching one's students to do the same: it is a constant reminder that it 
>actually is a "double letter" like Psi and Xi, and behaves as does a
double 
>letter.

I would say  "...reminder that it WAS a "double letter ... and behaved ..."

>...
>and thus everyone is always 
>reminded, even by the effort to do this, that here we have a double
phoneme 
>which behaves as a double letter, a sibilant, and a dental in function in 
>the language.

             "...that we HAD a double phoneme ..."

Morphologies of languages typically preserve and show old pieces of 
the phonology of the language. True of Greek like English.

However, in the Hellenistic period ZETA lost its double-consonant
pronunciation and has occasional mispellings with SIGMA in both 
directions. Or even adding a T/D when needed.
This did not affect the shape of the words, though.
EZHTHKA was still 
EZHTHKA even when pronounced with a simple [z]. 

Ward's rules cover this and are helpful. 
For actual language learning, though, I recommend
first learning to use a form rather than trying to think about 
generating it from rules. The rules are best seen as 'after-the-fact'
explanations about 'why'.

To what may ZHTA [dz] be compared? Perhaps like teaching 
Shakespearian 16th cent. English with a pronunciation of 'light' as [lixt] 
(very close to German). Such was its sound in the 14th century and it is 
very good for spelling. (Also note that the 14th century vowel would not 
have the [ai] quality of later Shakespearian and modern English. 
[Apologies to old Scots who still have some of these sounds :-) ] )

So if preserving the history of the language is the goal, then a 
[dz] pronunciation is OK, though there is some evidence of a 
metathesis having occurred in the old Attic [zd], i.e. /Z/ patterns 
like /Y/ [ps] and /X/ [ks] in structure but flipped in actual 
pronunciation. 
However, if the goal is reading like people would have 
heard in the first century and being able to easily read 
misspellings in papyri and NT manuscripts, then [z] would 
be recommended as historically accurate and consistant. 
   If it was good enough for Paul . . . (and moderns)


On the overall questions, see Gignac 1976 and Horrock 1997.
My 10-page overview on (www.biblicalulpan.com) deals 
mainly with vowels and is not helpful on the question of Z.

ERRWSQE

Randall Buth
Jerusalem





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