[B-Greek] MWYSHS

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Tue Apr 5 08:11:20 EDT 2011


>For some reason the Greeks heard a diphthong instead of a simple O
> or W.  At this point in time it is probably not possible to determine
> whether the Greeks heard correctly or not.  As WU is not a common
> combination in Greek, we can probably assume it was used for a
> reason.

Yes, there was a reason
but the answer is not in the vowels that they heard
but in the consonants.

Greek does not have a "sh" sound, only 's'.
Now "sh" bunches up the tongue and has more rounded lips than 's'.
The 'upsilon' also had tightly rounded lips, at least if someone is
using the correct sound for Koine Y. (It is like German 'ue' and
French 'u', a high, front, ROUNDED vowel).
By adding the ypsilon the Greeks were able to more closely approximate
the sound of 'sh' in Moshe [moyse (pronounced with rounded front vowel)]

Note SYMEON, too. Where the YPSILON follows the sigma to fill it out
in Greek ears. Hebrew did not have an Y vowel. Also, the E stands in
for the pharyngeal fricative `ayin, that does not occur in Greek either.
[shim-`on]

ERRWSO
Randall



-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicallanguagecenter.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life



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