90 On the Orthography of Hebrew Words. 



The Shemitish Aaleph, then, if we may judge from the Masoretic 

 punctuation, was both a consonant and a vowel. The corresponding 

 Alpha of the ancient Greeks, and a of the modern European langua- 

 ges, have retained onl}^ the vowel sound. 



To represent the sound of i< moveable, we will adopt the Roman 

 a, (1.) because N, when quiescent, usually quiescee in a; and (2.) 

 because the Roman a is ultimately derived from the Hebrew Aaleph. 

 Hence we merely restore to the Roman a its original consonant 

 power.* 



Beth. 



S appears to have had two sounds, according as it was written with 

 or without a Daghesh. i (without a Daghesh) was aspirated and 

 sounded like the Eng. v. a (with a Daghesh) was unaspirated and 

 sounded like b. The Greek Beta is pronounced by the modern 

 Greeks as the Eng. v. So b in Spanish between two vowels. The 

 Roman b, in the other European languages, has only its usual sound. 

 The Russians retain both sounds. 



The character v, however, as the representation of a aspirated, is 

 liable to some ambiguity, being pronounced by the Germans like f. 

 We will represent it by bh, (1.) because bh or v has the same relation 

 to b, that ph or f has to p ; and (2.) because in this way we adopt an 

 uniform mode of representation for all the aspirates. 



Gimel. 



:i had two sounds, according as it was written with or without a 

 Daghesh. :» (without a Daghesh) was aspirated and pronounced pro- 

 bably like the Irish gh. i (with a Daghesh) was unaspirated and 

 sounded like g hard. 



The fate of this letter among the different nations has been some- 

 what singular. In Syriac, it seems, as in Hebrew, to have been 

 sometimes aspirated and sometimes not. In Arabic and Persian it 

 is usually pronounced like dzh (Eng. j) ; but in Egypt and some 

 other provinces it is pronounee.d like g hard. In modern Greek it 

 is sounded before a, o, u, like g hard ; but before s, >, and the diph- 

 thongs having their sound, like the "fcng. y. In Russian It partakes of 

 a guttural sound. In French and Portuguese, it is sounded before a, 



* The necessity of representing X moveable in some way has led Professor Stuart 

 to make use of the Hebrew character itself, which ill comports with the other letters. 

 See his Heb. Gram. 2d, 3d, and 4th editions. 



