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FWIW this varies by background — Yemenite Jews still pronounce Ayin as Ghayin.
by reissbaker 3y ago
FWIW this varies by background — Yemenite Jews still pronounce Ayin as Ghayin.
- selimthegrim 3y agoBut there’s no letter for it in Hebrew?
- reissbaker 3y agoAyin (ע) is the letter, and was the original letter used in the spelling of Gaza — עזה is the oldest and original name of Gaza, for as long as it's had that name. The Hebrew alphabet hasn't changed letters in thousands of years, long predating other Semitic languages like Arabic which continue to use the Gh sound; ancient Hebrew is still easily understood in written form by modern Hebrew speakers — much more so than even Shakespeare is to modern English speakers. When people say "Hebrew lost..." what they mean is the pronunciation of letters changed, not that the alphabet changed (unlike e.g. English, which really has lost and gained letters even over very short periods). And in some cases the sounds were only lost in specific communities; Yemenite Jews have done a pretty good job retaining sounds, e.g. their pronunciation of ע, as well as ת. (Similarly, Ashkenazis' much-maligned pronunciation of ת is probably closer to the original than modern non-Yemenite Mizrahi/Sephardic pronunciation — although Yemenite is closer.) The last time written Hebrew meaningfully changed was when the Paleo-Hebrew script was exchanged for Aramaic block script 2.5 thousand years ago, but even then, the replacement was 1:1 — ע was still Ayin, it was just written with a different character. And Paleo-Hebrew script has been around since the Bronze Age.