Was there ever a J sound in Hebrew?

even without the tower of babel you've a point.ancient languages are different from their modern counterparts. Take for example Old English.It was spoken before William of Normandy (the Conqueror) came and mixed french into the language.It has a whole three different letters, all represeting a sound--which sounds we still have, but . . .The language is unintelligible to those of us who haven't studied Old English extensively--such as me.http://www.kami.demon.co.uk/gesithas/readings/deor_oe.html
just click on the first letter of each verse to hear it spoken. but you might need some new software, especially if you're lacking real player. the sight has several old english audio clips. pretty cool sounding if you ask me.ABE: upon rereading this, it seems as if you can intepret the sentence before the link as saying that I have studied Old English extensively. which is not the case--I've studied it in my english class in high school for the sole purpose of examining how they wrote their poems. The stuff is unitelligible to me for the most part also.Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

depends on which ancients you refer to, NJ.The roman and greek languages share a different root than does hebrew.latin and greek are from the proto-indo-european language family, as are all the germanic, slavic, romance, and even a few Indian (the continent, not our Indians).hebrew is semetic, and as such shares the same root as arabic.also, the egyptian language, I don't think, is based off of the sumerian.the ancient chinese have yet another root language.so, saying the ancients had the sumerian language root is false. saying that the semetic languages might still be false, but at least it's not a blanket statement covering every ancient civilization on earth.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

Interesting. I clicked on english. It told me every single damn country english is spoken in. Not where english is from, not its roots, not how it relates to others.If I could only scan my American Heritage dictionary's back pages, particularly with the graph showing the indo-european language.
The oldest language we know of, and guess what--without any written parts of it, they've figured the damn language out. It's prununciation, what the words mean, the grammer.Oh, and it's a lot older than sumerian. It's older than all of civiliazation--even from before written history.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

hey arach, are you sure that the phonecian language is the root of greek?the alphabet (or as you put it, the alef-bet) is definetely based off of their concept of having one symbol for one sound.but language wise, there's a lot of research that shows a different root. Germanic languages share the same root as latin, but germanic did not come from latin. I really wich I had my dictionary right now. maybe this weekend I can get a hold of it, and give the family tree of indo-european (heh-you're a peein' ) languages. And as a hint--the semetic languages, if I recall correctly, do not belong in the tree--they're in a totally different tree.you are right--german doesn't have a "j" sound. neither does swedish, so I'm fairly confident that danish and norwegian don't either.
spanish--the sound as we know i in english isn't there. but we must have picked it up from somewhere.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

I won't contend with you on your hebrew stuff--I don't know any of it grammer and whatnot wise.but, it will contend with you on old english. it is germanic in it's root. as are the scandinavian lanuages. but, OE did not come from them.of course, I may be taking that back after this weekend, seeing as how I've got a dictionary with a very nice thesis on the history of language, particularly english. Not to mention a wonderful chart.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

okay, so you were saying the alphabets shared a common root. which is true.yeah, that's were I was getting confused. It almost sounded as if you were saying the languages were rooted, especially on the disertation of the lack of a j sound in five generations.I interpreted that as more a language than alphabet thing.
hence, my confusion.okay.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

norse languages are separate--but . . .never mind.This weekend I am defintely going to go back to westminster to scan the picture of the chart, unless I manage to find one on the web.cool that you're dad's fluent in old english. I'm fluent in modern swedish (or whatever you want to call it).
well, I should hope that I am, seeing as how I'm half swedish, but . . .kind of a crummy graph
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/oe/oe-ie.html
another slightly difficult chart
http://softrat.home.mindspring.com/germanic.html
this one's easier to read
http://www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.html
and here's the chart I was gonna scan
http://www.bartleby.com/61/indoeuro.htmlof all these, the only one I do know to be at least somewhat factual and up to date is the american heritage one.
however, the rest show the same thing.
OE is from the west germanic branch of the germanic families. norse is from the north germanic branch.
closely related, yes, but not as close as you implied. (or perhaps thought).Edited by kuresu, : No reason given.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences