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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] linguistics, was Re: Prov. 30:19

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Karl Randolph <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • Cc: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] linguistics, was Re: Prov. 30:19
  • Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 14:06:11 -0700

On 12/10/2003 08:32, Karl Randolph wrote:

... (As for the early Scandinavian runic writing, did the early Vikings have
only 16 phones in their speech, or did their 16 glyphs correspond to 16
phonemes? Only an interview with a surviving Viking can answer that.)

Or did they have many more than 16 phonemes but for some reason only use 16 glyphs?

It is my belief that Hebrew started out as a phonetic writing system, where
each grapheme corresponded to a consonantal phone with a couple of exceptions
where waw and yod sometimes indicated vowels, only later, as the language
changed, added new phones and split one phoneme into two, were the graphemes
adjusted by adding dots to show the new phonetic values. We see the same
development in Arabic.

Does your belief correspond with historical reality? Only an interview with a surviving Hebrew can answer that.

Karl W. Randolph.




--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/






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