Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew R. Miller" <biblicalscribe AT hotmail.com>]

Thanks to all for the interesting replies to my Semetic written vowel
questions. I suppose my questioning was more theoretical than anything
else. The answer I received that makes the most sense to me so far is that
writing was developed as a sort of shorthand, so that the fewer elements,
the better. The only problem I have with that answer would be that, given
the several languages I have studied, writing seems anything but
simplified. Take for example, the accents of modern Vietnamese, or the
vowel pointing of Arabic, or the thousands of ideograms of modern Chinese
or ancient Egyptian. Is it that spoken language is just SO complex that
ANY writing must necessarioly be complex, even though it be simpler than
speech? Or is there another possible theoretical explanation of the lack
of vowels in many ancient Semetic languages? Thanks, Matt