Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT ozemail.com.au>]

Perhaps this one is helping me to understand you, Clay. (See first my
other posting on this subject.) But I don't understand your second
paragraph. In what way is the sign fundamental to language learning? I
can see that if you have learned the language by sign/meaning
association apart from any sound component, you will find it difficult
to switch to a different sign system. But that seems to me a very odd
approach to language learning, and Randall Buth's method a far more
natural one. Normally when learning a language the sound system is one
of the first things to be mastered; even for a dead language I would
always recommend learning by memorising what words sound like rather
than simply what they look like on paper.

Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: c stirling bartholomew [mailto:cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net]
> Sent: 20 January 2003 07:00
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: [b-hebrew] RE: Transliteration Schemes
> 
> on 1/19/03 10:33 AM, Trevor Peterson wrote:
> 
> >> Are there really Semitic language specialists who cannot read
biblical
> >> Hebrew script? Do these people really exists or is this just a myth
> >> propagated by publishers who just don't want to bother with the
> typesetting
> >> problems?
> >
> > Dunno. I can't recall ever meeting one, but I can conceive of a
person
> knowing
> > how to work with the language from a comparative standpoint but not
> knowing
> > the script. One issue could be the effort involved in retaining the
> script.
> 
> Trevor,
> 
> I have no problem with people using transliteration if it serves their
> purpose. In the case where several languages are being compared,
> transliteration is probably the best means of doing this.
> 
> On the other hand, if someone's goal is to learn to read OT Hebrew,
the
> linking of sound/sign/meaning in ones mind is fundamental to the
process
> and
> transliteration leaves out the sign.
> 
> If you learned Hebrew according to R.Buth's method you might end up
with a
> strong sound/meaning link that would make it easier to work with
> transliterated material. But if you learned Hebrew via silent reading
with
> the square script, transliteration requires some extra mental effort
to
> read.
> 
> Not everyone learns BH by hearing it.  Once the sound system of BH has
> been
> mastered (I am not there yet) then reading transliteration should be
less
> difficult.
> 
> greetings, clay
> 
> --
> Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
> Three Tree Point
> P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
>