Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Well, I can introduce you all to millions of Semitic language
specialists who don't know Hebrew script. They are called Arabs,
Ethiopians, Assyrians etc. But the other fallacy in your (plural)
arguments is the assumption that everyone who learns Hebrew wants to
become a leading edge Hebrew scholar or Semitic language specialists.
They don't. From my Christian perspective, most try to learn because
knowing Hebrew is a useful tool for their work or study, as Bible
students, exegetes, pastors, Bible translators etc. And many give up
Hebrew or make very slow progress because they (like me, and like Trevor
with Akkadian and Ethiopic) find the Hebrew script very hard. They would
make much faster progress with a well designed transliteration. And if
the Bible text and commentaries etc are made available in this
transliteration, such people would have no need to use the script.
Though I suppose it would be helpful to learn it enough to be able to
read slowly from commentaries using the script.

As for Sokoloff's "improvement", this is just a return to the
uselessness (to me) of BDB's Syriac references which are not
transliterated. Yet for some reason BDB transliterates South Arabian
inscriptional materials - into square Hebrew script!

Clay, I'm sorry I don't believe your "1000 times easier". This hype and
your use of "abomination" shows that your response is emotional rather
than rational. What raw nerve have I touched? I don't understand! Do you
consider the Aramaic square script somehow divinely inspired, or what?

Could it be that the Semitic language specialists have a vested interest
in keeping Hebrew and other Semitic languages hard to learn so that they
can perpetuate their intellectual elitism?

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Trevor Peterson [mailto:06PETERSON AT cua.edu]
> Sent: 20 January 2003 05:34
> To: Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: [b-hebrew] RE: Transliteration Schemes
> 
> >===== Original Message From c stirling bartholomew
> <cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net> =====
> >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.
> I
> studied Ethiopic a year ago, but I probably wouldn't be able to read
the
> script perfectly without a little bit of refresher (and we actually
> bothered
> to learn it--Lambdin's grammar works entirely in transliteration). I
> simply
> haven't had much occasion to read Ethiopic, and because the system is
> syllabic, it doesn't stick quite as well as an alphabetic system. The
same
> can
> be said about Akkadian. I'm also probably a little bit rusty with some
of
> the
> Syriac scripts. I've tried to keep reading it from time to time, but
what
> I
> happen to have handy is in the Western script only. My point, then, is
> that I
> can see from my own experience how a person who doesn't work much with
> Hebrew
> but has studied the basic features of the language and refers to it
> primarily
> for comparative evidence might not know the script, or at least not
know
> it
> well. Somewhat less hypothetically, I think it's reasonable to allow a
> common
> Semitic transcription system as a useful tool for those who deal in
some
> fashion with all of the Semitic languages at one point or another but
> specialize in one or two. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like a
person
> could get very far in complete ignorance of the scripts. It's well and
> good
> that HALOT transcribes Arabic, but I should still be able to look up
the
> word
> in an Arabic dictionary.
> 
> It may interest some people to know that M. Sokoloff identified as an
> improvement in his dictionary of Babylonian Jewish Aramaic over the
> Palestinian that newer publishing conventions allowed it to be printed
> with
> Syriac fonts, instead of transliterating Syriac references.
> >
> >When I read in the front matter of some reference book the standard
> boiler
> >plate about transliterating Hebrew and Greek for the "non-specialist"
I
> >always ask, show me someone who cannot read the script and I will
show
> you
> >that they cannot read the transliteration.
> 
> The fact remains, though, that non-specialists think they can use such
> reference books productively, and a reference book successfully
marketed
> to
> them will sell more copies.
> 
> Trevor Peterson
> CUA/Semitics
>