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b-hebrew - RE: [b-hebrew] RE: Transliteration Schemes

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  • From: Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>
  • To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] RE: Transliteration Schemes
  • Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 08:30:18 -0500

>===== Original Message From 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.

Somehow I think you and Clay are working with different definitions of
"specialist." I presume he means a scholar whose business is studying a
particular field, not a native speaker who may or may not be able to comment
intelligently on grammatical function. There is also some question as to
whether you mean the same thing by the adjectival use of "Semitic language,"
which is ambiguous in English, referring potentially to a specialist in one
Semitic language or several. I suspect here that Clay was referring back to
my
comment about people who refer to various Semitic languages for comparative
purposes in the process of studying the whole family. What you describe is
probably someone who uses mostly one Semitic language.

> 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.

I understand this to be the case, but I think you've misread my assumptions,
at least, and quite possibly Clay's assumptions as well. It is not that my
view of transliteration is based on the assumption that everyone wants to be
an expert; rather, it is that I don't see the addition of transliteration to
the process to be all that helpful for anyone who wants to read Hebrew. If
the
point is to read the Hebrew text itself, rather than relying on someone
else's
reading, then to stop short of reading the script seems to me rather
counterproductive. No transliteration system is perfect, and to know how it
is
imperfect requires the same level of knowledge that it takes to learn the
script anyway--more so, since you also have to know the transcription system.
Reading transcription only also restricts a person to reading only what
someone else who can read the script deems worthy of transcription.

> 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.

I should clarify that we have already acknowledged a distinction between more
difficult syllabic systems and the Hebrew alphabet. Since a person who works
with transcription must learn the values of the letters anyway, we're only
talking about learning roughly 30 sign shapes (including vowels). And most of
them are quite simple to draw and have rather distinctive shapes. Remember
that I said of Akkadian, which is by far the most complicated writing system
I've had to learn, we started working with the signs after a few weeks. If
you're talking about someone learning Hebrew and sticking with
transliteration
for months or years into the process, there's a pretty serious difference
here.

> 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.

And if they have an interlinear, they don't need to learn Hebrew at all. But
I
think especially in the case of Tiberian Hebrew, we need to be clear up front
about the fact that transliteration is never anything but an interpretation.
(The possible exception is the rigid system advocated for use on this list,
which IMO is just as difficult to learn as the actual script.)

> Though I suppose it would be helpful to learn it enough to be able to
> read slowly from commentaries using the script.

And with a moderate amount of practice, the very same learning would lead to
being able to read more smoothly from an actual Hebrew text. So why stop
short?
>
> 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!

Probably because there was no font available and not enough demand to create
one. Hand-drawing the letters is tedious, and transcription is not so utterly
useless that it cannot be a last resort. And transcription into a Semitic
script has distinct advantages over an attempt to transcribe with Latin
characters. Yes, the words may be useless if you can't read them. But how
much
more useful would they be if you could? For several of these languages, you'd
be hard pressed to find a resource for further investigation that you could
use without knowing the script. But for those who know the languages, there
are significant patterns that are much more readily visible in the native
scripts, and time and trouble is saved by not having to convert back to the
proper script when looking up a word for more information.
>
[snipped]

> 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?

Something like that. We eschew shortcuts that don't work, because those who
haven't got through will think they've got to where they haven't. And when
they've decided that their shortcuts take them far enough, who is going to
convince them that they've settled for a watered-down version of the
authenticity they sought in the first place?

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics




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