Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Touché  .   .   .   .   .  :-)

In other words, neither of us has enough data to convince the other.

I would amend that to an interview with a pre-Galut Babel Hebrew.

Karl W. Randolph.

Ps. I agree with Trevor that there is no good reason to continue the 
discussion at this time.


----- Original Message -----
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>

> 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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