Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Uri Hurwitz <uhurwitz AT yahoo.com>]

 to gfsomsel
Good question. Beyond title and author, alas, I can't supply more info.;my 
particular editions are no longer in print.
  The books I mentioned should  be available in any acadameic library that 
has a Heb. section; inter-library exchange in public libraries, in the US, 
will handle requests for non-English books by author and/or title; and any 
bookstore or dealer specializing in Heb. books should provide more specific 
details about edition that are in print.
 
UH

Polycarp66 AT aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 1/18/2004 10:50:21 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
uhurwitz AT yahoo.com writes:

Both, incidentally are available in voweled modern editions.

_________

Yes?  You recommend them, and note that they are available in modern 
editions, but you don't give any further information?  Is this a quest for 
the holy grail?  Enlighten us.

gfsomsel


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>From 06peterson AT cua.edu  Mon Jan 19 10:45:54 2004
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From: "Trevor Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>
To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] Hebrew transliteration
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 10:45:57 -0500
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Ken wrote:

> For (1), technology, there are two levels of compatibility to
> be sought. 
> (a) Must the transliteration survive text processing that 
> assumes 7 bits
> (ASCII) or 8-bits?

Good questions, especially since I've argued before that transliteration
is much less necessary now than in the past. I still think that it is
from the standpoint of printed media. The expense that used to be
involved in producing lead type for foreign scripts is now mostly a
thing of the past. So I don't think that should be an excuse for
transliterating. On the other hand, there are still some compatibility
issues. Not that my idea is to resolve them, but it remains the case
that not everyone can or wants to use Unicode. Unicode also has some of
its own design problems, which may prevent it from becoming a universal
standard. I'm not saying here that it doesn't serve its purpose as far
as that goes, but it may be overly optimistic to think that Unicode will
ever be an ideal solution for the needs of scholars. Maybe it will
someday; I'm not turning my back on it, but I'm also not putting all my
eggs in the Unicode basket. Regardless, there are still holes in the
universal coverage of Unicode for all possible needs, so we haven't
exhausted the need for transliteration to overcome technical
limitations. (Note, for instance, that all the major ancient language
e-lists still ask for transliteration.) For this sort of scenario, a
system that works on bare-bones character sets and minimal formatting is
undoubtedly best. I may not like the look of MCW, but it works for its
purpose. When less precision is required, I'm personally happy to stick
with a general-purpose transcription system.

> (b) Or is the limitation simply one of rendering
> Right-to-Left scripts?
> 
> For (2), unfamiliarity, what can the reader be expected to be
> familiar with instead?
> (a) English letters and their "normal" English pronunciation?
> (b) IPA?

For me, the issue is not so much unfamiliarity. I know Peter is more
inclined toward this motivation, but I think I agree with your
objections. I come at it more from a general Semitist perspective. Every
language is encoded differently in its native script (even those that
share a script, like Hebrew and Aramaic). Many of the scripts preserve
only minimal information (consonants only, some long vowels, etc.). Even
a syllabic system like cuneiform or Ethiopian leaves some ambiguities.
So there will always be times when we will want to go beyond what the
script encodes. Transcription is an accepted and standard practice for
this kind of analysis. Transcription also simplifies cross-linguistic
observations. Yes, we can write Arabic and Hebrew side-by-side in native
scripts and expect the reader to see the connection. But a common
transcription system can help to show correlations. There are also
writing systems, such as cuneiform, that are too cumbersome to work with
in print. Even in the case of a language like Ugaritic, the value of
seeing the script is to see the ambiguities of shape that need to be
evaluated in analyzing the data. A line drawing, photograph, or the
original tablet serves this purpose. An Ugaritic font does not. Indeed,
putting an Ugaritic text into print with an Ugaritic font amounts to
little more than back-transliteration from the initial analysis of the
signs. So it's unlikely that scholarly convention will ever abandon
transliteration in favor of an Ugaritic font, and that's a relatively
simple abjad. For cuneiform texts, it's even less likely.

I'm not saying that any of this means we should abandon the use of
native scripts in the case of languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, Ethiopic,
or Arabic. These are languages with suitably standardized scripts and
native traditions, and scholars who work with these languages should
feel comfortable using their scripts. But there are still plenty of good
reasons that transliteration and transcription should remain regular
practices, and for that reason, I strive to find a transcription system
I can buy into for Tiberian Hebrew. If I could find one that I really
liked using only ASCII characters, I might be inclined to use it more
universally. But as things stand right now, I think it's best to leave
plain ASCII systems to their ideal settings (e-mail and text databases)
and seek alternatives for more formally printed media.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics