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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Why Semitic languages had no written vowels?

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  • From: "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>
  • To: Hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why Semitic languages had no written vowels?
  • Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:20:35 -0500


----- Original Message -----
From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
>
> ... People
> recognize that vowels are necessary for modern writing: to my knowledge, all
> other languages mark vowels.
> Most certainly, "if" different vowels exist, it is necessary to mark them in
> writing. Absence of vowels in Semitic testifies to non-differentiation of
> vowels.
>
>
> Vadim Cherny
>

Vadim:

People _think_ that vowels are necessary for modern writing, but that’s
merely because that is the way they learned reading and writing.

Take a native speaker in English, present him with an English text that has
only consonants, and usually in less than a day, he can read that
text fluently, with only rare cases of ambiguity, using the correct vowels
and stresses. The experiment has been done, and it has been shown
that even in modern English, writing vowels is not necessary.

Consonants are the framework upon which spoken language is constructed. The
vowels are the decoration between the framework. Thus
vowelless writing still communicates.

Likewise, a native speaker in ancient Hebrew could read fluently with few
ambiguities a vowelless text. In fact, he would have an easier time
than modern English speakers who could read vowelless English text, because
ancient Hebrew writing had a better corrolation between
consonental sounds and writing glyphs. We find it hard because we are not
native speakers.

(The fact that letters were being added to the DSS texts to indicate vowels
is evidence for the argument that there were no native speakers of
Hebrew, particularly Biblical Hebrew, at that time.)

Therefore, the absence of vowels in writing does not indicate the absence of
vowels and vowel distinctions in spoken language.

Karl W. Randolph.
--
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