Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 28/04/2005 01:38, Kevin Riley wrote:

> The suggestion that the vowels may have been left out specifically because
> they were variable is a good suggestion also. If the Canaanite dialects were
> like most modern languages [Arabic is a good example] then it is likely that
> the consonants differed in predictable ways but not necessarily the vowels. 
> ...
>  

This may be true of Arabic, and it may have been true of the Canaanite 
dialects which were the immediate ancestors of Arabic as well as Hebrew, 
but is it really true of "most modern languages"? My impression, based 
on knowledge of Indo-European and Turkic as well as Semitic languages, 
is that in most languages (although Semitic languages may be a partial 
exception) vowel phonemes are no less distinctive and no less stable 
than consonant phonemes.

Note that even in Arabic there is considerable variation in 
pronunciation of certain consonants, e.g. jim (gim, in Egypt etc cf. 
Hebrew gimel from which it is derived) and qof.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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