Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>]

Vowel variation between languages cannot plausibly explain absence of
written vowels. By this token, definite article should be omitted, too,
since it is different in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Modern languages generally omit the vowels (usually only allophones)
non-essential semantically.
Few people comfortably read shorthand writing, and those people have highly
developed reading abilities. This was not the case with ancients. The better
analogy for them is students - for whom even Hebrew books add vowels.

A major reason for vowelless shorthand writing in modern languages is great
suprasufficiency of consonants. You wouldn't mistake a root dffclt, though
still open to various readings. But Semitic short roots are less comfotrable
vowelless.

While we cannot definitely rule out or prove some explanation, we can
consider it plausible or not. Shorthand writing is quite implausible. It is
more advanced stage of writing, not suitable for primitive people.

Vadim Cherny


> 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.
> As, in context, the vowels for any dialect could be supplied with a
> reasonable degree of accuracy, writing them may have actually been a
> disadvantage. I am not convinced that having a grapheme that may have
> multiple pronunciations is in any way an advance on not having a grapheme
at
> all. There are still modern languages which do not indicate all the
vowels,
> or fail to distinguish between different vowels, as they are predictable
> from context.  Which shows that even people who usually write vowels do
not
> feel the need to write them just because they exist.