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

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Vadim Cherny <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Why Semitic languages had no written vowels?
  • Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 17:32:22 +0100

On 28/04/2005 13:13, Vadim Cherny wrote:

...

Are you talking about children? Or are you claiming that the Hebrews and
other Semites of the biblical period had only just evolved to a level of
intelligence at which they were able to talk?


Speech is a physical ability, not directly related to intelligence. Early
humans had limited speech abilities.


Well, I am glad that you have backed away from calling Semites unintelligent. So now you claim that humans 3000 years ago were physically incapable of producing vowel sounds? Or was it a matter of their brain wiring? Well, let us leave aside the incredible implications of suggesting that some kind of mutation allowing for vowel sounds spread around the whole of at least the Mediterranean world in less than a millennium so that everyone in the Roman Empire was able to pronounce Latin and/or Greek complete with vowels - and look at the evidence. Mesopotamian cuneiform, indicating vowel sounds, was in use by the Sumerians from around 5000 years ago, showing that the Sumerians were able to pronounce vowels. The same writing system was used around 4000 years ago by Akkadians who were Semitic speakers related to the Canaanites, and this writing shows that these Akkadians pronounced vowels. And there is a limited correspondence from the Amarna period in which western, Canaanite Semitic was written in this same cuneiform complete with vowels - and the language of these is more or less the ancestor of Hebrew. So it is simply untrue that the Semites were physically unable to pronounce vowels.

What it all boils to, is that dropping vowels in writing is highly unlikely.
Not impossible, but bizarre, meaningless, and unlikely. ...


Iranians do it all the time. There are vowel points which they could write in their Arabic script, but they choose not to, in almost all texts, except occasionally to resolve ambiguities. And their language is not Semitic, but is Indo-European and so as dependent on vowels as Russian and English. This is just like Russian dropping the dots on their yo vowel - in most cases the dots are redundant and so no one bothers to write them.

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



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