Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Kevin:

Reread what I wrote below. You cannot disprove that 
Biblical Hebrew of 1000 BC, Ugaritic and Phoenician 
writing were phonemic. The data just isn't there. All you 
have are transliterations (very problematic) and theory 
(even more problematic).

When I look at other examples of writing not devised by 
modern linguists with the goal of phonetic writing, yet 
were phonetic (e.g. katakana, hiragana, suomi, etc.) and 
all the examples of non-phonetic writing are either from 
where languages were combined (e.g. all English after 
1066 AD) or where the languages had frozen spelling 
even as the language continued to change (e.g. again 
modern English, Latin, Hebrew, Greek, etc.), it appears 
to me to make more sense that Hebrew was originally 
phonetically written, and only later was it changed.

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>
> 
>   Can you name one example where an ancient script is phonetic?  What are
> all the examples of alphabetic writing systems' that you have seen which are
> phonetic?  I have searched for these and cannot find one, apart *perhaps*
> for Phoenician, which is claimed to have been phonemic.  How do you know if
> the spelling is 'fluid' or fixed?  If you want to see what happens when
> spellings are not fixed, perhaps you should actually look at the texts
> rather than a 'normalised' transcription where some scholar has standardised
> all the spellings.  Middle English is a good place to start.  If you prefer
> older texts, although not alphabetic, Akkadian I believe offers a variety of
> ways of presenting words, as does Ugaritic.  What texts exactly are you
> basing your theory on??
> 
> Kevin Riley
> 
> -------Original Message-------
> 
> From: Karl Randolph
> Date: 11/04/05 05:37:00
> 
> Peter:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> Admittedly true. But notice, it starts with the assumption
> that the language was phonetic. All I am doing is applying
> the same assumption to Biblical Hebrew of 1000 BC or
> older, not 600 AD after a millennium of frozen spelling,
> language change and no native speakers.
> 
> We can't prove that it was phonetic, but modern practice
> is equally unable to disprove that it was phonetic.
> 
> Further, the assumption that it was phonetic fits better all
> the examples of alphabetic writing systems I have seen
> where the spelling remained fluid, unlike modern
> examples like English, French and Latin, where the
> spelling is frozen to archaic forms while the spoken
> language varies.
> 

-- 
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