Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

Neither the Japanese nor Korean systems were phonemic originally in that
they did not distinguish the voiceless/voiced distinction inherent in the
language.  These were added later by using diacritics [like sin/shin], but I
have been told that their use is not necessary even today.  Those who are
expert in Ugaritic say it is not phonetic, as certain sounds are represented
by more than one symbol and vice versa - or else earlier sounds have fallen
together in an entirely haphazard way and/or there were rapid sound changes
during the 200 or so years the script was used.  Greek is more phonetic in
its later rather than ealier forms, as is Latin.  That it took centuries for
these sytems to approach a phonemic system argues against your theory.  The
data *is* there - you just a priori rule out most of it.  Neither
transliterations nor cognate languages are as problematic as you want to
believe.  They simply don't give the results you want.

Kevin Riley
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: Karl Randolph
Date: 11/04/05 13:19:28
 
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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