Biblical Hebrew Forum

["JAMES CHRISTIAN READ" <JCR128 AT student.anglia.ac.uk>]

KG: This idea might sound silly, but a person could learn to read Biblical 
Hebrew without the vowels like a deaf person learns to read and understand a 
language without imagining any sounds connected to the words.

You can just see the letters as words, and recognize what the words mean 
without any sound connected to the letters. If a person wants to read 
Biblical Hebrew, and has no plans to speak the language, then he or she can 
look at the letters without the words representing sounds. The meanings of 
the words could be understand by each person in his or her own language. If 
deaf people can do it, then a hearing person could do it, but it would feel 
strange.

Do you have to speak or even hear a language to know how to read a language?


JCR: It doesn't sound strange to me. What you say makes 
perfect sense. All reading is is the association of 
images on a page with cognitively understood concepts 
in the brain. The reason why this could sound strange 
to some people is because the Hebrew writing system, 
like many other writing systems, is a phonetic attempt 
at representing meaning.

But if we were to consider pictoral writing systems 
like Egyptian hieroglyphics or Mandarin/Cantonese 
pictograms as an example then it may be easier for 
people to understand the validity of your suggestion.

I suppose the one place where having an approximate 
authentic Hebrew pronunciation actually aids in 
comprehending the text is in cases of rhythm and metre.

James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science 
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew       -  thesis1: concept driven machine 
translation using the Aleppo codex 
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc  -  thesis2: language acquisition simulation








































































































ximate 
authentic Hebrew pronunciation actually aids in 
comprehending the text is in cases of rhythm and metre.

James Christian Read - BSc Computer Science
http://www.lamie.org/hebrew       -  thesis1: concept driven machine 
translation using the Aleppo codex
http://www.lamie.org/lad-sim.doc  -  thesis2: language acquisition simulation